Letters: Science funding
There is a vital lesson that science funding should take from the approach
of large company corporate finance departments.
Most corporate projects are funded if their earnings sufficiently exceed
their investment, taking into account timescales and risk. Scientific research
deserves the same approach: if it pays eventually through profitable applications,
then regardless of whether it is the scientists, the universities, the government
or the private sector that gets the reward, the research has justified itself
as an investment in the economy.
Large companies are also prepared to invest a certain amount in projects
endearingly classified as ‘non-income-producing’. These are judged in a
completely different way and great care is taken to avoid confusing the
two types of projects. (Hybrid projects sometimes arise but can be dealt
with without upsetting the philosophy.) Likewise, scientific research that
does not promise to aid the economy should be assessed quite separately
from useful research. Pure research is worthwhile for the same reason that
art is worthwhile – it is part of the essence of a civilised society. Budgets
for pure research have more in common with arts budgets than with budgets
for scientific investment.
Only by making the distinction between the two purposes of science can
we ensure that pure science does not suffer from being unfairly treated
as a luxury.
Roland Davis Cuckfield, West Sussex
Letters: Shocking teeth
The letter from Willy Goldberg (5 September) about oral galvanism leaves
me completely unworried. The list of disorders is typical of those attributed
by fringe medicine and quack medical practitioners to various modern living
conditions, and the writer seems ignorant of the fundamentals of the science
involved.
The phrase ‘discharging hundreds of millivolts’ is a case in point:
discharges are measured in amps (or milliamps), not volts. Note the more
impressive ‘hundreds of millivolts’ rather than ‘a few tenths of a volt’.
One wonders what one would measure the polarity of a filling with respect
to, and how one would interrupt the supposed oral circuit to measure the
current in it. How would one check the compatibility of a patient to an
amalgam or composite, and over what timescale?
The fact is that a current will only flow when dissimilar metals are
present in the mouth to form a cell when connected together. A quick bite
on a chocolate bar with the aluminium foil accidentally left on will soon
demonstrate the sensations and tastes when a current does pass – I don’t
think this would be tolerated for long. The fact that amalgam fillings last
without corrosion for tens of years is ample demonstration that they do
not take part in electrochemical cell reactions in the mouth. Forget the
pseudoscience and concentrate on the real issues of cosmetic appearance,
hardness and cost.
Ken Gale Bournemouth Dorset
Letters: Fortran's fortunes
Metcalf is right. Fortran is the only practical language for scientists
who use large portable programs. No one wants to start rewriting millions
of lines of code into the latest fashionable language. Although most large
computer manufacturers realise this and are planning to make Fortran 90
compilers, fewer microcomputer suppliers show similar foresight. This is
unfortunate because as the price of computer hardware decreases more scientists
will do most of their computing on microcomputers, and would prefer to do
it using the Fortran language they know.
I have both a PC clone and an Acorn RISC-based Archimedes microcomputer
in my office; I find the latter significantly quicker and easier to use
to develop my Fortran-based graphics programs. I cannot understand why neither
Acorn nor the scientific community is aware of the potential of this great
little machine. I wonder whether anyone is planning to release a version
of Fortran 90 for the Archimedes?
Since Acorn offers little support for Fortran I have organised a ‘self-help’
user group known as Fortran Friends. Your readers are welcome to join.
Kate Crennell Chilton, Didcot Oxfordshire
Letters: Fortran's fortunes
Metcalf does not do justice to the strengths of Fortran, its reason
for surviving so long and the problems it now faces. Initially Fortran was
grabbed by those concerned with numerical computation as being just what
they needed. It was considerably simpler than Algol in syntax and semantics
yet supported some attempt at standard input/output.
During the two decades when Fortran was the only general-purpose language
to support numerical specialists, these specialists have become accustomed
to using Fortran as a tool for communicating algorithms to each other. Even
if no further programming were done in Fortran, it would still survive for
many years filling this vital role.
The problem that needs to be tackled in the 1990s is that of writing
the user interface for programs in the various flavours of graphical interface.
