Letter: Antarctic park
Richard Law’s comments on the conservation proposals put forward by
environmentalists will find little sympathy from many Antarctic scientists
(Talking Point, 30 March). The proponents of the ‘World Park’ idea have
provided considerable details, culminating in a draft ‘convention on Antarctic
conservation’.
This reveals very reasonable ideas: each nation would evaluate its activities
to determine whether any are likely to have more than a transitory impact;
if it decides that an activity is likely to be minor then there would be
little likelihood of it not being able to proceed; and an activity with
potentially serious environmental effects would require a comprehensive
environmental evaluation followed by the consideration of all convention
signatories as to whether it should proceed. As the large majority of Antarctic
science would cause little impact, then the demon of ‘unacceptable threats
to Antarctic science’ raised by Laws is itself unacceptable.
A ban on minerals activities could help stimulate an international resolve
to find alternatives to minerals from Antarctica. Vigorous pursuit of those
alternatives now would be wise, rather than hoping Antarctica might gain
us respite from resource depletion, even if that might be a ‘long time’
away.
Our activities in the Southern Ocean have shown how we are capable of
hugely perturbing even a supposedly ‘robust’ ecosystem. The great whales
have certainly not recovered and the increase in fur seals is hardly a natural
event but rather a consequence of whale depletion and increased food availability
for other predators. At the ice-free areas on land it is cumulative impact
on an ecosystem which changes and recovers very slowly which is the major
concern. This impact is occurring well away from the inevitable devastation
in the immediate vicinity of bases. Laws overlooks these points.
Paul Broady University of Canterbury Christchurch New Zealand
Letter: Antarctic park
Richard Laws is quite right to emphasise the importance of scientific
research in Antarctica. The importance of keeping Antarctica as pristine
as possible, as the world’s greatest natural laboratory, is one of the reasons
why scientific stations there must be subject to strict environmental regulations.
He is also almost certainly right to say that damage to the Antarctic
environment from mining is not imminent. But his continuing support for
the Convention for the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities
is questionable. He does not mention the fact that CRAMRA would have allowed
prospecting to commence as soon as it came into force. In this and other
ways the convention would have encouraged the exploitation it was set up
to control.
The mineral causing most speculation is oil. In his analysis of the
Southern Ocean ecosystem Laws does not deal with the impact of oil spills
at that latitude. The Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska gave an idea of what
the impact of a spill would be in Antarctica-only there it would be incomparably
more difficult still to clear up.
If oil is the Antarctic mineral which some time in the future becomes
‘essential to the world’, then I would venture that the world will already
be in deep trouble, and that a few more years’ supply of oil from Antarctica
would not help.
James Martin-Jones WWF United Kingdom Godalming, Surrey
Letter: Correct code
I read with interest your editorial ‘Defence of the data'(19 January).
The facts you present do not give the whole truth. I know of no encryption
program using the DES algorithm on a personal computer that would not use
hours of time for a file as large as the ‘battle plans for the recapture
of Kuwait’.
Furthermore, in some countries well-known products such as that which
you describe ‘to recover files inadvertently erased . . . ‘, which claim
to encrypt using DES, do not do so. One performs no encryption at all; another
product encrypts using a proprietary algorithm.
We have not been able to test a large number of these products for copyright
reasons but in every test we have performed, where the product claimed to
have DES encryption for personal computers, the DES encryption did not happen.
There is a public domain version of DES and cheap proprietary versions
are available. As these may be subject to export restrictions in some countries
I shall be happy to give the name and address of a legal supplier in the
home country of any reader who cares to write to me.
Jennifer Seberry University College University of New South Wales Canberra,
Australia
Letter: Brain books
Victor Bryant is clearly unfamiliar with the difficulties of composing
puzzles for a wide range of readers (‘Braintwisters’, Review, 16 March).
As a compiler of crossword puzzles on a small scale I have discovered the
hard way that what the compiler may think is a technically brilliant puzzle
is quite useless if the solver is not tempted either to solve it quickly
or to enjoy spending time on it.
Equally, one has to include a variety of types and levels of difficulty
in an attempt to attract as wide an audience as possible. Christopher Maslanka
has succeeded brilliantly in dealing with these two hurdles facing the puzzle
compiler. His book contains arithmetic and linguistic puzzles together with
riddles and scientific enigmas. Furthermore, the setting in which each puzzle
is framed is so entertaining that the book can be enjoyed even if the reader
‘cheats’ and looks up all the answers without trying to solve them.
Bryant fairly criticises shortcomings in two of the 140 puzzles but
fails to realise that this is not a book designed solely for mathematics
dons.
A. J. Nuttall Newcastle upon Tyne
Letter: Traffic rights
Mick Hamer’s article on the ‘Transport and Society’ conference missed
two vital points (‘Cars come to the end of the road’, 23 March). Firstly,
the report at the conference dealt with transport in complex urban areas,
as Phil Goodwin explained, and secondly, there was no unanimity among those
who prepared the report. At least one leading transport academic argued
at the conference that the role of improved urban roads had been seriously
underestimated. Others made the same point in papers submitted during the
preparation of the report.
It is said that the ‘Department of Transport predicts there will be
an extra 25 million cars by 2025′. While further growth in the British car
stock is inevitable, if only to catch up with the levels already found in
much of north-west Europe, the official forecasts predict a saturation level
at about 14 million above the current level and that probably not for 50
years or longer.
