Letters: Simple solution
In your Comment column (20 June), you asked, ‘What can be done about
the great British reluctance to invest in industrial R&D?’
The answer is quite simple – abolish accountants.
Chris Gibbins Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Letters: Frog effect
Even if you don’t accept the Gaia hypothesis, most biologists would
accept that life on this planet relies on a web of interconnecting relationships.
Two reports in a recent issue of New 杏吧原创 may be linked in a way few
readers might have noticed, yet have a profound influence on our lives.
No mention was made in John Emsley’s article ‘Potent painkiller from
poisonous frog’ (New 杏吧原创, Science, 30 May) about what was done with
the remains of 750 Ecuadorian frogs used to isolate a mere 24 milligrams
of a new painkiller, epibatidine. If each frog weighed on average 50 grams,
then the American research team would be left with some 37.5 kilograms of
processed frogs.
Given that you have devoted so much space to a series of articles on
animal welfare, the ethics of animal experimentation, the necessity of
conservation and the maintenance of biodiversity, this huge mass of ex-frog
seems such a waste. (I suppose that even a half-starved French postdoc associated
with this group would not find the leftovers palatable.)
In the same Science section of the same issue, William Bown has suggested
in ‘Mathematicians learn how to tame chaos’ that the global weather system
may one day be controlled through a manipulation of the ‘butterfly effect’.
Apparently, thunderstorms in Glasgow might be the result of a small butterfly
flapping about in China.
Since China has so many butterflies, incredible computing power will
be needed to predict what these Chinese butterflies are up to and how they
will affect the weather weeks later in Britain. I have a terrible feeling
that rather than spend the money to develop this computer power, they will
choose instead to bribe the Chinese into killing all of their butterflies
and rid Glasgow of thunderstorms at half the price.
Wouldn’t the world be so economical if only the Chinese butterlies were
filled with a useful painkiller? Thus their deaths would be painless, have
a positive influence on the weather pattern and turn a fast buck at the
same time. I only hope that the Ecuadorian frogs played no important part
in our weather, but if they did, I pray that sufficient frogs were left
intact to maintain the system.
Andrew Spiers University of Auckland New Zealand
Letters: Helping hand
Re: ‘Design for the third age’ (13 June). As a milkman serving quite
a number of single elderly people, I am regularly called in to their homes,
by them, to help them open sealed jars and other containers with screw caps.
Many elderly people have problems with the standard ‘child-proof’ cap
because they lack the necessary strength to push down and twist at the same
time. They also have problems with larger, normal lids such as pickle-jar
lids, because they are unable to apply a strong grip when twisting a tight-fitting
cap.
I think there is a good case, with many screw lids and caps, for the
printing of an instruction on the container, ‘hold lid/cap under hot running
water for about one minute to enable lid/cap to expand slightly’. I find
this often helps when even I have trouble with them sometimes.
Tony Newman Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Letters: Snakes alive
Anna Merz (Letters, 13 June) wonders why she was not poisoned by swallowing
cobra venom. Any snake venom is a protein that is quickly broken down by
the digestive system; there would be a lot of dead snakes around otherwise.
But I have often wondered, what happens to the poor snake that suffers from
stomach ulcers?
Glyn Williams Derby
Letters: Snakes alive
If she had been unfortunate enough to have a cut or sore inside her
mouth, the outcome might have been less favourable.
The cobra, of course, was aiming at her eyes, since the venom can pass
across the conjunctiva and cause at least temporary blindness.
Anthony Campbell London
Letters: Mixing it
I am pleased to read that Tam Dalyell intends to put it to William Waldegrave
that the future success of British Science lies very much with interdisciplinary
research (Forum, 30 May), as I am a senior scientist in an as-yet-thriving
interdisciplinary department, including physicists, chemists and engineering
graduates as well as the more ‘normal’ medical doctors and nurses. Certainly
it is recognised in orthopaedic surgery that the expertise of engineers
can contribute greatly – just consider the success of the metal and polythene
total hip and total knee replacement operations.
The new Interdisciplinary Research Centres which have been set up also
support the thesis. However, the government is still not doing enough to
foster this collaborative approach – though it can equally be said that
such collaboration begins at home, and what is needed, as well as more practical
help, is a change of mind within each separate discipline, recognising the
abilities and advances which can be achieved at the interface.
George Kernohan Queen’s University of Belfast
Letters: Innocent mine
Your article ‘Island devastated by mine, say rebels’ (This Week, 30
May) overlooked the substantial scientific contribution made by Bougainville
Copper Limited (BCL) to Papua New Guinea environmental research.
The Panguna copper mine is a very large open-cut, but the mine area
and tailing leases occupy only 1.4 per cent of the island. Substantial disturbance
within this area was always seen as an unavoidable cost of having the mine
there. Compensation paid to local landowners affected by this disturbance
totalled 24 million kina ( 拢13.3 million) over the life of the mine
(1969-89). Of the total 1.7 billion kina cash generated by the mine, 67
per cent went to the national and provincial governments and landowners.
During the period of the Panguna mine’s operation, the company carried
out research and monitoring programmes into a wide range of environmental
aspects to assess the impact, identify changes and prepare for rehabilitation.
BCL had some 30 staff in its environmental division, and a budget of many
millions of dollars. It employed hydrologists who published a large number
of world ranking papers. Environmental research in marine biology and agronomy/rehabilitation
was of a similar high standard.
