Dream teams
As fantasy football mania grips the country once more and fans play the role of premier division manager and win points according to how well the members of their ideal team perform in reality, perhaps it is time for New 杏吧原创 to launch its “dream department”.
I propose that participants should be allowed to choose, say, 11 researchers, with a limited head-hunting budget and a specified quota of professors, postdocs, PhD students, etcetera. Points will be awarded according to publications, television appearances, mentions in New 杏吧原创, managing to write up and so on.
In line with current policy, no points will be awarded for teaching. A couple of transfers a season will probably be necessary to take account of short term contracts and defections to the real world.
At the end of the year the “head of department” with the most points would not win any prize since it is enough to be recognised by one’s peers, but no doubt such an achievement would look good on the CV of any would-be academic bureaucrat.
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Play in the traffic
Philip Cohen reports that children misunderstand or fail to apply road safety rules that they have been taught (This Week, 23 September). He comments that “practical training”, by which he means training on the road, would improve the situation. This must surely be very difficult and risky to arrange. It struck me that this would be an ideal task for virtual reality.
A computer could be readily programmed to simulate real traffic to train children in the circumstances that they will come across, without putting them at risk. It could perhaps be structured as a game where the player scores points for the correct moves. Unfortunately, the traditional three “lives” that a player has would give the wrong impression and the limit would have to be one.
Pioneer pigeons
Eric Simms records in The Street Ltfe of the London Pigeon that in 1965 he observed a pigeon boarding his train at Kilburn, which is above ground, and travelling two stops to Finchley Road on the Bakerloo line, where it joined three others on the platform (Letters, 2 and 30 September).
It seems they have been fare-dodging for at least 30 years.
Dirt and diesel
Unfortunately, a few technical details in your article about cleaning up diesel engines have been mixed up (Technology, 23 September).
Sulphur dioxide is not a serious problem in diesel engines; at least not for modern engines and not in Western European countries, where purified diesel fuel is used. Furthermore, sulphur dioxide “broken apart” to form elemental sulphur should not be released into the environment, whereas nitrogen and oxygen are indeed harmless gases.
The internal combustion engine in a medium size car produces about 100 kilowatts of mechanical power at full thrust. Most of this power is delivered to the drivetrain and used for propulsion. In inner city traffic, 15 to 25 kW is sufficient. The alternator typically produces up to 1 kW of electrical power, used for the spark ignition, for auxiliary electric motors and the car stereo etc.
We propose to use a few hundred watts (some 0.1 kW) for an electrical secondary treatment of the exhaust. This measure would run in conjunction with efficiency improvements to the engine of about 10 per cent. These improvements are not possible if a conventional three-way catalytic converter is employed, but work well with diesel or lean-burn petrol engines. As long as we stay below 10 kW for a middle class car, the efficiency balance is on the positive side. In tests we have not used that much power so far, neither do we consider it to be of “maximum benefit.”
Rooting for Rhol
Nick Saunders’s review of David Rohl’s book A Test of Time: from Myth to History” (Review, 23 September) is a travesty, with snide remarks such as “this ex-rock musician’s arguments 鈥�” and “posing Indiana Jones” implying that the author is a “Johnny-come-lately” with superficial knowledge.
The book’s dust-cover CV of the author indicates that he is a London University graduate in Egyptology with a long-standing interest in the subject since early boyhood, with excavations and several published academic papers to his name.
The present book may be iconoclastic, but original research often is (for example, A. Wegener and plate tectonics). A well reasoned thesis like the one presented in Rohl’s book deserves more respect than that given by your reviewer.
Einstein in error
Gerald Pellgrini’s exposure of a fundamental error in a 1913 experimental proof of Einstein’s special theory of relativity (New 杏吧原创, Science, 16 September) is indeed a momentous matter. However, it was not only “physicists in the early part of this century” who made the error of assuming that rotational motion can be considered as a good approximation to linear motion. Einstein himself made the same mistake.
You quote physicist Arthur Swift on the paradoxes which arise when special relativity is applied to a series of synchronised clocks placed on a rotating turntable, leading him to the conclusion that, “special relativity is an entirely inappropriate theory to apply to a rotating body”.
Yet if we refer to Einstein’s original 1905 paper on the special theory of relativity (quoted by Herbert Dingle in Science at the Crossroads in 1972), we find in it an analysis of synchronous clocks moving in a closed curve, from which Einstein concluded that 鈥� “a balance-clock at the equator must go more slowly, by a very small amount, than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles under otherwise identical conditions”.
