Letters: Moonstruck
I would like to offer the following comments to ‘Hungry for answers’
(Letters, 5 December).
As a country boy in England, I was never aware of the folklore concerning
the planting of seeds in phase with the moon, but on moving to Italy I was
immediately swamped by the local peasants telling me about planting, harvesting,
hair cutting, making and bottling wine, etc., and a local physics teacher
assured me that his litter of puppies died because they were born under
the wrong moon.
There are several popular gardening books which give strict instructions
on when to plant, but the horticulture department assured me that it didn’t
really matter.
However, in response to local pressure, we have analysed the calving
dates of 120 000 cows and found a significant trend to calve either with
the new moon or the full moon-not with the quarters. This is all very interesting,
but what I can’t understand is what benefit it offers? Under a new moon,
the calf could hide from predators; under a full moon, the cow can see the
predator coming and do something . . . It doesn’t sound very convincing,
does it? But I plant my beans in the third quarter, just in case.
Colin Mills Udine University Pagnacco, Italy
Letters: Relief in pregnancy
Victor Gavin’s observation of his pregnant wife’s remission from asthma
(Letters, 12 December) may have an underlying hormonal basis.
The enzyme histidine decarboxylase is responsible for the single step
conversion of histidine to histamine, and in mice its activity, at least
in the kidneys, is induced both by oestrogen and during pregnancy. It has
been known since 1940 that blood and urine levels of histamine are extremely
high during human pregnancy.
Histamine is involved in a wide range of biological processes including
pregnancy, rapid growth (including reparative and malignant growth), and
the allergic response which, of course, includes asthma. Histamine is secreted
by mast cells in the lungs where its fundamental role in vasodilation may
explain its connection with relieving asthma in pregnant women.
By the way, I experienced temporary relief from chronic back pain throughout
both my pregnancies.
(Ms) Sam Martin Glasgow
Letters: Missing baroness
I was interested to read your Feedback piece (12 December) about the
difficulty of getting hold of my telephone number.
I am pleased to say that most small businesses are more enterprising
than your journalist. They can quite easily, and frequently do, get in contact
with me at the House of Lords or at the Department of Trade and Industry
Baroness Denton of Wakefield Department of Trade and Industry London
Letters: Nuking asteroids
Giles’s letter on the problem of nuking asteroids is a good precis of
the chapter ‘Murphy’s Law’ in my forthcoming novel The Hammer of God. Clearly
a case of telepathy-but in which direction?
I was also extremely interested in Peter Bond’s article on radar examination
of asteroids (‘Radar explorers of the solar system’, 5 December). In Hammer
I propose a mass census by a nuclear-pulsed radar – a microwave version
of SDI’s ‘Excalibur’.
Needless to say, I’m most intrigued by the ‘all metal’ asteroid 1986DA.
Obviously ‘Rama’ is on the way. You have been warned.
Arthur C. Clarke Colombo, Sri Lanka
Letters: Nuking asteroids
Giles is approaching the problem of avoiding the Earth’s impending impact
with the Swift-Tuttle comet from the wrong angle.
Surely, it would be much simpler to move the Earth-by persuading the
population of China to all jump at the same moment, say?
Jim Jobe Ripon, North Yorkshire
Letters: Nuking asteroids
D. L. Giles holds out little hope for the prospect of detonating devices
at precisely the correct moment ahead of a ‘doomsday’ comet (Letters, 5
December). It seems very feasible to me given current technology, let alone
that available 130 years from now. Fuel-air mixture (FAM) weapons, or ‘daisy-cutters’,
are used to clear (and, indeed, create) helicopter landing zones by the
simple expedient of flattening everything in a huge, dispersed blast. The
detonation height of a few metres is critical. The height sensor is simply
a long probe sticking out of the weapon. When the probe strikes the ground,
the weapon is triggered. A similar technique was used on the lunar module
to shut off the engine when the module was a few feet above the lunar surface.
Since a weapon used for planetary defence may have to cope with a range
of target profiles, a competent system might build an appropriate warhead
for any given situation en route to the target. Such a missile is already
in development in the US.
As detection technologies improve, threats will be identified at ever-increasing
distances, so there may be little need to ‘blast’ a threat. It may be routine
to land engines and fuel on bodies and simply adjust the orbit by a continuous
burn.
Of course, in 2120 someone perusing the back issues will spot these
letters and simply chuckle.