Fortran is completely unsuitable for such purposes. An increasing number
of Fortran users are recognising this and are looking at languages such
as C++ for such provision. In the meantime, the C and C++ communities are
recognising the value of the numerical resources locked up in the Fortran
libraries. This realisation is causing the implementers of C and C++ compilers
to include support for access to Fortran from within C and C++.
Some of your readers may be interested to learn that one reason for
the quick production of the Numerical Algorithms Group Fortran 90 compiler
is that it works by translating Fortran 90 into C, which is then compiled
with any of the existing standard C compilers.
Francis Glassborow C Users Group (UK) Oxford
Letters: Fortran's fortunes
Michael Metcalf (‘Still programming after all these years’, 12 September)
presents the usual Fortran version of history. In fact, Algol was not discarded
because of the complexity of its grammar, for in reality it is simpler than
Fortran, Pascal, C and PL/1, among others. It lost out to Pascal for marketing
and PR reasons, just as Pascal later lost out (mostly) to C for technical
reasons.
Metcalf reports that Fortran is at last becoming ‘safer’. This is good
news, but I suggest that more than the language needs to change. Fortran
has traditionally banned many unsafe practices, but has left it to the programmer
to ensure that the bans are enforced. This is good for ‘efficiency’, in
that the compiler does not need to insert costly checks into the code. But
it is a sure recipe for bugs and obscure mishaps of the sort that occasionally
lead to spectacular disasters.
Those Fortran programmers (I hope a minority) who are obsessed beyond
reason with efficiency need to move to the mind-set common among users of
many other languages. In this mind-set, the odd percentage point of speed
is sacrificed to rigorous checking, and nits picked by the compiler are
gladly accepted as preferable to portability problems and other bugs, which
are much more easily cured at the outset than when they become visible in
a running system.
Andrew Walker University of Nottingham
Letters: Lead check
After frightening us out of our wits about the damage lead pipes do
to our children’s brains (This Week, 19 September), could you possibly suggest
a do-it-yourself check for excess lead in our drinking water?
Felix Planer Chailly-Montreux, Switzerland
Letters: Heisenberg's bomb
The title of your article suggests that the German nuclear scientists
were peaceniks, whereas the evidence seems to contradict this: Heisenberg’s
assertion that wartime conditions in Germany made a successful project impossible
is supported by Hitler’s armaments chief Albert Speer, in his book Inside
the Third Reich. Speer believed in 1942 that the project would take till
1947 (or 1945 if other projects such as V2 were scrapped). Since he authorised
a project for uranium-powered submarine motors (the ‘reactor research’ mentioned
by Heisenberg?), presumably he was convinced that this was the more ‘achievable
goal’ which could conclude the war more rapidly.
It would be interesting to know whether this ‘motor’ project was conceived
by the scientists as a red herring to keep them occupied for the duration.
Might they not, however, have believed it to be a viable tool for severing
Allied supplies, thus winning the war (for Hitler) so they could then get
on with making the bomb?
Reading Speer nevertheless suggests that Heisenberg at least may have
practised disinformation: ‘Heisenberg never gave any final answer . . .
whether a successful nuclear fission could be kept under control with absolute
certainty or might continue as a chain reaction. Hitler was plainly not
delighted with the possibility that the Earth under his rule might be transformed
into a glowing star.’ Was there any scientific reason why Heisenberg should
have acted that way when the Manhattan team clearly didn’t?
Alan Wells The Hague, Netherlands
Letters: Heisenberg's bomb
The article by Dan Charles ‘Heisenberg’s principles kept bomb from Nazis,’
(This Week, 5 September) flies in the face of well-documented facts. Heisenberg
concluded that making a nuclear bomb required a greater effort than Germany
could afford in wartime. He was right, because even the Americans, with
greater industrial potential and not exposed to bombing, did not complete
it before the defeat of Germany.
He did know what it takes to make an atom bomb and explained this on
many occasions to physicists and ministers alike. Because he regarded this
as prohibitively difficult, he did not trouble to make a serious estimate
of the amount of separated uranium isotope required, but used rough arguments
with answers that varied between 50 and 2000 kilograms. He thus overestimated
the difficulty. This explains why he and his colleagues did not believe
that the Americans could do it, and refused to believe the first news of
Hiroshima. Once he saw that the news was real, he was able, great physicist
that he was, to figure out quickly how it was done.
