Letter: Save the kakapo
We read with interest and considerable concern the article ‘Last days
of the old night bird’, which describes the attempts to save the New Zealand
kakapo (16 June). Just reading the article filled one with the same degree
of pessimism as is obviously felt by those trying to save this wonderful
and unique bird.
We would like to reply to a number of points raised in the article,
not only as bird lovers, but as avian researchers.
The concern over taking eggs for artificial incubation is misplaced.
Artificial incubation has advanced greatly and, using techniques such as
egg density measurement with advanced temperature and humidity control,
hatchability is very good. The risks are far lower than those imposed by
predators in the wild.
Techniques for hand rearing and diets are also extensively used, with
a high degree of success when practised by a team that is knowledgeable
and experienced. At our incubation centre in Britain over 120 species of
parrots have been reared, with about 1000 individuals successfully reared
annually.
Research at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London,
centres on the cytogenetics and molecular biology of parrots. Chromosome
preparations from blood feather tissue facilitate determination of sex of
monomorphic species and evolutionary relationships between species. DNA
extracted from the same tissue can be utilised in DNA profiling to establish
familial relationships. These studies could be vital in maintaining a diverse
gene pool with so few individuals, and in finding out the sex of offspring
or confirming the sex of adults.
The question on your cover is ‘Can anyone save the kakapo?’ Although
we have no experience of these birds we feel we can offer some help. Surely
we should all pool our knowledge to prevent the emergence of a new phrase,
‘as dead as a kakapo’!
Simon Joshua, John Stevens
Databird Worldwide Scientific Queen Mary and Westfield College
London
Letter: Smart moves
As a keen, if not particularly talented, chess player, I was pleased
to see two chess-related articles in my New 杏吧原创 (Patents and Review,
30 June). In the review of Chessmaster 2100, the program is described as
playing a ‘strong’ game of chess. While it offers many excellent features,
and will be perfectly adequate for a majority of your readers, those seeking
playing strength might check M Chess or Rex before parting with their hard-earned
cash.
In a more scientific vein, those who would like to try their hand at
teaching computers to play chess, but are daunted by the amount of work
involved in writing a chess program, may find Gnuchess from the Free Software
Foundation a good starting point. The C source code for this program is
freely available (you will need a C compiler).
Readers with access to Janet can get a copy from infoserver@uk. ac.
ic. doc.
Simon Waters
Exeter Devon
Letter: Barrier methods
In reply to Richard Duvaille’s queries regarding the Thames Barrier,
the chance of overtopping the barrier should the sea level rise by 30 centimetres
is ‘1 in 1000’ (Letters, 16 June).
However, by operating the barrier gates so that the reservoir upstream
of the barrier (formed by closing the barrier at low tide) is partially
filled just before the peak of the tide, this ‘1 in 1000’ chance can be
maintained for an even greater rise in sea level without any flooding occurring.
With regard to Duvaille’s comment about taking the greenhouse effect
into consideration, the barrier was partially constructed before this phenomenon
was considered a problem. The designers were not clairvoyant.
So far, sea levels have not risen at the rate originally allowed for,
never mind any increase caused by the greenhouse effect.
Ian Fallon Thames Barrier National Rivers Authority London
Letter: Teacher training
Is John Galloway really suggesting that only those people who have read
their subject at university make good teachers (Letters, 7 July)? Does he
know what makes a good teacher? Has he considered tolerance, flexibility,
commitment, insight, an ability to listen, teach effectively to a wide range
of abilities, and so on? Does he realise that many graduates in independent
schools are not trained to be teachers? Has he ever suffered at the hands
of one of these graduates?
Barbara Tomlins Burnham Bucks
Letter: Party Popper
Robin Oakley-Hill is, I believe, mistaken in several ways in trying
to get Marxism off the Popperian hook (Letters, 30 June). Popper, in his
‘recantation’ of 1977, asserted that natural selection was, after all, refutable,
if one took account of the fact that it does not explain all characteristics
of species. Some features appear to arise by genetic drift in the absence
of a definite selection pressure, and serve no useful purpose. Popper’s
problem, I believe, had been that natural selection lacked his crucial criterion
for a scientific theory; that is, it should predict things. Natural selection
could not predict the variety of the world. He pointed out that if we found
that life on Mars consisted exclusively of three species of bacteria we
would not be affected by the absence of rich variety.
The worry here was that natural selection could explain anything, for
this is the crucial hallmark of pseudo-science, manifested with most respectability
in Marxian and Freudian studies. Finding some things unexplained by natural
selection removed this anxiety. It did not, however, either refute natural
selection nor give it much predictive power, so Popper’s change of mind
is unconvincing. However, even as a metaphysical research programme, it
offers, in Popper’s words, ‘a possible framework for testable scientific
theories’, and therein lies the power of Darwinism: refutable theories within
the framework seek to explain the variety of specific adaptations.
Of Marxism, Popper said from the beginning that it was a refutable scientific
theory, which had (long before Havel and Walesa) been refuted for a number
of reasons, not least of which was the failure of the Western working class
to become steadily worse off, more numerous and more class conscious. It
is the ‘Marxism’ of Marx’s intellectual and political activist disciples
that Popper labels unscientific, for it is prescriptive, which is not a
function of science, rather than predictive, which is. Darwinism and Marxism
are, then, quite separate issues in Popper’s thought, so Oakley-Hill is
simply wrong to assert that his ‘exclusion of Darwinism as a true scientific
theory . . . was a result of Popper’s refusal to admit Marxism as a true
falsifiable theory’, especially as the latter refusal did not occur.
