Letters: Close to home
John Holmes raises several important points in his discussion of the
A-level system (Talking Point, 11 May). His ideal cure is the complete abolition
of this system and the introduction of a ‘broader system which is closer
to that followed in other European countries’.
I am currently studying at the University of Glasgow, after recently
having the good fortune to study in a country which has such a system of
schooling. The system I followed allows pupils to study for one year after
the age of 16 in up to six subjects for a ‘Higher Grade’ certificate. In
the subsequent year, pupils may study two or three subjects in a greater
depth at the same school, often with emphasis on untutored or practical
work, for a ‘Certificate of Sixth Year Studies’ (of a similar status to
A-levels). Capable students are encouraged to combine this with other courses
which may interest them, if they have sufficient time.
The radical education system of this country also includes four-year
university courses, allowing for greater opportunities than the English
three-year system.
The forward thinking, but oft-forgotten ‘European’ country in which
this system has been in place for many years is not even far from York;
it is called Scotland.
P. B. Climie, Glasgow
Letters: Mammoth task
Various theories have been put forward to explain how ancient DNA might
have survived intact for thousands of years, including the idea of carotenoids
(vitamin-D-like substances) in ancient sediments mopping up radicals (‘The
oldest DNA in the world’, 11 May).
In 1989 I successfully extracted DNA of about 100 to 200 base pairs
from a 40,000-year-old piece of mammoth tissue supplied to me by the Leningrad
Zoological Institute through the Soviet Embassy in London. This mammoth
was not fossilised, but rather frozen in Siberian permafrost on the side
of a river bank for 40,000 years, presumably in peaty soil.
This would seem to lend support to the theory of humic acids chelating
(binding strongly to) metals or even bacterial precipitation of metals as
sulphides. It would also seem to suggest that fossilisation per se is not
a required prerequisite for increasing DNA survivability over such periods
of time. It would be interesting to build up an international database of
‘ancient DNA’ conditions so that a potential common environmental link can
be found between fossil or frozen samples giving rise to DNA.
C. S. Cockell Department of Biophysics University of Oxford
Letters: Cheap and healthy
Your article ‘Britain’s deadly diet’ (11 May) suggests that healthy
food may be too expensive for some people. But a healthy diet is, generally,
cheaper than an unhealthy diet. We are advised to eat considerable amounts
of bread, potatoes and other vegetables, all cheap foods, and less meat,
which is generally expensive.
Taken in proper amounts, the food produced by our farmers and sold in
our shops is perfectly healthy – what is wrong with most people’s diet is
that they eat too much food, too much meat, too much fat and too much sugar.
Kenneth Mellanby Cambridge
Letters: Cults and Kuru
Regarding Martin Harris’s comments on the transmission of Kuru among
the people of the New Guinea Highlands (Letters, 11 May) I was under the
impression, from discussions with colleagues when I worked at Ipswich Museum
and from a later television programme, that this too was a doubtful case
of cannibalism.
From what I recall, these New Guineans disinter their dead after a period
and clean the remaining decaying flesh from the bones, emptying the remains
of the skull contents at the same time, but do not actually eat any of this.
The transmission of Kuru occurs by infected brain tissue getting into cuts
on the hands, or by fragments remaining on the hands being ingested accidentally
while later eating a (non-cannibalistic) meal. Like most other cases, there
is no first hand evidence of New Guinean cannibalism.
Ian Simmons Leicester
Letters: Absent friends
The article ‘The advantages of dual nationality’ (Forum, 4 May) touched
a raw nerve. Recently I was asked by the scientific attache of an EC country
to help in locating research centres in Great Britain in certain areas of
biology for possible collaboration. I first turned to the BEST database
(British Expertise in Science and Technology, published by Longmans). Sadly,
it became clear that very few scientists bother to provide data for inclusion,
and much material that is included is redundant. I spent hours reading life
histories and past glories to find the few nuggets of research in progress.
On consulting friends who are active in research whose names were not
listed, I found that they too were disillusioned by BEST because of the
material required for an entry, and that they believed that no one ever
looked at it.
I next turned to CRIB (Current Research in Britain, published by the
British Library). Although a book rather than a database, this was better
inasmuch as it was more up-to-date and a good deal less verbose; but again
my friends’ names were not there, again because they believed that no one
looked at it.
May I warn researchers that the above productions are used by such as
me (and presumably by my counterparts abroad) who are looking for areas
of collaboration; but at the same time can I ask the producers to be more
‘user-friendly’ and to make entries briefer.
L. G. North Wimbledon, London
Letters: Bewitched
After seeing a school television science programme on astronomy, my
11-year-old daughter explained to me that the pictures from the Hubble telescope
could only be improved on Earth by computer ‘enchantment’.
Is this an electronic version of ‘hubble, bubble, toil and trouble’?
Robert Head Caringbah NSW, Australia
Letters: Music in bits
As a researcher in the field of the applications of nonlinear dynamical
systems to musical composition, I was fascinated to read Roger Lewin’s review
of the work of the Hsus (Science, 4 May). This is by no means a novel field
of research – Richard Voss and John Clarke (Nature, vol 258, p 317, 1975)
pointed out that both loudness and pitch fluctuations in music show 1/f
or Brownian power spectra, and the application of Brown noise to fractal
landscape and music creation has become commonplace. Many fractal algorithms
are now regularly in use as compositional generators (indeed my own software
implementation of a nonlinear iterative system was used to produce the climax
of the Community Opera staged as the culmination of the 1990 Leeds Festival).
