Letters: War-torn bears
Susan Biggin is clearly on the side of bears and I share her compassion
(This Week, 12 February). But she is insufficiently informed and uses assumptions
as definite arguments.
The heavy toll the bears and their habitat have paid because of the
war is undoubted. At least 20 bears have been killed in Croatia alone, along
the battle line between the Croatian defenders and invading Serbian forces.
No one knows what is happening in the eastern half of the bear habitat in
Croatia, which is still occupied by the Serbs.
In addition, John Walsh (World Society for Protection of Animals) has
reported on massive forest fires and other habitat destructions in the core
bear areas in Bosnia. A number of bear cubs have been orphaned and one of
them is in Zagreb after being rescued in Bosnia.
However, I have been able to record only one case of unusual movement
of bears from the war-affected areas. In summer 1993 a bear walked some
30 kilometres and appeared in the Krka National Park, where this species
has not been seen for over 50 years. Bears are certainly disturbed by the
very presence of people in the forest, not to mention explosions and fires,
but they usually move to shelter just over the next mountain.
It is true that bears do routinely travel over borders. One male managed
to reach Austria in 1973 and several more went to southern Austria (Carinthia)
and north-east Italy (Tarvisio and Trieste) during the 1980s – all before
the war. The number of recent cases listed by Biggin is not above the average
of the previous decade.
I am personally interested in helping bears to spread to western Europe.
My assistant, Josip Kusak, walked with two Austrian experts the 314 kilometres
of natural corridor from Croatia, over Slovenia and Italy to Austria in
order to identify the major manmade obstacles to bear migrations and to
suggest mitigation measures.
I recently captured three bears in Croatia and in Slovenia for the Austrian
WWF. The two females and one male were sent to central Austria, where they
have given birth to a total of 8 cubs, making them equal to the entire
bear populations in northern Italy (Trento) or the French Pyrenees.
The future of bears in most of Western Europe depends on their welfare
in the Dinara mountain range. When the Serbian aggression is stopped, the
bears will, as well as people, live here in harmony with nature and travel
around as welcomed guests and not as refugees.
Djuro Huber Zagreb, Republic of Croatia
Letters: Wonderful walls
I was delighted to read ‘Go easy on the weedkiller’, not only for the
general advice contained in the title, but specifically because it dealt
with walls (Forum, 7 May). My colleagues and I have assembled ‘What’s on
a Wall?’, a booklet encouraging the recording of walls as habitats and listing
the hundreds of species of flora and fauna to be found on them. We
would be pleased to hear from any readers interested in this project. We
feel it is time to redress the balance of interest between walls and hedgerows.
The use of chemicals in the countryside has driven wildlife (and some
people) into the towns; urbanisation of foxes is particularly well known.
Meanwhile, chemical pollutants have removed the greater part of the lichen
interest from urban areas. Anyone spraying (for instance) a wall should
remember the ecological dictum: ‘You can never do only one thing’. We have
got rid of wolves and most other serious ‘threats’ to humans in this country,
so now let us try to live with other species.
Peter Nalder Renhold, Bedfordshire
Letters: First face
Hugh Loxdale (Letters, 14 May) recalls that the Radio Times cited his
relative, Norman Loxdale (1909-1993), as ‘the first person to see a Baird
image in 1923′, whereas I had suggested it was the fifteen-year-old office
boy, William Taynton (1910-1976), on 2 October 1925. There is, however,
no dispute.
Both Loxdale and Victor R. Mills (1901-1988) were witnesses in 1923
of Baird’s first shadowy images at St Leonards, East Sussex. According to
Baird in 1931, however, his first picture of a recognisable human face was
that of an office boy from Cross Pictures Limited, in the same building
as his little ‘studio’ in Soho, London.
Further research since 1991, however, now leads me to doubt if the BBC
TV’s espousal of Bill Taynton in their This is Your Life programme got the
right office boy. There is as good a claim for Joseph E. Hamelford (born
1909), who preceded Taynton in his job.
Puzzles of this kind might best be solved from the collective knowledge
of New 杏吧原创’s whole readership, as used in your excellent new ‘Last
Word’ feature.
