Letters: Morphic moon
Your correspondent Jeremy Henty and your reviewer Colin Tudge both seem
willing to accept as fact the oft-quoted observations of Eugene Marais on
African termites. I have removed the reproductives from hundreds of termite
nests, sometimes accidentally killing them in the process, but I have never
observed any such sudden disruption in the behaviour of the sterile population
as Marais described.
In one series of experiments the reproductives were removed from large
nests and the nest chambers re-sealed with earth. After varying intervals
the orphaned nests were dug up and their populations analysed. They continued
to function normally for about ten weeks after removal of the reproductives,
as long as there were juveniles and young adults present. In other experiments
orphaned nests were found to have replaced their reproductives from nymphs
or unflown alates that were already in the nests. These observations seem
to show that the queen is not the vital force that Marais postulated.
Marais’s book, The Soul of the White Ant, is full of interesting ideas
and observations, but his experiments are fairly anecdotal. They are not
clearly described, are never quantified, and may not even have been replicated.
They would need to be repeated and re-examined in a much more critical way
before they can be accepted as evidence of anything, let alone of a revolutionary
hypothesis like Sheldrake’s morphic resonance.
Johanna Darlington Cambridge
Letters: Give us time
Your article on ‘Britain’s abandoned empire’, (23 April, and Letters,
14 May) emphasises the British government’s responsibility to promote biodiversity
conservation in the dependent territories, but scarcely mentions the need
for local involvement when it comes to implementation.
Conservation development will only be sustainable with local support
and such support is not going to materialise overnight. Here on St Helena
our chronic isolation has meant that international concerns about biodiversity
are slow to filter through.
We are grateful to the Overseas Development Administration and the Royal
Botanic Gardens at Kew for ‘pioneering a path to sustainable development’,
but it is unrealistic to expect proposals in the Kew report to be automatically
accepted. It is unreasonable to criticise the British government or the
St Helena government for not responding to the report immediately.
Extensive and time consuming consultations have aimed for a consensus
on a strategy for environmental conservation which supports the overall
development of the Island. We hope that relevant recommendations in the
Biodiversity Action Plan will become part of our programme but this can
only happen with the full support and understanding of St Helenians, not
when the UN or ODA says it must.
Chris Lomas and Anthony Hill Department of Agriculture and Forestry
St Helena
Letters: Give us time
Re ‘Will drug giants bale out Darwin?’ (This Week, 9 April). While Fred
Pearce’s emphasis on my principal concern over indigenous property rights
is apt, the implication that commercial companies should not be involved
in conservation is not. My point was that we should not be entirely or unduly
dependent on multinational agribusiness and pharmaceuticals companies for
funding conservation, especially where food and drug species potentially
valuable to them are involved.
The percentage of GNP that the British government gives to the conservation
of biodiversity is minimal. With the Darwin Initiative, the main balance
of project funding in many cases has to come from the private sector, or
the work would not be done. My own research, referred to in the article
is an example.
About half the world’s population relies on wild and other traditional
informal sector food for essential vitamins, minerals, fats and proteins
to supplement its carbohydrate staples. These vital ‘wild foods’ are being
lost, and with them many relatives of our staple crops and livestock. Our
problem is to find environmentally aware companies willing to support the
development of wild food policy on an equitable basis.
Margaret Evans Oxford
Letters: Don't OD on tea
Paul Herbert’s letter (16 April) about protecting toads from UV by infusing
ponds with tea sounds like a great idea – but whoa! We don’t know nearly
enough about the effects of tannins on freshwater systems to do this safely,
especially at the corrected dose rate of 100 grams per cubic metre (Letters,
23 April). A tea infusion of this strength would very likely affect many
pond organisms, either directly (for example, some algae) or indirectly
through changes in food webs and, at present, nobody can say whether the
overall effect would be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for pond communities.
My interest stems from our work on the control of nuisance algae using
barley straw and plant litter such as brown-rotted wood and deciduous leaves:
barley straw rotting in water is now widely used as an algal control measure.
All of them seem to work through the release of polyphenolics – lignin from
straw and wood and tannins from leaf litter – which become oxidised in well-aerated
water.
Tea certainly inhibits test algae such as chlorella in the lab and I
actually tried out tea bags in a small pond, where they appeared to control
filamentous algae but also caused a sharp decline in copepods and the total
disappearance of leeches. The tea bags were withdrawn hastily and smelt
quite abominable.
We don’t know whether barley straw has adverse effects on any freshwater
animals, including amphibians: there is no evidence that it does but you
can’t be too careful and so, with help from English Nature, we have just
set up a n array of artificial ponds to investigate the wider effects of
barley straw. Looking at effects on amphibian breeding is top priority.
May I respectfully suggest that anyone contemplating the tea cure for
toads first sets up a small trial: raise toads in the presence and absence
of tea and compare rates of growth, numbers developing into toadlets and
the general well-being of toadlets. As I said before, you can’t be too
careful.
Irene Ridge Open University, Milton Keynes
Letters: Shovelling snow
Re your article about ergonomic shovels (Technology, 9 April). The inference
is that the design is a new concept of Australian origin. We here in Canada
have been using snow shovels with this feature since at least early 1992,
if not earlier. They are made by The Garant Company of St Francois, Montmagny,
Canada.
Those of steel construction were known as the ‘Back Saver’ and the more
recent model with aluminium construction as the ‘Ergo Concept’.
Glad to see that good ideas spread.