Paul Hardy Osaka, Japan
Letters: Brain storm
Congratulations on your excellent brain poster (12 December). One fact,
however, stands in need of correction. The area of the unfolded cerebral
cortex is about that of an unopened broadsheet newspaper (2500 cm2), not
a tennis court.
Lewis Griffin Guy’s and St Thomas’s Medical and Dental School London
Letters: Virtual parody
Playing a video game is not ‘doing and learning science’ but primarily
entertainment. Successful playing for the majority of games bought requires
little more than excellent reflexes and only very occasionally application
of a few discovered simple rules.
Certainly the educational potential of video games is enormous, as it
is with television. But while Sega, Nintendo et al have profit as prime
mover, there is no requirement for any attempt to realise this potential.
Escalating wealth and technology have led to a belief in Western children
that the Universe exists for their entertainment. When a considerable fraction
of the entertainment repeats the message that problems may be violenced
away, some results are obvious.
P. Seal Mitcham, Surrey
Letters: Virtual parody
I must protest about your editorial ‘Virtual panic at Santa’s grotto’
(Comment, 19/26 December). That video games are training the youth of today
in scientific skills is ludicrous, for they present a parody of the world,
and a parody of our ways of interacting with it. There is no mystery, only
secrecy, and the universe presented may be tricky but is ultimately defined
and algorithmic: ‘There is a God, and he’s a hacker.’ They may help motor
skills, but they are disconnected and antisocial, presenting an illusion
of control in the world by presenting control in an illusion of the world.
The more complex games reduce complex social situations to vectors of
properties, taking a few steps down the ever-steepening slippery slope which
artificial intelligence disappeared down some years ago.
The limited mechanical thinking that these games encourage, no matter
how skilful, is useful in only a tiny part of the scientific and technical
enterprise. Where is the dialogue with the situation? Where is the dialogue
with the other protagonists? Where is the dialogue with other scientists
or technologists? Where is the place for creativity?
This distanced and mechanical view of the world is disquieting for science
but a disaster for technology, where machines are a vehicle for interactions
between people.
Bruce Anderson University of Essex
Letters: Doubts about Doll
Few would disagree with your assessment that Richard Doll is one of
the greatest epidemiologists ever (‘From cancer to cholesterol’, 21 November).
But his approach to the management of some of the health problems he identified
is open to serious criticism.
Let me explain with regard to the health hazards of asbestos, another
major health issue with which Doll’s name will be forever associated. Without
doubt, Doll’s 1955 paper showing a tenfold increase in lung cancer among
asbestos workers was crucial in establishing the relationship between exposure
to asbestos and lung cancer. By 1968 he was confident enough to state that
the lung cancer hazard at one of the factories he had studied had been ‘largely
eliminated’ by the applications of the 1931 Asbestos Regulations. So confident
was he that in 1977, when researches by his own co-worker Julian Peto revealed
a much higher health risk at this same factory, he went to the extent of
stating, in the Oxford Times of 4 February 1977 that, ‘I don’t think we
have any justification for doubting’ the then ‘safe’ levels of asbestos
in air.
In 1982, following the film Alice-a fight for life, which revealed the
real hazards of asbestos, the workers at the factory invited him to meet
them in person. A few words from them revealed that the company’s application
of the 1931 regulations had not been effective in protecting them. The rest,
as they say, is history in the developed world, where asbestos is gradually
being banned or the control levels are very strict. But, depressingly, asbestos
sales to the developing world are increasing.
More generally, Doll has been an enthusiastic supporter of the ‘lifestyle’
theory of public health for many years: it is our changing personal behaviour
such as smoking, drinking and high-fat diets-rather than environmental factors
such as pollution and occupational hazards-that holds out the best hope
for good health.
With this view, he joins Edwina Currie, Tory minister of health, 1986
to 1988, another enthusiastic supporter of this theory-as she says, ‘Personal
responsibility should come first.’
Alan Dalton South Bank University London
Letters: Camel kids
I attended a medical conference in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, just
before Christmas at which one of the communications was on 42 spiral fractures
of the tibia in children who are used as riders for camel racing in the
country (‘Winning streak for sheiks’, 19/26 December). The injury appears
to be the result of torsional stresses on immature bones as an outcome of
the Velcro attachments to the saddles. There are also reports of a number
of head and other injuries to these very young jockeys. It is relevant to
note that your photographs show that they do not have significant head protection.