However, the description of the methodology of the researchers cited
by Lewin seems to bear an uncanny similarity to the method of musical analysis
devised by the late 19th-century musicologist, Heinrich Schenker, who showed
that many musical masterpieces could be explained as elaborations of simpler
structures. Pieces were ‘reduced’ by the gradual removal of decoration through
a series of levels, from foreground (the notes as played in a performance)
to background (essentially a falling three-note figure like ‘three blind
mice’) to unpeel the basic structure.
This system was based upon the pedagogical method of species counterpoint,
which involved the creation of more complex forms by decorating simple ones
and by which most of these composers had been trained. But Schenker would
certainly not have suggested that the foreground could be reconstructed
from the background. This was the prerogative of the improvising genius!
Finally it should be noted that musical self-similarity, like that of
most natural objects, is largely statistical rather than absolute, and limited
to a small number of scales (forgive the pun).
David Cooper Department of Music University of Leeds
Letters: Engine trouble
It was interesting to see Barry Fox’s article about Alan Blumlein,
who also ‘starred’ in a BBC radio feature a couple of weeks back (Forum,
27 April).
The BBC and New 杏吧原创 told the story of that terrible day in June
1942 when Blumlein’s Halifax crashed at Welsh Bicknor. Inevitably the Beeb
did not go into such technical detail as Barry Fox, but they did have the
sound of Merlin engines as used in some models of Halifax bomber, including
the doomed V 9977.
They might well have got that sound effect wrong. But they didn’t. After
all, many Halifaxes were powered by Pegasus engines – such as those shown
in the picture accompanying your article! I think ‘Whoops!’ is in order,
don’t you?
Roger Worsley Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales
Letters: Sludge gulps air
Andy Coghlan’s article on water treatment (Technology, 4 May), contains
a fundamental error.
The article states: ‘In the activated sludge process, the bacteria and
the sewage swirl around in a huge tank from which air, which kills the bacteria,
is excluded’.
The conventional activated sludge process contains bacteria, fungi,
protozoa, rotifers and occasionally nematodes, although the bacteria are
the most important group of micro-organisms present. The system is aerobic,
requiring oxygen to maintain the process. All activated sludge processes
involve some type of aeration.
On the other hand, anaerobic digestion by methanogenic bacteria utilises
concentrated organic solids from primary sedimentation tanks and secondary
sludge from the activated sludge process to produce microbial biomass, carbon
dioxide and methane. This process is strictly anaerobic, the methanogenic
bacteria being very sensitive to low oxygen concentrations.
J. D. Mugglestone Needham Market, Suffolk.
Letters: Chernobyl witness
We were surprised by Roger Milne’s attack on the scientific credibility
of Vladimir Chernousenko, the major witness in our two recent films about
Chernobyl for ITV’s This Week programme. (This Week, April 27). Having spent
many days with Dr Chernousenko and his expert colleagues inside the Chernobyl
exclusion zone, at the Ukraine Academy of Sciences in Kiev and in London,
we have no doubt at all about his qualifications and experience. Chernousenko
was executive adviser and co-author of the report on the consequences of
the Chernobyl accident requested by President Gorbachov. He is currently
scientific controller of the exclusion zone and vice president of Nonlinear
World, an international scientific group.
To our knowledge Roger Milne did not contact Chernousenko either directly
or through This Week to hear his story. Instead he has preferred to rely
upon ‘official Soviet sources’ and the British nuclear establishment – precisely
that combination of interests about which Chernousenko is, in our view,
quite rightly sceptical.
Richard Lindley, Reporter Tim Shawcross, Producer This Week, Thames
Television.
Letters: Leave well alone
Although, as an amateur ornithologist I must applaud the broad principle
of searching for the unknown, I must express my concern over this study
into the Jabiru stork (This Week, 11 May).
In summary, this bird has no known natural predators, it nests in inaccessible
places in the tops of tall trees and is admitted not to be in any immediate
danger of extinction.
It would appear to me that these birds are doing very nicely, thank
you, without us knowing where they go for the non-breeding season. Discovering
where they go will mean that the area will almost certainly need protection.
Why not just NOT discover it – the mystery of its location is, I would suggest,
its best protection.
Philip Jones Saltash, Cornwall
Letters: Cup of grace
I wouldn’t want to spoil Elizabeth Young’s fun in pointing a finger
at the finger pointers (Letters, 13 April), but I earn a living by writing
so I suppose I should defend myself against accusations of illiteracy. Young
is correct, the phrase is not coupe de grace. I wrote coup, but somewhere
in the editing process someone blew a cup into view. As to Microsoft’s ‘compli/ements’,
it is a well known fact of life (that is, I have just made it up) that computer
manuals, like samplers of old, have to contain a grammatical lapse, if only
to show that the creator is less perfect than the Creator.
Michael Kenward Staplefield, West Sussex
Letters: Right to feel sick
Some 15 years ago I carried out a psychological survey of schoolchildren
in Oxford who had chosen biology as an option. No less than 33 per cent
of them said that dissection made them feel ‘sick or ill’.
Experimenting on animals makes me feel sick and ill also, but so does
the scientist’s macho rejection of such ‘squeamishness’ (This Week, 4 May).
Instead of dismissing squeamishness as some sort of moral weakness, the
true scientist ought to be studying it as a powerful and surprisingly widespread
reaction to causing injury which just may have far-reaching moral implications.
I have no objection to vivisectionists getting together to complain
that animal experimentation is becoming increasingly unpopular. But I find
it disturbing that a Nobel prizewinner should urge that anti-speciesists
such as myself should be smeared as being aligned with ‘quackery, cults
and terrorism’. Such tactics smack of panic.
Richard D. Ryder Vice Chairman RSPCA Council Haytor, Devon