H. Johnsen Toronto, Canada
Letters: Igniting Jupiter
D. Pennington (Letters, 9 April) refers to the forthcoming impact of
comet Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter during the last week of July – the most
dramatic astronomical event of this century, if not of all history. He states:
‘I understood that Jupiter’s mass was just short of that required for self-ignition,
which would enable it to become a second sun. I hope experts have taken
into account the possibility of artificial (sic) ignition. . .’
Precisely such an event – though with a somewhat different scenario
– was the climax of 2010: Odyssey II, and was superbly rendered in Peter
Hyams’s movie. Though I do not for a moment believe that this will actually
happen (Jupiter would have to possess ten times its present mass to become
a sun, and that of any comet is quite negligible), I am not averse to generating
a little alarm – and publicity!
Arthur C. Clarke Colombo, Sri Lanka
Letters: Morphic moon
The two letters (23 April) on Colin Tudge’s review of Seven Experiments
That Could Change The World (26 March) say it all.
Jeremy Henty showed all the hallmarks of the missionary zeal and fervour
of a follower of an, albeit modern, religion. Not one logical, scientific
explanation was given to refute examples in the review. It would be interesting
to learn how regular patterns of termites’ behaviour are not disrupted
by cutting a nest in half, but that the death of the queen has an effect
on both halves. How does a vixen control cubs when they are not looking
at her, just by looking at them? Too many assumptions were made and no explanations.
Does he really think the world is run solely by what can currently be observed
by scientifically controlled experiments?
As a suggestion, try telling staff in charge of emotionally disturbed
patients that they are not affected by a full moon. I am not certain how
objective observation could be set up, but there is enough evidence to convince
many of a very profound effect.
The great pity is that genuine thinkers and innovators are being stifled
and that the refreshing contrast of Anon’s letter had to be cloaked by him
so signing himself, out of fear of self-appointed ‘thought police’.
Colin Lewis Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Letters: Morphic moon
Anon refers to historical evidence of the non-parabolic trajectories
of projectiles, particularly arrows. Such flight paths are never parabolic,
as they take place in air. The resistance of the air slows down the horizontal
motion of the arrow, eventually to zero if it is in the air long enough.
The net effect is that the trajectory becomes asymmetrical, and in the
extreme case the final part of the arrow’s flight is vertically downwards
or nearly so.
This bears a passing resemblance to the nearly triangular trajectories
reported by your correspondent as seen in early religious tapestries. In
medieval times, archers were not marksmen but fired their arrows into the
air at steep angles to produce a rain of arrows on the enemy – so the times
of flight would be long.
What is disturbing about morphic resonance is that it provides explanations
for events for which we already have perfectly adequate interpretations
based in elementary physics.
John Sweeney University of Leeds
Letters: Morphic moon
If ‘early religious tapestries’ are going to be taken as accurate representations
of the world at that time, then the appearance of mankind has presumably
altered considerably in the centuries since the Middle Ages. People are
often depicted in medieval drawings with hands and heads very large in
comparison to their bodies and joints that seem to bend at angles we would
now consider quite ridiculous – evolution is a wonderful thing but I
can’t imagine it works quite that fast.
Presumably either the drawings are not to be trusted or some great
thinker somewhere came up with a logical theory to explain that people couldn’t
look like that and we all changed overnight.
Frances Watson London
Letters: Morphic moon
Anon wonders whether planets followed elliptical paths before Kepler.
The answer is: yes.
The records of eclipses and comets in Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian
cuneiform show that they were in the right place at the right time according
to Newton’s laws.
F. G. Grisley Barry, Glamorgan
Letters: Morphic moon
Anon shows the way forward to end the controversy around the theory
of morphic resonance once and for all by simple experiment.
A statistically significant number of experiments from various disciplines
should be arranged, and performed by unbriefed scientists outside of each
field. The experiment should then be repeated after a briefing which will
include a statement of the results to be expected.
The meta-experiment would be the monitoring of all these experiments
by a group completely sceptical of Sheldrake’s theory. If the experiments
performed by briefed scientists show no better agreement with the expected
results, then this will be in accordance with the monitoring group’s expectations
and will amply demonstrate the validity of morphic resonance.
Clearly, if the second set of experiments did produce more results
in line with expectations then this would leave the theory in real difficulty.
Peter Jeal Mitcham, Surrey
Letters: Patently wrong
Kurt Kleiner describes the controversy over software patents (‘Stop!
Software speed trap ahead’, 23 April), but fails to explain clearly why
they will have such a detrimental effect on the software industry. If the
only problem was the incompetence of the US patent office then this could
be cured by better training or by recruiting new skilled staff. Unfortunately,
the problem is more serious that this and is not so readily curable. Software
patents will cause the price of software to rise and will inhibit innovation.
Software is much cheaper to develop than hardware of comparable complexity.
A computer program containing hundreds of potentially patentable components
may cost only thousands of pounds to produce, whereas developing a car or
aeroplane of comparable complexity will typically cost millions. But while
development costs vary by several orders of magnitude, patent costs are
comparable.
The cost of patent searches, licensing and application are readily absorbed
into hardware development costs, but will come to dominate software costs.
This will cause the price of software to rise dramatically. The increased
start-up costs will put small software companies out of business and, hence,
inhibit innovation. No wonder the big computer companies support software
patenting and the small ones oppose it.
There is also a safety problem. To avoid licensing costs, programmers
will be tempted to adapt tried and tested algorithms for standard tasks
by incorporating arbitrary changes to them. This will increase the chance
of error in operation.
Alan Bundy Edinburgh