Blind reviews
The article on the veil of secrecy surrounding peer review of research grants and scientific research publications made a case for reviewers to come public (Forum, 11 February). Another issue is the anonymity of the applicants for grants and publications.
The opinion of the reviewer is very much influenced by the academic standing of the applicant, their affiliation and any personal friendship. The case could be made that review should be undertaken in a double blind fashion to prevent any bias. The final criterion is the quality of the grant application or publication, and this should be reviewed in a completely objective way.
Publicising the name of the reviewer does not remove bias and in fact it could increase the problem of reviewing submissions from friends and colleagues. Anonymity of both applicant and reviewer protects both sides from bias.
Patent points
There were a number of inaccuracies in Andy Coghlan’s article on patents for human genes (Focus, 11 February). The incomplete picture given would lead a reader without experience in the field to believe, erroneously, that very broad patents can be granted without a full description of the whole breadth of the invention, and that there are only limited grounds to have a patent revoked.
It is correctly stated that Genentech was granted a very broad patent for tissue plasminogen activator (tpa), albeit in February 1986. Coghlan fails to note that, more importantly, the patent was then revoked in October 1988 by the Court of Appeal on grounds of obviousness, amongst other things.
Grounds for the revocation of a patent go beyond the three stated by Coghlan (lack of novelty, obviousness and immorality). A patent can also be revoked if the invention is not fully described 鈥� the situation which contributed to the revocation of the Genentech patent. Some further grounds are: lack of industrial applicability, lack of clarity of disclosure, claims to discoveries, and claims to surgical and diagnostic methods.
Crazy cupboards
The explosive disintegration of toughened glass “teardrops” prepared by water-quenching from the melt (“Why do teardrops explode?”, 11 February) is related mechanistically to a little-known but significant hazard to laboratory workers who use fume cupboards.
Many fume cupboards have vertically opening (sash) doors that consist of a single sheet of toughened glass. Such glass is made by air-chilling the surface of a heated glass sheet to create strain gradients through the sheet thickness. Like car windscreens, these will shatter on sufficient surface impact to form a coherent mosaic of fragments that normally stay in place.
In 1991 we experienced the spontaneous failure of a fume cupboard door that consisted of a 6-millimetre-thick toughened glass sheet, 1980 mm wide, 760 mm high, weighing 22 kilograms. Several kilos of glass shrapnel were hurled up to 4 metres into the laboratory. Fortunately no one was injured.
Finding no references to such a phenomenon in the literature (including the British Standards dealing with fume cupboard construction) we published a letter in Chemistry in Britain to draw attention to the hazard 鈥� the operator’s face is typically a few centimetres from the partly closed door in fume cupboard operations.
The letter led to others contacting us to share similar experiences. The worst example was in the research centre of a large pharmaceuticals company where five explosive failures had occurred over a six month period. The source was identified as the edges of bolt holes drilled near the lower edges of the doors to accommodate the handles.
In our case the handle was bonded to the glass and we assume that the failure was caused by a flaw in the vertical hidden edge of the door which grew to a critical size by fatigue from the stresses of repeated operation of the door and then propagated explosively.
Conversations with a manufacturer of toughened glass revealed that edge-initiated explosive failure is well known to them, but it does not appear to be common knowledge in the at-risk community of laboratory workers. As a precaution we had our replacement glass covered on the outside with polyester film. The energy stored in toughened glass is not trivial.
Many meanings
With reference to Tam Dalyell’s column (11 February), the sentence “When John met his uncle in the street he took off his hat” is in fact capable of many more than six meanings without even considering doubts about the identity of John.
The first pronoun can mean John or some third party and the other two have three meanings each (John, Uncle or third party). The phrase “took off his hat” may be an action, a metaphor, or the mute on a brass instrument. If spoken, “the street” could be a place or slang for the TV programme Coronation Street, as the presence of capital letters would not be apparent. That makes 108 possibilities. A 109th is that the sentence has no meaning but is an identifying sentence of the type beloved in spy stories.
Presumably someone can improve on this total.
Snowflake race
I see from Letters (4 February) that there is a race on to claim to be the first to have used a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to study snowflakes. The Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 1970, vol 96, p 257, shows SEM images obtained by me in 1969. Note, however, that these are images of ice crystal replicas and that the crystals themselves were grown in the laboratory. Maybe this is a different race after all.
She's so heavy
Oh, shame on John Gribbin! In his review of The Ascent of Wonder (11 February) he mentions a Tom Godwin story (The Cold Equations, in fact), reminds us that the spaceship in it is on a mercy mission (carrying urgently needed medical supplies to a scientific mission based on a little-known planet) and then blows it by talking of the stowaway and “his excess mass”.
The whole poignancy of this excellent short story, one of the best known and loved in all the science fiction canon, resides in the fact that the stowaway is a young girl, the sister of one of the planet-based scientists, desiring only to see her brother again. Yet her excess mass it is that endangers the mission. To save the group of scientists The Cold Equations demand that she be “spaced” and this the pilot of the spaceship does, much against his grain as the act may go.
