Letters: Hall of fame
Jeremy Gray, in his enthusiastic review of Mary Cannell’s biography of the
mathematician and physicist George Green, refers to the fact that his
bicentenary falls this year (Review, 17 July). Your readers may be
interested to know that this was marked by a dedication service in
Westminster Abbey, at which the president of the Royal Society unveiled a
memorial plaque next to those of Isaac Newton, William Kelvin, Michael
Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. The Lord Mayor of Nottingham also unveiled
a plaque in St Stephen’s church, Sneinton, Nottingham, where he is buried,
and a memorial window was dedicated in Caius College, Cambridge.
Other events included lectures at Nottingham University by Freeman Dyson and
Julian Schwinger describing how Green’s functions were first introduced into
quantum mechanics.
L. J. Challis
University of Nottingham
Letters: Many museums
It is unfair to compare London’s Science Museum with the Cite des Sciences
et de l’Industrie in Paris (Review, 10 July), because their roles are
entirely different. The Cite des Sciences was designed as a gee-whizz
complement to two other places, whereas the Science Museum has to cover
everything under one roof.
The demonstrations and permanent exhibits of the Palais de la Decouverte are
concerned with the fundamentals of mathematics and science. This museum is
situated, as it should be, right in the middle of Paris (imposing back
entrance to the Grand Palais). There is just the right amount of
dustiness, but the electrostatics demonstration (to name but one) is more
fun than any old talking robot.
The museum attached to the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers is
dedicated to technology. Unfortunately, the presentation has not been up to
the historical importance of many of the exhibits. The last time I visited
it, many of the halls were closed for modernisation, so I suppose something
is being done about this. One or two stroppy attendants could also do with
modernising, but then this is Paris, not Disneyland.
All three places are well worth a visit.
C. R. Lee
St Martin de Brethencourt,
France
Letters: Dog disorders
The Dog Genome Initiative at Berkeley (This Week, 26 June) is not the only
project underway that is producing genetic markers for mapping the canine
genome. At the Animal Health Trust we are engaged in a project, funded by
the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, to generate and characterise
microsatellite markers for the dog.
This research, which is in collaboration with J. Sampson (University of
Leicester), has the overall aim of developing markers for canine inherited
disorders; at the moment we are studying progressive retinal atrophy in a
number of breeds, and haemophilia and copper toxicosis in Bedlington
terriers.
N. G. Holmes and M. M. Binns
Newmarket, Suffolk
Frozen flavour
The reason that it is possible to ‘suck out’ the flavour of an ice lolly
(Letters, 17 July) may be that it is manufactured by freezing a continuously
agitated solution. The first particles of ice to form contain no colour or
flavour. In this way a slurry is obtained which may be moulded and
stabilised by further freezing. Thus the ice lolly has an inhomogenous
microcrystalline structure. The crystals containing the most solutes will
have a depressed melting point, and will melt and be consumed first.
P. F. Perry
Richmond, Victoria
Australia
Letters: Frozen flavour
The flavouring in an ice lolly was never in the ice, because solids like ice
are not solvents. So as soon as the lolly was frozen most of the water
separated out as ice, leaving the flavouring and colouring as strong
solution between the crystals. To prove this, you can wash the colour off
the crystals in a crushed lolly, using very cold water. The ice can then be
seen to be colourless.
Tom Nash
Sherborne, Dorset
Letters: Frozen flavour
It is only the water which freezes, a fact which is used to advantage by the
cider makers of New England. By storing their barrels outside in sub-zero
temperatures they can fortify their product simply by the removal of the
ice.
Douglas Kell
University of Wales
Aberystwyth
Letters: Ticklish issue
It has been brought to my attention that you passed on a request for papers
on ‘why you can’t tickle yourself’ in Feedback (10 July). In your issue of 6
May 1971 is an account of a paper that appeared in Nature (1971, vol 230, p
598), ‘Preliminary observations on tickling oneself’, by myself, J. Elliott,
and C. Darlington, together with a nice cartoon. The paper received a lot
of attention at the time, and I still get requests for it. I have sent one
to your American requester.
L. Weiskrantz
University of Oxford
Letters: Ticklish issue
The premise of the issue is wholly false. Any man with nasal hair knows it
to be false. A hair grows from the central cartilage of the nose and tickles
the opposite side of the nostril: it is an exquisite torture. Use a
‘personal hygienic trimmer’: it grows again.
Your Letters pages are not the place to debate whether a nasal hair is
‘you’ or ‘yourself’ or both but, I tell you, it tickles.
Malcolm Evans
Inzievar
Dunfermline, Fife
Letters: Plug pulled
From time to time one reads or hears assertions that, because of the
rotation of the earth, water running out of a bath or basin rotates in the
same direction as atmospheric cyclones – that is, anticlockwise in the
northern hemisphere, clockwise in the southern (the proposition is silent as
to what happens at the equator).
Is there any experimental evidence to support this? My physicist friends
tell me that, although Coriolis forces are doubtless present, their effect
is so slight that they are completely masked by other factors, such as the
shape of the basin and the (random) disturbance induced by pulling out the
plug.
Casual observation in this location (latitude 50 degrees N) indicates total
randomness – indeed, it is not uncommon for the direction of rotation to
reverse during outflow.
Is this a myth that needs to be laid to rest ?
Felix Arscott
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Canada
Yes, you are right. It is a myth – Ed
Letters: Mouldy books
The annual sale at York University of redundant textbooks from the National
Science Library is a real treat and can usually be relied upon to unearth
all kinds of ‘treasure’. Last year was no exception – except only for the
fact that most of the books stank of mould, presumably due to damp storage
conditions prior to the event.
