Letter: Eating and driving
It seems there may indeed be a way in which we can have our alcohol
without drinking it (‘Drink? If you’ve got the energy’, Forum, 22/29 December).
The ‘auto-brewery syndrome’, fermentation of carbohydrate to ethanol in
the gut after an oral glucose load, was reported last year in Journal of
Nutritional Medicine. The maximum concentration of blood alcohol the authors
had previously recorded was 19.7 milligrams per 100 millilitres, close enough
to the Swedish driving limit of 20 mg/100 ml to merit sober reflection before
dipping into the biscuit tin (digestive biscuits contain 66 grams carbohydrate
per 100 grams) or dropping into the sweet shop (a Mars bar contains 68.6
grams carbohydrate per 100 grams).
Sally Clarke Journal of Nutritional Medicine London
Letter: Third World debt
Tam Dalyell finds Midland Bank director Kit McMahon, ‘pretty convincing’
in claiming that cancelling Third World debt would be neither ‘fair nor
effective’ (Thistle Diary, 12 January). The only convincing aspect of this
statement is its sheer hypocrisy. Is it fair that the hundreds of millions
of poor people in the Third World should be made to suffer what McMahon
refers to as ‘fundamental – if painful – economic reforms’ to repay debt
incurred by unaccountable governments?
In the seven years after 1978, IMF ‘stabilisation’ policies (McMahon’s
‘painful reforms’) resulted in a 30 per cent drop in the disposable income
of the average Sudanese peasant and an increase in the country’s debt from
$2 billion to $13 billion. In 1985/86, over 50 per cent of all Sudanese
government expenditure was used to service debt obligations. Sudan is now,
like many other African countries, wrecked by war and facing mass famine,
a fifth of its population being internal refugees.
Similar, if slightly less horrific, stories of the total failure of
IMF/World Bank policies can be told about scores of other countries. Yet
the only method of reducing Third World debt which McMahon mentions – the
meagre concessions offered by the Brady Plan – depends on governments adopting
more of the same fatal medicine prescribed by the same organisations which
have reduced the Third World to debt bondage.
McMahon admits that ‘the debt burden of many developing countries is
considerable’. As this is obviously so, in what way would the removal of
this burden not be ‘effective’? Could McMahon mean that it would not be
‘effective’ in maintaining the present international economic order and
the global influence of bankers such as himself? Could the unfairness McMahon
refers to be unfairness to the shareholders of the Midland Bank?
When Dalyell considers statements from bankers he would do well to try
and separate self-interest from economic reality.
Patrick McCully The Ecologist Sturminster Newton Dorset
Letter: Cock and Gaul
Anthony Toole’s article on elementary etymology wrongly attributed Gallus
(from which gallium is derived) as meaning Gaul, or France (Forum, 22/29
December). The discoverer of gallium, in 1875, was a French chemist called
Lecoq. The Latin for the cock is gallus, and this was his way of letting
the world know his Latin was as good as his chemistry. Gallus also means
a castrated priest, proving the Romans had a word for everything, except
maybe gallus and taurus.
Giles Perryer Birmingham
Letter: Die hard
Regarding the covgerof the 22/29 December edition, may I point out that
the sum of the opposite sides of a die is seven? It is therefore impossible
for such an object (assuming that it has been correctly manufactured) to
be seen in either of the positions portrayed, since the five and two as
well as the three and four are shown adjacent to each other.
Timothy Harris Plymouth Devon
Letter: Detecting God
Unlike Andre Beeson (Letters, 5 January), I am a practising scientist
who was not angered by John Habgood’s comments (Talking Point, 8 December).
I interpret his assertion that scientific methodology portrays a universe
‘which has no place for the human subject’ not as an attack on the humanity
or morality of science as practised, but rather as a statement of the fact
that the scientific process is not designed to record and analyse those
aspects of human experience and humanity which are foremost in interactions
with God, like love.
Science employs methodologies and instruments appropriate to the analysis
of the creation rather than the Creator. By contrast, perhaps we, ourselves,
are the most appropriate ‘instruments’ for detecting God in a way which
we can interpret. The only way to test the hypothesis that God exists is
then by seeking personal experience of God. I would suggest that most ‘non-religious’
people have not seriously tested the hypothesis.
Ian Todd Nottingham
Letter: Costly drugs
I think alpha interferon is not cheap because it costs 58 Pounds for
a bottle which gives me two day’s doses (‘Canada to test Kenya’s disputed
HIV drug’, This Week, 12 January). And I don’t think it is exactly readily
available because the chemist has to keep writing to different places to
get it. I have to inject it every day to treat the condition resulting from
Philadelphia Chromosome. I wish it could be given by mouth, but the doctor
says it doesn’t work.
Fiona Bowman (age 10) Haverhill Suffolk
Letter: Air train
Like Martin Pyke (Letters, 12 January) I too noted with interest the
article about the ‘air driven train’ in Jakarta (Technology, 24 November).
However, the principle behind this new development is not (as Pyke suggests)
‘exactly the same’ as that employed on the South Devon railway. The Jakarta
train appears to work on positive pressure being applied behind a ‘sail’
in a concrete duct. Atmospheric railways worked by partially evacuating
the air ahead of a piston in a tube and so the piston was pushed along by
atmospheric pressure – hence the name.
The atmospheric system was in fact patented in 1839 by Jacob & Joseph
Samuda and was first demonstrated in 1840. The first application was on
the Dublin & Kingstown Railway, opened in August 1843, followed by the
London & Croydon Railway in 1846. Isambard Kingdom Brunel recommended
its adoption for the South Devon Railway because he thought that the steep
inclines and tight curves of the proposed route would have caused difficulties
for the locomotives of the time. As long as the leather flap along the top
of the tube was in good condition, 16 inches of vacuum was sufficient to
draw 35-ton trains at speeds up to 64 miles per hour.