Mark Ackary London
Letter: Chaos links
Jim Lesurf’s article ‘Chaos on the circuit board’ is actually an explanation
of the more complex form of chaos reported by William Bown in the same issue
(Science, 30 June). Negative resistance can be achieved in electronic gyrator
circuits configured so that the combination of a capacitance with a number
of resistors behaves as if it were an inductor at a specific audio frequency.
This is a question of phase relationships.
Gyrators are frequency-selective, and a system of negative resistance
filters would clearly offer multiple paths of least resistance. The transformation
of a square onto eight segments could be achieved by devising a system of
mutually orthogonal pathways. The new form of chaos described would then
become entirely predictable. The necessary manipulations can be derived
by inspection of the usual topological representations of the projective
plane, the torus and the Klein bottle as orthogonal vectors arranged in
the form of a square. These are also phase relationships. If superconductivity
is taken to be the ultimate expression of negative resistance, then so-called
chaos is the dissipation of energy in phase transitions taking place along
determinate pathways. This would constitute progressive entropy reduction
in a dynamic flow system equivalent to the generation of information.
Brian Clement Crickhowell Powys
Letter: Hotbed of faith
The Wessex Skeptics’ firewalk reported by Sue Blackmore is moderately
useful as far as it goes (a counter-demonstration to a suspected false-positive),
but the putative conclusion that ‘anybody can do it, with or without effective
faith’ is not proved (‘Playing with fire’, Forum, 14 July). The result is
consistent with Skeptics having miraculous protection as a consequence,
perhaps, of their scientific convictions about poor conductivity of hot
wood-ash.
Instead of pussyfooting around, what is needed is for the psychics to
show that they have abnormal resistance to the effects of heat by, for instance,
walking across a bed of hot copper. It need not even be very hot; 100 Degree
C should be enough to make most of them dance to a different tune. Who knows,
they might even levitate.
Alan Worsley London
Letter: Copycat
Acronyms are proliferating at a rate faster than most people can cope
with but they are sometimes duplicated. In ‘Circles in the corn’, 23 June,
CERES, the Circles Effect Research Group, is mentioned, while the IME Bulletin
refers to ‘CERES, Consumers for Ethics in Research’.
I would like to suggest a Society for the Protection of Acronyms (SPA
for short), or has somebody already used it?
Tisha Browne Rochester, Kent
Letter: Spineless wonders
I was interested to read Zakaria Erzinclioglu on conservation and invertebrates
(‘Spare a thought for the invertebrates’, Forum, 7 July). May I give some
observations? Generally, comparative data for invertebrates are much harder
to get than for birds and mammals, which benefit from fewer species and
greater awareness. To help overcome this, I would suggest more emphasis
on manageable and obvious groups such as butterflies and dragonflies.
The decision makers in conservation are busy people and want advice,
not long lists of Latin names in (to them) little-known scientific publications;
the scientific data have to be summarised and interpreted so that appropriate
courses of action can be readily decided.
There is an urgent need for people to get together in their regions
and either make their invertebrate data available on computers in record
centres, or make themselves available when management or planning decisions
are made.
Taxonomic skills such as identification are unfashionable in the world
of ‘ideas’ (higher education, systematics), so we have to work closer with
competent amateur or retired naturalists in our area and encourage younger
naturalists to follow them.
E. A. Jarzembowski The Booth Museum of Natural History Brighton, Sussex
Letter: Watering cancan
Your report and picture about the Thames man(nequin) at Kew (not Brussels)
were fun but would have benefited from a little more research before you
took the ‘pis’ (Feedback, 14 July). You said Kew Gardens does not get any
of its water from Thames Water.
In fact, we supply around 1 million gallons a week – that is a lot of
water. Hard water, such as we have in the Thames Region, can, especially
when sprayed, leave chalky deposits on foliage. Kew has a number of deionisers
which are used on some of our supplies to reduce the natural hardness content.
These are mainly used for certain indoor collections.
Water for domestic gardens does not normally need any treatment. But
overwatering, or watering too frequently, can do more harm than good, and
at peak times can put a strain on our supply system. Thames, with the experts
at Kew, has produced an advice leaflet (Watering Your Garden, The Good Kew
Guide), available from Customer Services (R124), Thames Water, New River
Head, 173 Rosebery Avenue, London EC1R 4TP.
Peter McIntosh Thames Water Reading, Berks
Letter: Faulty map
I was startled to see in your map of Britain’s geological faults that
there is one running roughly from Carlisle to Berwick which is so severe
that the whole northern part of Britain has apparently drifted away (‘Ancient
faults and modern earthquakes’, 7 July). This might explain all sorts of
things, such as the curious outbreak of support for the West German World
Cup team which emerged in Scotland around semifinal time. On the other hand,
if you just want to write an article about England and Wales, that is fine.
But please do not refer to it as Britain. Not only is it wrong, but it makes
those of us in the rest of this island very cross.
Neil McNaught Callander Scotland
Rich parents
In all the correspondence about the low numbers of scientists coming
from public schools, I feel that an important factor has been left out –
very few scientists are wealthy enough to send their children to expensive
private establishments. At my school, most boys are the sons of lawyers,
accountants or bankers. As they are likely to have inherited their parents’
ideas, they naturally find these areas more interesting. Indeed, even in
my class, where we all take double maths and physics, only one person has
a parent who is a physicist.
Philip Horrell London