Thus the scientists are (presumably) saved and the girl dies. “It was the only logical thing to do, Captain,” as Mr. Spock might have said.
Spotty teenagers
I was interested in A. S. Robertson’s ideas about skin acne in teenagers (Letters, 11 February). It reminded me of an article in New 杏吧原创 about teenagers which stated, if I remember correctly, that in human societies it is important for sexually mature adolescents to be able to experiment and learn their roles in adult life without actually becoming parents until they were into their late teens/twenties.
Isn’t it therefore more plausible that acne is merely another way that humans have evolved to signal that they are not yet mature enough to reproduce. After all, it is widely believed that a clear complexion is a sign of health and therefore of reproductive fitness.
This idea is supported by the fact that when people want to enhance their attractiveness they try to hide their spots and other skin blemishes. Acne is therefore a delaying mechanism designed to allow the lengthy process of physical maturity to progress and to allow the even longer period of social learning to take place before actual parenting and reproduction occurs.
Add lemon juice
Your article on “waving goodbye” to discoloured fruit (Technology, 21 January) reminds me that my mother, among others I know of, had a homely way of preventing the discolouring of freshly sliced or grated pome: it was to sprinkle the newly cut fruit with lemon juice.
Our fruit salads usually included cut-up orange pieces as well, but the lemon juice still seemed to be needed to prevent the staining; so presumably the effective ingredient is in lemon juice, but not apparently in orange juice. It may be that lime or grapefruit would serve as well, but I have not experimented with either; the lemon juice remedy certainly does work.
Can a body tell?
Your amusing letters about “p’ubbliqs pea king” (14 January and 11 February) unlocked a childhood memory for me: an uncle wrote the following and bade me sing it to him:
O霉 est n’a beau dit,
Qui sa beau dit,
Guy n’a beau dit-elle?
I couldn’t sing it as I didn’t know the tune, but as I read it out over and over again, he was in stitches. I thought him most peculiar at the time, but now can clearly see the reason for the hilarity.
Letters to the Editor
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Grow your own
Wood happens to be a fairly good biomass fuel, since it can be burnt in the form of chips in a power station (Letters, 11 February), and can also be fermented to make ethanol and methanol, which would be both more efficient and more “green” as a car fuel than electricity.
However, trees take a long time to grow, and are also hard to process in such a way to make them into useable fuel for cars. So the search must be for an alternative biomass fuel. The simple answer to this is that we already have one, except that it also happens to be illegal to grow it without a Home Office permit. This fuel is hemp.
Hemp seeds contain large amounts of oil, which can be pressed out and recovered. This oil is usable in modified diesel engines, and is supposedly as efficient. The remaining plant can be culled, and the fibre used for clothing (I believe that Levi, the jeans manufacturer, is researching the use of hemp fibre for denim clothing). The bast and leaves can be processed for biofuel in the normal way. Although the conversion into fuel is significantly less efficient than conversion of sugar cane into alcohol, it is important to consider that hemp grows in temperate climes, produces approximately three times as much biomass per year as trees, is harvestable annually, and is not soil depleting.
Oh, and the mash that remains from the pressing of seeds is rich in proteins, especially those which are essential in animal diets. Such protein could be used as safe cattle feeds and also as vegetable protein for human consumption.
All that needs to be done is more research into cars which can run on alcohols (as they do in South American countries such as Brazil) and the encouragement of hemp production, the history of which is a political issue worthy of discussion elsewhere.
It is time for petroleum oil to be used for petrochemical production, and not wasted by burning. Hemp, sugar cane and other biomass fuels would allow us to do this.
Electrifying
Your correspondent T. Robertson argues that the higher apparent efficiency of transport driven by internal combustion engines compared with the electrical alternatives means that combustion engined vehicles have a lower environmental impact (Letters, 11 February). This argument is regularly advanced by motoring interest groups to justify perpetuation of the status quo. It is false in terms of both efficiency and the environment.
The ideal calculation of efficiency does not apply to the reality on the road. In Britain over 80 per cent of the population live in urban areas and 80 per cent of all journeys are less than 5 miles. This results in congestion. In short, stop-start journeys, catalysts do not begin working, cold engines run inefficiently and idling engines run with zero efficiency.
In contrast, electrical drives are marginally more efficient when cold, regenerate when braking and use no power when stationary. Thus the majority of trips would be more efficiently executed electrically, especially in the niche urban environment 鈥� hence trams.
The environmental impact of combustion-engined vehicles is concentrated in their locality. Urban congestion results in levels of particulates, nitrous oxides and hydrocarbons which blight the life of millions with respiratory complaints and hastens the deaths of 10 000 annually.
The global impact of combustion as against electric vehicles depends on the electrical generating technology. Twenty per cent of electricity is currently generated without CO2 emissions. This figure will increase, but even now the writing is on the wall for petrol and diesel driven urban transport.
The specific energy consumption of vehicles with steel wheels running on steel rails is much less than that of rubber tyred vehicles. Modern electric drives using power electronics to supply three phase motors are inherently capable of regeneration during braking and this facility can usually be provided at little extra initial cost. Both these factors can achieve, according to the circumstances of their use, large reductions in the net energy used.