Heisenberg said on many occasions that the German scientists were fortunate
in not having to make a decision whether to work on a bomb, since this was
not possible for Germany. We cannot know whether they would have done so
if it had been regarded as realistic; we cannot assign them moral superiority
for not doing so.
Rudolf Peierls Oxford
Letters: Science funding
There is a proposal that institutions outside academe should be permitted
to bid for science base funds administered through the research councils
(This Week, 3 October). When I first heard this I rejected it as too absurd
to worry about. On reflection however I realise that nothing is too absurd.
Insofar as there is such a proposal, I hope that it will be dealt with
in the forthcoming White Paper.
The following are some of the points which should, I suggest, be borne
in mind:
When deployed in the universities, research funds provide a treble benefit:
expansion of the knowledge base, research training for PhD students, and
enlivenment of undergraduate teaching.
To remove funds from what is already an inadequate pool in order to
prop up government laboratories/agencies which have lost their way and need
to be refocused would be extremely damaging to science and education whilst
yielding no matching benefit to our national well being.
Do the protagonists of such a policy change restrict their thinking
to government laboratories? No reason why they should. If you follow the
argument (I nearly said reasoning, but that would have been a mistake),
such organisations as BT, ICI and GEC should be encouraged to bid for basic
research funds – and University College London will bid to manage the british
telecommunications network and the completion of the European Fighter Aircraft.
Seriously, I hope that the White Paper will give this idea short shift.
Derek Roberts University College London
Letters: Science funding
There is no evidence that good teaching can only be performed by lecturers
active in research. Also, there is no evidence that the present failure
to provide the engineers and technologists that industry is assumed to
need will be remedied by pumping more money into ‘science’.
Engineering and technology are disciplines distinct from one another
and from science. Recognising this fact is an essential first step to addressing
the problem. For example, our performance as a nation in computing has been
lamentable. Nevertheless, vast amounts of public money have been poured
into an ingenious variety of support mechanisms without even slowing significantly
the rate of our relative decline.
By all means let us determine how much the country can afford for basic
science and spend it, but let us not delude ourselves that this will provide
educational or industrial benefits.
John Henderson Alton, Hampshire
Letters: Sidling in
D. L. F. Sealy, one of the winners in the Feedback competition (19 September),
might be interested to know that the Car Parking Facilitator has already
been invented more than 30 years ago by one A. J. Butterworth. He aptly
named it the Sidler, and formed a company by the same name to develop it.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have been a commercial success, possibly
because it was complicated by having the ‘sidler’ wheels power-driven by
frictional contact with the vehicle’s driven wheels. The technical details
are preserved for posterity in British patent specifications 832 679, 832
680 and 842 331.
Alan Treacher Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire
Letters: Green logging
Your photograph, which the reader will almost certainly take as an illustration
of Barama’s operations, may have been culled from a photo library, but is
certainly not a photograph of Barama’s activities, as no logging operations
have as yet begun.
It is clearly unfair to suggest that Barama could destroy large areas
of virgin rainforest when there is no shred of evidence to support this
contention. Both the Timber Sales Agreement signed with the government of
Guyana and the Forest Management Plan, which is about to be signed, require
Barama to practise selective logging.
The Barama concession does not include any Amerindian lands, as such
lands have been specifically excluded from Barama’s lease.
Ki Taik Chung Barama Company Limited Georgetown Guyana
Letters: Green logging
The Edinburgh Centre for Tropical Forests (ECTF) is not providing ‘a
green cover for a logging company’ in Guyana (This Week, 12 September).
The quoted criticisms from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Friends
of the Earth (FOE), neither of whom have contacted ECTF to inquire about
its contract to monitor the logging concession, have missed the point on
two critical issues.
First, ECTF firmly believes that while some forest resources must remain
preserved untouched, it is essential for others to be wisely managed for
social, environmental and economic benefits. Further, we are committed to
the regeneration of forests and the establishment of plantations to take
pressure off remaining natural forests. Few logging companies have delivered
sustainable forestry, frequently due to short concession periods, and the
government of Guyana’s foresight in this instance lies in allocating a very
long concession period of Barama (50 years).