There also seems to be some doubt about age limits. I was told the minimum
was ten but your article quotes eight and it was suggested informally at
the conference that the children could be even younger. They are not the
offspring of Emirate nationals.
Your readers should be reminded that, as the BBC programme Camel Kids
also pointed out, these children are being grossly exploited in the interests
of a ‘sport of kings’, and though the scientific results are of great promise
in the future understanding and use of camels in developing countries, they
are only the consequence of the unregulated pursuit of an enthusiasm which
could be subject to some ethical scrutiny.
Hugh Dudley Strathdon, Aberdeenshire
Letters: Ready to approve
I write in response to the article ‘Britain dithers over gene therapy’
(This Week, 12 December) and the further observations in Comment.
When the Report of the Committee on the Ethics on Gene Therapy was published
in January this year, ministers asked the committee to remain in being while
extensive and necessary consultations about its conclusions took place.
Ministers did so in order to handle any proposals for gene therapy that
might be made before substantive arrangements were in place.
In the event, research in this field moved forward more quickly than
had been envisaged by the committee, the government and, most significantly,
by the researchers themselves. Steps have therefore been taken to ensure
that the committee is fully prepared to deal with any applications which
might be forthcoming in advance of final decisions on our report. The sources
of expertise available to the committee have been greatly expanded and strengthened.
The committee met in November to consider two such applications. Approval
will be given when the committee is satisfied that they are scientifically
sound and ethically proper. The decision to approve any application will
be made public.
Before any protocol for gene therapy is approved, those responsible
must demonstrate that the techniques they wish to use on patients have been
subjected to adequate preclinical studies to assess their safety and effectiveness.
This process has not been hampered in any way by the fact that ministerial
decisions on our report have yet to be made.
Our advice to ministers remains that an expert supervisory body should
be set up to deal with these applications. In the meantime, the mechanisms
described above will enable the committee to deal efficiently, thoroughly
and swiftly with any applications it receives to apply gene therapy to patients.
Cecil Clothier Committee on the Ethics of Gene Therapy London
Letters: Night spark
If the incoming telephone wires to John Dowding’s house (Letters, 2
January) run close to his electricity meter, it is possible that the noise
is due to electromagnetic transmission by the spark caused by an Economy
Seven meter switching from day to night units, which happens at such an
ungodly hour. The random nature of the phenomenon may be determined by whether
he happens to be awake or not at the time.
S. T. Dobbs Market Harborough Leicestershire
Letters: Hurting brains
I am not writing to answer the Frasers’ third puzzle (Letters, 5 December)
about intellectual work and hunger, though it may be connected to my own
poser, which your articles on the brain haven’t shed light on for me.
Why is intellectual work an effort, as difficult and exhausting as physical
labour, when there is virtually no difference in the brain’s energy consumption
during different mental activities? Or is this assumption wrong, and that’s
why Mr and Mrs Fraser find that we get very hungry after intellectual effort?
We constantly apply the same words to thinking that we do to manual
labour-it’s hard work, exhausting, or, if we don’t do it, we’re lazy – as
if thinking depleted our energy quickly and made our bodies sore and stiff
(‘my brain hurts’). We find it terribly hard work to write up a report or
paper, but easy to read the newspaper or to attempt the crossword (leaving
aside actually solving it). It’s especially easy to do anything else but
the thinking we are paid to do, or which will pass our exams or improve
our lives.
Is there any physiological reason, or is it all psychological? Perhaps
the answer has practical applications of particular benefit to anyone who
tries to teach or who pays someone else to think.
Would a computer that could think use more power to do so, and would
it do puzzles, read the paper and write letters to New 杏吧原创 when it
should be working on a problem?
Rex Parry Longueville, NSW Australia
Letters: Relief in pregnancy
It is not uncommon for women to have respite from asthma during pregnancy
when progesterone levels are high. Many diseases are worse, or only occur,
in the premenstruum and disappear during pregnancy.
This is what led Raymond Green and Katharina Dalton to treat premenstrual
conditions of all kinds with natural progesterone. Many women, not just
those with premenstrual asthma, now have cause to be grateful to their pioneering
work on the treatment of premenstrual syndrome.
Victor Gavin would find it interesting and useful to chart the occurrence
of his wife’s asthma attacks. If they are usually in the fortnight before
she has her period and are usually absent in the seven days or so after
it, then she would probably benefit from progesterone therapy. Progesterone
is a naturally occurring steroid as he suspected and there are receptors
for it in the respiratory system.