Norris McWhirter London
Letters: Dinnertime
The correspondence about sunrise, sunset and solstices, summing up a
picture of a wobbly Earth on an imperfect if certain course round the sun
(Letters, 5 March), the mention of swinging sundials and lop-sided pendulums
in ‘The world of symplectic space’ (19 March), and the reference to anticlockwise
clocks (Letters, 19 March and 30 April) make one quite queasy.
To settle my stomach I exercised my mind – rather like Pooh, that bear
of little brain, wondering why a bear likes honey – with the comforting
idea that while real time is unreal, meal times seem to represent the only
reliable constant.
R. Harrison Geneva
Letters: Mystery Solved
I know why toast normally lands on the buttered side: the rotation involved
on dropping and the distance to the ground combine to allow half a turn
to be performed by the toast in mid-air. If you do not believe me, try it
yourself: Push a piece of bread or use a biro lengthways to model the bread,
slowly over the edge of a table. See?
Now to untangle string theory . . .
Colin Morgan Warrington, Cheshire
Letters: We want Wally
William Bown has picked up echoes of a frequent topic of conversation
among scientists recently (‘Will Waldegrave walk the plank?’ Forum, 14 May).
A long-standing aim of Save British Science has been the formation of
a Ministry for Science and Technology headed by a full-time Cabinet minister.
We, therefore, welcomed the surprise announcement by John Major’s government,
shortly after he won the 1992 election, of the creation of the Office of
Science and Technology under the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,
William Waldegrave.
Admittedly the OST is only a half measure: time has shown it to be quite
powerless to forge cross-departmental coherence in the government’s approach
to investment in R&D. But to lose the Cabinet position altogether would
totally devalue the Prime Minister’s recent statements on the high priority
he accords to science and technology.
In William Waldegrave we have a minister demonstrating a genuine interest
in science and a commitment to do what he sees as best to carry out his
responsibilities. There has been dialogue, he has taken opportunities –
like his appearance at the British Association annual meetings – to come
away from Whitehall and meet scientists at work. On such occasions his remarks
have, in our experience, been well received and he has earned warm respect,
even if there are significant disagreements over some aspects of policy.
If he were now shuffled out, the brief relationship and continuity of
understanding would be broken. It is a time for stability, for time to digest
the many changes under way and those still in train; to build on what is
good and work to modify the not so good.
John Mulvey Save British Science, Oxford
Letters: Eyes on antimatter
My colleagues and I thank you for New 杏吧原创’s interest in our work
on antiprotonic helium atoms (Science, 30 April). Please permit me to point
out a few errors in your report and make some illustrative comments on these
fascinating new members of the fundamental atom family.
As you state, antiprotonic helium atoms consist of a helium nucleus
orbited by an electron and an antiproton. They are not new – the new feature
is the astonishing longevity of some 3 per cent of them. To put this in
perspective let us make the analogy between the antiproton’s orbital period
around the nucleus and the earth’s one-year orbit around the sun. We expected
that all such atoms would live for at most a few ‘antiproton centuries’
before the antiproton is annihilated (by entering the helium nucleus, not
by leaving its orbit and encountering a proton, as stated in the article);
we found that some of them survive for the equivalent of the age of the
universe.
We do not, by the way, produce our atoms with a laser, rather we destroy
them with it, and in so doing probe their structure. It is the longevity
that makes these and other spectroscopic studies with lasers feasible. Laser
techniques have revolutionised the spectroscopy of ordinary atoms and may
enable us in future to see the antiworld much more clearly through the telescope
offered by antiprotonic helium atoms.
Another aspect of these atoms is that in a sense they are not really
atoms at all but a strange new species of molecule with one positively charged
and one negatively charged nucleus (the helium nucleus and the antiproton
respectively). As in ordinary diatomic molecules the electron cloud surrounds
both nuclei. This has led us to use the etymologically questionable but
evocative term ‘atomcule’ to describe something which cannot really make
up its mind whether it is one or the other.
John Eades CERN, Geneva