Barama has recruited, on its own initiative, independent forestry expertise
to monitor operations and to support sustainable forest management. ECTF
has the environmental, social, economic and forestry skills to fulfil this
vital role. It maintains its independence by reporting to government, and
by its right to publish in the international press.
Secondly, defining sustainable forestry, maintaining biodiversity and
safeguarding the interests of Amerindian communities form the basis of ECTF’s
agenda in developing proposals for our long-term research and monitoring
role. These proposals are currently being prepared, and have yet to be agreed
with the government of Guyana and with Barama.
Far from providing ‘green cover’ ECTF is actively working towards the
sustainable management, conservation and protection of tropical forests.
Helen Whitney McIver The Edinburgh Centre for Tropical Forests University
of Edinburgh
Letters: Sampling sex
In the recent correspondence regarding discrepancies between the average
numbers of sexual partners between men and women (Letters, 15 August and
5 September), no one has mentioned possible sampling problems in inhomogeneous
populations.
Consider a village with 1000 men and 1000 women, 10 of whom are prostitutes.
If all the men partner all the prostitutes, and all the women who are not
prostitutes are faithful to one man then the average number of partners
for both men and women will be approximately 11. However, a poll of a random
population sample which includes no prostitutes will suggest that the average
man has had 11 partners and the average woman only one.
John Dickson Ulverston, Cumbria
Letters: Not so hot
May I draw your attention to an error in This Week, 5 September? The
caption to the colour photograph of Mount St Helens should read: ‘Molten
lava has a temperature of about 1000 掳C,’ (not 10 000 掳C) ‘ . .
. but this falls to around 50 掳C at the solid surface’.
C. P. Hayes Dartford, Kent
Letters: Reverse growth
Stuart Nelson’s letter (5 September) gives the population of the UK
as 60 million with a growth rate of 2.4 per cent per annum. These figures
are much publicised, but the 1991 census counted only 55 509 000 – that
is 171 000 less than in 1981.
The population has been falling for many years. West Germany was the
first European country to record a fall in population and Greece and Ireland
were the last.
Gareth Morgan Mountain Ash, Mid Glamorgan
Letters: Not one girl
I was interested to read ‘Low marks for electronic tutors’ by Mike
Holderness (26 September). The last sentence reads ‘But much more needs
to be done to benefit students who may not love computers for their own
sake’. Received wisdom indicates that girls are in this category. If it
is true that girls are not smitten with computers, they are certainly not
going to be encouraged by this article. Why not? Because it shows two photographs
containing a total of seven boys obviously fascinated by their computer,
and not one girl.
Stephanie Trotter Esher, Surrey
Letters: Dark secret
I have a cheap solar-powered pocket calculator which I keep in my office
desk. Quite often, though not always, when I open my desk drawer the calculator
registers a self-generated number, commonly 25 but just as frequently a
much more complicated number. The number may be generated at the time the
drawer is opened when light first strikes the panel, though my present office
is fairly dark and I have yet to see the number actually appearing. My
previous office was sunny but I have detected no change in the machine’s
behaviour since moving. I should add that the calculator continues to operate
perfectly normally when required to perform.
My questions are these: What processes are involved in creating the
power to generate the numbers? And what determines the selection of the
numbers?
It has occurred to me that perhaps someone or something is trying to
communicate but I fear that if this is the case the message has so far
eluded me. The numbers don’t work on the pools either.
Chris Bentley Southwell, Nottinghamshire
Letters: Timing lightning
I feel that John Williams and his family are somewhat unfairly ascribing
a numerically absolute purpose to a piece of folk wisdom more commonly employed
in relative fashion (Letters, 19 September). In my experience, the time
interval between lightning flash and thunder roll is not used to calculate
the distance in miles (or kilometres) from the person looking and listening,
but rather, it is the lessening or extending of successive intervals which
indicates whether the storm is approaching or receding (as in the thunderstorm
sequence of the first Poltergeist movie).
Kenneth Murray Alloway, Ayrshire