A suitable chart and further information can be obtained by sending
a stamped addressed envelope to the National Association for Premenstrual
Syndrome, PO Box 72, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 1XQ.
Olive Ford South Petherton, Somerset
Letters: Relief in pregnancy
The remission experienced during pregnancy from allergic conditions
is fairly well known, especially amongst rheumatologists and obstetricians.
The rationale behind this phenomenon is the development, during pregnancy,
of a significant amount of immunosuppression.
Part of the key to embryo/foetus survival in an immunologically hostile
environment is the instigation of local immunosuppression in the womb. It
is thought that some incidents of recurrent abortion arise from the absence
of sufficient early stimuli which leads to insufficient localised immunosuppression.
As pregnancies progress, a more generalised state of immunosuppression arises
(still mainly reported anecdotally).
Gavin guesses that naturally occurring steroids may be involved. He
is quite likely to have guessed accurately. In pregnancy, not only have
placental proteins, hCG and progesterone proved to be very strongly immunosuppressive,
but corticosteroid levels also fluctuate significantly
Sammy Lee London
Letters: Unstuck
A German firm, Wenko, markets a label remover through Lakeland Plastics,
but the yoghurt manufacturer Onken solves this problem by using an adhesive
which allows its labels to be removed with no difficulty and leaves no stickiness
behind. This enables the containers, which are dishwasher proof, to be used
for many purposes.
I wish other manufacturers would follow suit as I have numerous items
such as garden furniture permanently disfigured by adhesive.
Alan Hoare Haltwhistle, Northumberland
* * *
Editor’s note: The above is just a selection of the vast correspondence
we have received on this topic. Other suggestions have included Johnson’s
Baby Oil, Eucalyptus oil, lighter fuel, Brasso, Three in One oil, cling
film (for removing the glue) and Duraglit metal polish wadding. Take your
pick.
Letters: Unstuck
I would recommend freezing the glue. It magically becomes brittle and
can be easily scraped off. You can buy freeze spray from industrial cleaning
suppliers who use it to remove chewing gum from pub and restaurant carpets.
Marcus Postlethwaite London
Letters: Unstuck
All you have to do is press masking tape onto the sticky surface and
peel it off again.
Roger Bennett Baldock, Hertfordshire
Letters: Unstuck
Peel off the label as best you can. Hold it sticky side down and use
it to dab the patches of adhesive remaining on the article lightly and repeatedly.
This method is not infallible, but it works quite well, quite often.
Will Stevens Redland, Bristol
Letters: Unstuck
A proprietary product known as ‘Goo Gone’. This is an oily liquid of
petroleum distillate origin, made in the US and sold by the Magic American
Corporation of Cleveland, Ohio. I suspect that any similar substance, such
as those for removal of chewing gum from carpets (or children’s hair) would
also work.
D. Willis Harrow, Middlesex
Letters: Unstuck
Use a light hydrocarbon oil such as paraffin, white spirit or WD-40
to soak the surface of the label, and leave for 5 to 10 minutes. The sticky
gunge which is left behind is then easily removed using washing- up liquid,
which emulsifies it.
C. J. Collister Sherborne, Dorset
Letters: Unstuck
To remove sticky labels (Letters, 12 December), warm the label with
a hair dryer or similar to about 60 degreeC; the glue then usually comes
off with the label. Failing this, rub a little melted butter into the glue
for a minute or two. This will dissolve the glue but not the substrate;
then wipe off with tissue paper. Even price labels on softcover books can
be removed by these methods. Butter is also the best solvent for removing
tar or resin.
M. P. Frankis Newcastle upon Tyne
Letters: Whiff of tiger
I normally receive New 杏吧原创 after a great delay, so I have only
just come across Bill Tidy (Grimbledon Down, 7 March) musing on the Maillard
reaction (MR) which happens in conventional cooking and adds such aroma
and flavour to food as are beyond the microwave oven to impart.
For the last few years my group and I have been working on tiger pheromone,
which contains the same marvellous aroma as certain fragrant rice, and we
have now synthesised it by MR at 130 degreeC. The rice plant gives its aroma
at 30 degreeC (you get a whiff when the sun shines in a field of ripening
rice) and the shade-loving tiger, at a still lower temperature.
I might have reared a tiger at Grimbledon Down for studying MR!
R. L. Brahmachary Embryology Unit Indian Statistical Institute Calcutta,
India