Peter Witt British Road Federation London
Letter: Cost in space
Nicholas Booth’s article on the 30th anniversary of Gagarin’s space
flight makes interesting reading (‘Space travel sticks in Earthly orbit’,
6 April). However, there is one point that he does not make, which is essential
to understanding the current state of space activities: the cost of space
operations today is extremely high, not because of inherent physical necessity,
but because all space operations are performed by government agencies devoted
to developing new technology and other political objectives.
For example, the cost of launching a tonne aboard the space shuttle
is twice as high in real terms as it was, using the expendable Saturn 5,
25 years ago. By contrast, the costs of the miniature Japanese tape recorders
and video cameras that the Apollo crew used have fallen by a factor of 10
000 since then-from $1 000 000 to just $100.
Likewise, we know that although the current US/European space station
is planned to cost $40 billion, a large and useful space station could
in fact be built for a few hundred million dollars-because we had one 20
years ago called Skylab. And if we’re talking commercially, a single Energia
could launch a station weighing up to 100 tonnes for less than $100 million.
So it is understandable that taxpayers are becoming less interested
in paying for government employees to travel into to orbit. But this doesn’t
mean the end of human space flight-quite the opposite. When commercial companies
are spending their own money they will build cheap launch vehicles. Just
wait and see.
Patrick Collins Imperial College London
Letter: Music test
While agreeing with Brian Josephson and T. L. Carpenter that the concept
of ‘musical idea’ may have some relevance to the concept of music as communication,
I am afraid that their arguments rather miss the point (Letters, 30 March).
The existence of the ‘culture-independent musical idea’ simply cannot be
tested in the same way that, for instance, one may test the possibility
of the operation in cognition of a set of principles that enable a listener
to distinguish between the notes of a piece of music in terms of a structural
function. (In fact, the results of experimental work on this latter topic
could be held to militate against the existence of highly specific culture-independent
musical ideas while lending validity to the idea that common cognitive processes
may be operational for listeners in different musical cultures.)
No matter how formal the way in which they are expressed, the concepts
employed within musical analysis are not necessarily scientific theories
or hypotheses although they may serve as context or input to scientific
theories about music and mind; they are not of the same order or type as
the concepts addressed by a cognitive psychology of music. They are typically
not falsifiable, and they are not necessarily articulated within the framework
of a general theory of perception, cognition or performance. However, accepting
this difference, the ideas and findings generated in the two areas may interact
fruitfully in assisting the understanding of music.
Ian Cross University of Cambridge
Letter: On the fly
I read the item on the ‘Wind-up bus’ in the Patents page with growing
apprehension (30 March). Surely the heavy flywheel used to power the bus
will act like a lethal gyroscope?
If the flywheel is vertical, the first roundabout the bus comes to will
be its last. If it is horizontal the first humpback bridge or little dip
in the road the bus approaches will give the passengers the chance to guess
whether they are going to inspect the bridge masonry at close quarters,
or take off.
Presumably the patentee lives in a completely flat part of England,
serviced by an excellent set of Roman roads. Or am I missing something?
Dave Hancock Tunbridge Wells Kent
Letter: Hand trouble
No wonder there’s so much agitation about what goes on at Grimbledon
Down (23 March). Even the director has been affected. Just look at his hands.
J. Taylor Holmrook Cumbria
Letter: Bit part
As a systems and software designer, I disagree with the need to introduce
the Unicode standard based on a simplistic 16-bit approach (Technology,
9 March). There is ample room within the existing ASCII structure to provide
expansion for other language and symbol sets using escape codes and sequences.
The need to standardise on a single code set for all languages is unnecessary
because is of little use except in a multilingual environment, and only
then when the display capabilities are there. The benefits of faster processing,
communications and larger storage will be lost if Unicode member companies
try to enforce it.
IBM and Apple can ill afford to slow their machines down at a time when
speed and capacity are paramount considerations. I don’t see it as suitable
to be an enforced standard, but rather as an optional de facto standard,
such as PostScript, Hayes, Epson and others that have settled in as common-sense
solutions to problems in their respective areas, if Unicode proves to be
such.
Stephen Zadarnowski Perth, Western Australia
Letter: Rock and rail
The risk of exposure to animated adverts on the walls of the Channel
Tunnel is enough in itself to make many people take the ferry. But Ariadne
is, perhaps, too quick in dismissing the possibility of an accompanying
soundtrack (6 April). Even if we disregard the more high-tech approaches,
good old Victorian technology might be persuaded to do the job.
If the tops of the rails were encoded with suitable transverse ridges
and furrows, the audio element of the brainwashing could be vibrated straight
into the carriage-just like an old-fashioned horn-phonograph. By using a
slightly different set of data for each rail you could even get the message
across in stereo.
I can see a number of disadvantages in this technique, not least being
the length of time that a message would last before being worn away. In
addition, the multiple bogies would probably give you a bit of an echo,
but you would expect that in a tunnel, wouldn’t you?
John Gilbey Winkleigh Devon
Letter: Cornish research
In Gail Vines’s otherwise excellent article on Nobel prizewinner Peter
Mitchell she says that Mitchell’s laboratory, the Glynn Research Institute
in Bodmin, is Cornwall’s only research establishment (Forum, 30 March).
This in incorrect: the Camborne School of Mines, Redruth, has been recognised
by the government as a centre of excellence for research in earth sciences
and is responsible for the multimillion pound dry rock geothermal energy
project at Rosemanowes, Falmouth. I’m sure that ECC International, St Austell,
which has extensive laboratories, would also feel somewhat aggrieved.
K. Atkinson Camborne School of Mines Redruth Cornwall