Despite a year in a warm dry room my ‘finds’ still pong badly enough to make
them tolerable only in small doses. Can anyone recommend a practical
deodorising process to make them suitable for polite society?
David Tong
Leeds
Letters: Therapies on trial
Edzard Ernst (Forum, 17 July) thinks that complementary therapies must, to
‘mature’ as a medicine, be subjected to the rigours of the randomised
controlled trial.
RCTs are not a foolproof method of evaluating any therapy and have been
hotly debated since first becoming fashionable in the 1970s. An RCT cannot
be designed, conducted and interpreted entirely objectively by the people
who undertake it. The ‘experts’ of the medical establishment have a
particular axe to grind (and a golden egg to protect) and I for one do not
trust them to undertake the task of impartially evaluating complementary
therapies.
I reject Ernst’s definition of complementary medicine as ‘medical practices
which do not conform to the standards of the medical community’, which
implies that orthodox medicine is science, alternative medicine something
else entirely. Many orthodox medical practices currently in vogue have never
been subjected to the canonical RCT. By their own standards, doctors are
daily administering ‘unproven’ therapies, though most seem remarkably
unperturbed by this.
Simon Comer
Roscahill, Co. Galway
Ireland
Letters: Therapies on trial
The double-think involved in comparing orthodox with complementary medicine
is so blatant I am surprised no one else appears to have noticed.
Almost any article comparing the two mentions the placebo effect in such a
way as to imply that individuals may be subject to it, if they claim a cure
from complementary medicine, to a greater degree than would be the case with
orthodox medicine.
If this is true, then why have individuals who have been faithfully trying
orthodox medicine for months or years not been cured by the placebo effect?
And yet a sceptical visit to a homeopath yields results.
Jane Still
North Petherton, Somerset
Letters: We all pay
E. P. C. Mead is being disingenuous (Letters, 10 July). It isn’t just car
drivers that are subsidising him, it’s all of us, since the road system is
paid for out of general taxation. Yes, lorry operators do pay a lot in tax,
but it doesn’t come near the full costs they cause. Added to the direct
road damage by lorries (Letters, 19 June) is the extra road fatalities and
the pollution from lorries which is not fully taken into account in
taxation. One estimate (Tweddle et al, Leeds University, 1991) is that lorry
taxes would have to increase by 15 to 55 per cent (depending on lorry type)
in order to cover costs.
But Mead has a point. If tolls are just put on motorways, lorries and other
traffic will divert to less suitable parallel roads. That’s why we are
suggesting that lorry taxes should be restructured and a capacity/distance
tax introduced (applying to all lorry mileage, not just to motorway travel).
The effect of this will be that the biggest trucks travelling furthest will
pay the most tax. What could be fairer?
Stephen Joseph
Transport 2000
London
Letters: Spending spree
I don’t know exactly what Tam Dalyell’s brief is from New 杏吧原创, but his
rant about THORP (Forum, 10 July) does neither of you much credit.
What’s particularly worrying is to see that we have an MP who believes that
having already spent a lot of money on a project counts as a reason for
continuing with it. No wonder central government funds are so often badly
spent.
Donald Simpson
Rochdale, Lancashire
Letters: Diversity debate
It is depressing to read in Roger Lewin’s article (‘Genes from a
disappearing world’, 29 May) that the chairman of an American university’s
anthropology department makes the statement on the Human Genome Diversity
Project that it ‘is 21st-century technology applied to 19th-century
biology’. I have the greatest reverence for Mendel and Darwin, but I do not
believe they could have anticipated modern ideas on genetic population
structure, which inspired the project. That the chairman of anthropology at
Amherst is not conversant with state-of-the-art of population genetics is
strongly suggested by his accusing me of being a typologist, one of the most
hilarious things I have read in decades. Fortunately another American
anthropologist cited by Lewin defends me on this score.
I am labelled a ‘colonialist’ for using words like ethnic groups in Europe
and tribes in Africa. I have worked in Africa, and am certainly not a
believer in European superiority. The comment reveals a taste for quibbling,
and ignores many differences in the social structures most frequent in these
two continents, which must be taken into account in a sampling programme.
I would not call tribes ‘provinces Francaises’ or Italian regions.
Finally, the source of information of Lewin’s article wants to ‘humanise’
us. He is apparently unaware that the organising committee of the Human
Genome Diversity Project devoted a great deal of attention to bioethical
problems – I will be happy to send material to readers who request it. I
will repeat that we are anxious to do everything we can to help
disadvantaged indigenous people. But one should not ask us to do the
impossible: people who have done fieldwork, or who have read The Victims of
Progress by J. H. Bodley (Mayflower, California, 1990) may recognise the
depth of the problem.
We are convinced, however, that our effort will help the poorest indigenous
people at least by drawing much public attention to their condition. We are
very interested in practical advice, and in informed, constructive
criticism.
Luca Cavalli-Sforza
Stanford University, California
Letters: Nothing new
David Pearce (Letters, 3 July) is keen to attribute ‘gross misrepresentation
and neglect of economics as a discipline’ both to me and to Julian Rose, who
reviewed my book Energy Efficiency Policies.
He does so on the basis of the assumption that we believe that environmental
taxes such as carbon tax ‘constitute’ a ‘new economics’. Rose makes no such
claim in his review (12 June), nor do I make any such claim in my book. So
Pearce is guilty of a bit of misrepresentation himself.
Environmental taxes are in fact advocated by a wide variety of people on the
basis of many different viewpoints and types of argument. They are advocated
both by many who are firmly committed to orthodox, market-based
environmental economics, and also by many in the New Economics Foundation
and elsewhere who are seeking to develop a ‘new economics’ closer to the
values and general philosophy of the green movement.
Victor Anderson
London