Sliding contact systems are in widespread and satisfactory use and such limitations as do exist are essentially mechanical and can be overcome by appropriate engineering 鈥� as on the French TGVs and Eurostar when in France. Electrical losses of sliding contact systems are low and, even on low voltage high current systems such as that of BR’s Network SouthEast, the loss at the pick-up shoe under normal weather conditions (snow and ice excepted!) is negligible and is not taken into account when calculating train performance.
On overhead systems individual pantographs commonly collect many megawatts and 5 per cent losses would represent hundreds of kilowatts. Even a fraction of this loss ending up in the collector would make it very hot and this does not happen. There is no need to have reservations about sliding contact systems where their use is appropriate.
If we are to avoid the damage now being done to our environment by hydrocarbon fuelled road vehicles then electric vehicles of many types are going to play a major part in our future transport systems. Many practical and satisfactory electric vehicle systems already exist and development continues. The problem with electric vehicles is not so much technical as the need for political and public awareness of their potential, and the need for support for the exploitation of electric vehicles on a scale which can reap the benefits of large scale production.
It seems to me that the main advantage of electrical vehicles is that any pollution is moved away from the city centres into power stations.
This may seem like a case of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), and a fruitless gesture from the global point of view. But ask yourself this question: is it easier to improve the performance of every petrol driven and diesel driven engine and clean up their exhaust emissions, or to use electrical vehicles with zero emissions, and clean up the emissions from the power station?
One false impression that many people may have about electric vehicles is that the cost of charging up from the domestic electricity supply could be relatively cheap. However, one litre of petrol yields about 34 000 kilojoules, that is, 9.4 kilowatt-hours of energy. At about 52 pence per litre this is about 5.5p per kilowatt-hour. But I see from my electricity bill that currently I pay 7.94p per kilowatt-hour. My gas bill, on the other hand, is just 1.5p per kilowatt-hour.
Internal combustion engines can be readily adapted to run on nice clean methane (the principal constituent of natural gas), so why not develop engines which can run on either and have domestic systems for compressing natural gas into a cylinder within the car for short journeys. Then you could just use dirty expensive petrol for long journeys?
In defence of paint
I manage an international development group for a European paint manufacturer. The emission of volatile organic compounds has been a subject of close scrutiny, and we have spent a great deal of time working on the European Commission’s numerous draft documents of the Emissions to Air directive.
I therefore found the statement, “solvents, such as paint and dry-cleaning fluid 鈥� are the biggest source of VOCs”, very misleading (In Brief, 19 November).
The commission document includes a brief summary of the origins of Europe’s VOC emissions, which make up an estimated 10 million tonnes per year. Of this, the total for organic solvent usage is “in the order of 34 per cent 鈥� For comparison the corresponding figure for transport is 53 per cent”.
According to the commission breakdown of this solvent usage, only 49.5 per cent of the 34 per cent derives from paint and dry-cleaning operations, giving a figure of 17 per cent of the total of @man-made non-methane emissions”. Methane emissions in Britain alone count for another 4 million tonnes per year.
It should also be noted that these figures refer to the quantities of solvent used within an industry, and the assumption is made that this is all emitted. But the solvent vapours in the coil coating industry in which I am involved, for example, are burnt as a part of the fuel for the curing ovens. Less than 5 per cent of the solvents used within this industry are emitted as VOCs. So paint is hardly the biggest source of VOCs.
Unfair to wolves
Ross Firestone’s letter (18 February) portraying wolves as “dangerous and unpredictable predators” made some of the usual errors and assumptions which have done so much to disrupt the work of concerned conservationists over the last few decades.
It is interesting that, despite the proximity of wolves and humans in North America (particularly Minnesota), Firestone is unable to find a report of an attack since 1947. Neither of the cases he describes (1920 and 1947) was independently confirmed, and both contain rather dubious eye-witness statements.
Firestone’s fears for Scotland’s sheep (although touching) seem to be equally groundless. Research in Italy showed that between 50 and 80 per cent of the livestock kills attributed to wolves were made by feral domestic dogs; many reported wolf kills in the US were attempts by farmers to claim compensation for animals which had never existed, or which died by other means. In Minnesota, which has the highest wolf population of any of the lower 48 states, less than 1 per cent of farmers complained of wolf predation. Of the reported kills, few (if, indeed, any) were multiple. Wolves clearly kill some livestock, but well-managed compensation schemes should avoid conflict.
I hope that unauthenticated evidence over 50 years old, combined with a healthy dose of superstition and legend, will not divert attention from the valuable research in the US, Britain and elsewhere on the behaviour and ecology of wolves.
This correspondence is now closed 鈥� Ed
Holding hands
In his fascinating article “Are you lonesome tonight?” (11 February), Robin Dunbar calls the correlation between married couples in the relative length of the joints of the fingers bizarre.
But what do courting couples do at every opportunity except hold hands? Then there is the importance we like to attach to a handshake.
Perhaps a future article could examine just what is the information 鈥� fancied or otherwise 鈥� which we get out of such contact?