When the Panguna mine was established, the technology to transport tailings
down steep mountain slopes was not available, and tailings dams were not
practicable due to high seismicity. After many years of research and engineering,
BCL was close to completing a 70 million kina tailings pipeline to the
coast when the mine was closed by rebel activity in 1989. This would have
resulted in no more tailings being deposited in the Jaba River and rehabilitation
of the valley could have been advanced.
In 1988, the Papua New Guinea national government employed a New Zealand
consulting firm to examine BCL’s environmental performance. The resulting
report made it clear that the allegations you attribute to the rebels’ spokesman,
Mike Forster, are without substance.
Ian Johnson CRA Minerals (PNG) Port Moresby Papua New Guinea
Letters: Innocent mine
Regardless of my political views, and I am a strong supporter of Bougainville
independence, I suggest that most of the contents of the article should
be taken with a pinch of salt.
Any large open-cast mining operation will give rise to environment problems
and these will not go away, even if the Bougainville mine is operated by
the government.
One of Bougainville’s major assets is the very ‘clean’ ore. The talk
of heavy metal pollution is pure nonsense. All metals except copper are
of background value: Tailings in the river and delta consist of crusted
rock with a copper value no greater than 0.05 per cent. It is obvious that
at some point vegetation will regrow on this material. At no point in the
process of producing the concentrate is mercury used.
David Mann Rochester, Kent
Letters: On the spot
Some 40 years ago J. Bronowski and his team had solved most of the technical
problems associated with underground gasification of coal seams, but I understood
that political objections by the trade unions at the time led to cessation
of that work.
There seem to be three market conditions at present which may well cause
irreversible closures of pits which could be regretted later: artificially
low coal import prices, lower sulphide contents of some imported coal and
competition from natural gas and oil.
Since it would be cheaper to scrub sulphides from cold gas coming from
underground compared to removing them from hot flue gases, and the provision
of gas-powered generating stations on coal fields would appear to make sense,
I am surprised not to have seen references to this possible route anywhere.
H. F. G. Archenhold Walsall, West Midlands
Letters: Not at all boring
I am rarely provoked enough to write in response to aggravating articles,
but ‘How to be a PhD student’ (Forum, 6 June) has done the job.
First, the question of money. If you take the basic SERC grant, add
a little top up from the group, consider the tax relief and add some more
cash for demonstrating, then the overall sum is not that insignificant.
In real terms it will approach the starting wage of some new graduates.
Secondly, the research topic. Yes, the nature subject described does
sound boring, and so does ‘that membrane protein involved in bacterial killing’,
but there are more research areas available than just toxicology and the
title of the article was directed to all PhD students. A research student
in microelectronics at Southampton could be looking at active and passive
optical devices on silicon substrates with a view to producing an optical
computer demonstrator chip.
Other topics include the use of silicon carbide and silicon germanium
to produce heterojunction bipolar transistors, new state-of-the-art devices
that can operate at enormous speed to try and keep up with optical communication
data rates. Light from silicon due to quantum mechanical effects, quantum
devices working at the limits of our lithography: these are not boring subjects.
This is great stuff, limited only by the student’s (and supervisor’s) imagination.
Finally, if you allow the ‘appalling day-to-day hysterical politics
within your research group/department’ to reach your PhD students, then
you don’t deserve any. It’s your job to cushion your researchers from such
nonsense.
Greg Parker University of Southampton
Letters: Sinecures
It was only recently that I came across Ali El-Ghorr’s suggestion that
job security could help the British science effort (Forum, 18 April). Do
not be so sure.
In India we have job security in academic research institutes, universities
and colleges. The only good it has done is to saddle the country with a
large number of people who believe that, having landed a ‘permanent’ teaching
and/or research position, they are now free to indulge themselves in a variety
of activities ranging from running a grocery shop to coaching students for
a hefty private fee (illegal).
Most who do not join in these activities do not do any better teaching
or research either. And one of the wonders of recent years has been to find
out how these people pass their time. Thus, while the country boasts of
one of the largest pools of trained scientific manpower in the world, very
little actually gets done by way of either creating new knowledge or passing
on existing knowledge effectively.
It is not as if the policy makers, bureaucrats, politicians, and academics
are unaware of standards of quality in teaching and research. It is just
that those who live up to high standards are relatively few in number and
are simply unable to assert themselves in any effective way, given the provisions
of permanency in service.
Rajiv Lochan Indian Institute of Advanced Study Simla, India
Letters: The right balance
I was somewhat surprised by the tone of your editorial (Comment, 6 June)
on the recently announced US regulatory policy for foodstuffs derived through
genetic modification.
You quite properly address the point that public acceptance will make
or break biotechnology and suggest that the public will need the reassurance
of careful regulation.
You then suggest that the US regulatory policy does not meet this test,
being overly tilted toward industrial competitiveness rather than human
safety. I believe that this interpretation is a vast oversimplification
of the facts, which are:
1. That the US authorities have concluded that the overwhelming number
of products in development are sufficiently close to previous experience
of food developments to make new regulations unnecessary – in other words,
existing controls are adequate.
2. Notwithstanding (1), the authorities reserve the right to ‘call in’
for examination any development which appears to present a major novelty
or which takes matters close to areas of potential concern.
It is argued that a flexible, pragmatic approach of this nature provides
a reasonable balance between public reassurance and the avoidance of onerous
regulations which could strangle the technology at birth.
It can also be argued that Europe’s muddled, overly cautious, bureaucratic
and expensive approach will not only frustrate scientific research and
development but will so sensitise the public that they will have fears when
none need exist.
K. T. Pike ICI Seeds Haslemere, Surrey