Bill Barksfield Chalfont St Giles Buckinghamshire
Letter: Round in circles
John Gribbin’s description of the ‘centrifugal force’ acting on a spacecraft
is simply nonsense (‘Spinning backwards for Christmas’, Science, 22/29 December).
His discussion of the curvature of space-time may be post-Einsteinian, but
his understanding of circular motion can only be described as pre-Newtonian.
In which direction were your editors spinning when they passed Gribbin’s
piece and its diagram? I suggest they have a new-year re-read of Newton’s
first and second laws and then rewrite the article before the beginning
of next term.
Grenville Needham Ackworth School Pontefract Yorkshire
Letter: Round in circles
An experimenter who carries out measurements in a room (or spaceship)
in a rotating reference frame will measure a force, outward from the centre
of rotation. This is centrifugal force, and you can feel it any time you
are in a car that goes round a corner (it also makes you lighter than you
would be if the Earth were not rotating, assuming you do not live at a pole).
Although sometimes referred to by physicists as a ‘fictitious force’, they
mean by this that it exists only because of rotation.
In the story referred to, the centrifugal force does not act on the
spaceship, but on objects inside the spaceship – so in the special orbit,
people inside the spaceship are weightless, whatever the speed at which
the spaceship moves around the orbit. The whole point of this discussion
is that the spaceship is firing its motors to maintain various circular
orbits without being in free fall. Within the critical orbit, occupants
of the spacecraft will be pressed against the inside wall by centrifugal
force.
It was not, incidentally, New 杏吧原创 that introduced the term ‘centrifugal
force’ into the discussion – it is the one favoured by the relativists.
I would be interested to know if, indeed, there is any recognised alternative
term for this force.
John Gribbin Piddinghoe Sussex
Letter: Paper tiger
With reference to your leading article about British Telecom (Comment,
12 January), I suggest that Telecom Gold, its electronic mail, confirms
many of your comments. The service is dreadful.
My favourite joke is the ‘Info’ section. Try entering ‘Info Access’;
the response starts: ‘Please set paper to top of form and hit space .’
Paper? Does the company think we still use teletype machines? Amazingly
it does: the page length is 66 lines. With the normal 25 line personal computer
screen you cannot read what is sent.
If you waste time saving the file, you find ‘Info access’ ends with
an example: ‘country name eg: Info access USA’. Try the example and you
get: ‘No info on USA’. That one has been there a long time. They are probably
too worried about the scarcity of teletype paper rolls to fix it.
May I recommend Compuserve, now readily accessible in Britain. You won’t
believe the difference until you try it.
Julian Nott London
Letter: Baste of time
Congratulations to Peter Barham for his cooking instructions (‘Talking
turkey’, 22/29 December). Mine came out perfectly. It is a pity he did not
quote the really simple rule-of-thumb solution to the heat diffusion equation:
the distance reached by the input is proportional to the square root of
the time. So his formula for the cooking time of a spherical turkey as proportional
to the (mass) to the power 2/3 easily follows, as does the result for heat
flow in the opposite direction, giving the time to solidify a casting as
proportional to the square of the volume to surface area rtatio (Chavorinov’s
rule).
My first-year engineering students use this approximation to estimate
the time required for surface heat treatments and hardening processes, as
well as verifying Delia Smith’s cooking time for beef. Incidentally, I cooked
my turkey upside down. The result: moist, automatically basted breats. Is
this chaos or is entropy truly the arrow of time?
Roderick Smith University of Sheffield
Letter: European interference
I was glad to see Barry Fox drawing attention to the plight of electronics
manufacturers resulting from the new European regulations on susceptibility
to interference (Technology, 1 December). I have been warning the members
of my trade association, who supply audio and lighting equipment to the
entertainment industry, for nearly a year now that these regulations, if
strictly applied, could put them out of business.
One of the major problems of the directive is the amount of testing
involved. There are only a few test houses capable of carrying out the wide
range of tests needed and there are certainly not enough to go round, especially
when it is realised that at least one sample of every item of electronic
equipment containing any kind of amplifying or switching device would need
testing. Fox did not mention that a manufacturer can self-certify products,
and this will undoubtedly lead to unscrupulous people omitting the costly
testing.
Also, the labelling required for 1992 means that the product must comply
with all EC directives applicable to that product. In the case of electronic
items, this also means the low-voltage directive, an edict few firms know
about.
Another problem is the redesign of existing products before 1992, and
on behalf of my association I have asked the DTI for a three-year moratorium
on existing products. At the time of writing, DTI representatives are in
Brussels negotiating with the European commissioners on this and other problems,
but I am not expecting much in the way of concesisons.
My association is of the opinion that the directive is unworkable if
it is rigidly enforced on 1 January 1992.
G C Thompson Professional Lighting and Sound Association Eastbourne
Sussex
Letter: Two a penny
You quote the case of a 40-tonne lorry with 10 wheels (‘Roads to ruin’,
15 December). This would give an average wheel loading of 4 tonnes. My fully
laden touring bicycle, including rider, exerts a downwards force of 50 kilograms
on each of its wheels. Using the fourth-power law this means each lorry
wheel will do 40,960,000 times the damage of a cycle wheel. Don’t forget
the lorry has five times as many wheels.
For many years, lorry drivers have advocated taxing pedal cycles. Well,
if the lorry cited above pays annual tax of 1,231 Pounds then I calculate
that we pedal pushers should pay 0.0006 pence per year. To whom do I make
my cheque payable?
Brian Moss Tamworth Staffordshire