Dingle pointed out that, as all motion is relative, Einstein’s analysis could also allow one to deduce precisely the opposite conclusion which is, of course, impossible. In other words, Einstein was wrong.
Dingle (who was originally one of the leading popularisers of Einstein’s theory) made little headway with the physicists of his day when he presented his critical analysis of special relativity in 1962 (Nature, vol. 195, p 985), so it is gratifying to see some of his criticisms at last finding acceptance. However, are today’s physicists prepared to contemplate the possibility, as argued by Dingle, that applying special relativity to a rotating body was not the only mistake that Einstein made 鈥� and that there are flaws which run to the heart of the theory which require a fundamental reappraisal?
Ban them all
Tam Dalyell mentions the problem of the oestrogenic effects of alkylphenolic compounds (Forum, 9 September). As he states, a phase-out has been agreed for one group of these compounds, the nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs) for one group of uses, as industrial cleaning agents.
However, this leaves another group, the octylphenol ethoxylates (OPEs) uncontrolled. Although sales of OPEs are only about one tenth of those of NPEs, octylphenolic compounds are ten times more oestrogenic than nonylphenolic compounds. This phase-out also ignores other uses of alkylphenolic compounds; it is clearly inadequate.
Those chemicals have been shown to affect wildlife and could be affecting human health, so they should all be phased out. Further information on the environmental effects of alkylphenolic compounds can be obtained from my report, “An environmental assessment of alkylphenol ethoxylates and alkylphenols” available for 拢6 from Friends of the Earth, or from my oestrogenic substances web site at
Silly sirens
Wonderful news! After 15 years or more, the penny has at last dropped 鈥� or at least is starting to. I think it was in June 1980 that I was in Washington and first heard a high-intensity warbling oscillator in the street (This Week, 23 September).
I’d never heard this before, but it eventually became clear it was a police car. However, it was a very long time before I could locate it, confused as the ear was by multiple echoes from buildings.
Reflecting on this, I thought “How like the Yanks to go for something ‘space-age’ but practically useless.” Even I, with no more than a smattering of physics and no physiology, could spot that in trying to locate a moving sound source in a built-up area, the brain would have to rely heavily on doppler, arrival time and intensity, to help distinguish direction from reflected sound.
Reflected sounds will in general have travelled further, be fainter and arrive later than direct sounds. They may also have less “blue shift” to their pitch, since the along-path velocity for an oblique path may often be less – but in any case, their pitch will vary more, relative to that of the source.
But to take advantage of all these clues, the brain needs an intermittent source signal, with a fairly strong constant-pitch component. The short peals on an electric bell, common for fire engines in this country at the time, was a good example of such a signal. A warbling continuous tone seems carefully contrived to make source location (under these conditions) almost impossible.
Within a year or so, I was hearing the same noise in this country. I was amazed that we should so promptly follow the US down such an obviously wrong path, but had faith that we (and hopefully they also) would soon learn better. We don’t learn very fast, do we?
Unwise implants?
I was concerned by your article in which several dubious claims were put forward in favour of cochlear implants for very young deaf children (This Week 23 September).
You report that “300 children a year need a cochlear implant”. I don’t dispute your figures for profoundly deaf children, but that they need the implant at all. The implants are said to allow children to develop speech and communication skills they would otherwise lack. No mention was made in the article that deaf children have a readily available language in British Sign Language. BSL can provide children with all the communication skills they need. There is also increasing evidence that deaf children who grow up using BSL develop good English skills when they learn written (and even spoken) English as a second language.
A child with a cochlear implant is still deaf and, as such, will probably still require the “care” that any deaf person needs for equal access to society. Children without an implant, however, avoid the trauma of surgery, can learn their natural language, develop their own identity as deaf people, and can make their own choice about implantation when they grow up.
Cochlear implants are wonderful devices for deafened people who have lost their identity as hearing people. Their use for deaf infants, however, is still fiercely debated, especially by many deaf people themselves, who see their deafness as a matter of cultural pride, and not a medical problem to be cured by technology.
I suffer from hearing loss in one ear, and have recently been trying out an exceedingly minute hearing aid. It has prompted the following idea.
The present approach is for a hearing aid to act as an audio amplifier, boosting the sound pressure level of frequencies to which the ear has reduced sensitivity. In the case of deafness resulting from cochlea deterioration, such deterioration may often have arisen as a result of exposure to high sound pressure levels. Simply boosting the sound pressure level at the ear drum so that the cochlea cilia produce a sufficient signal level for the brain to detect is therefore a very crude brute force approach, and one that must surely cause further damage to the cilia.
I would be interested to know whether anyone has pursued the line of using frequency-shifting instead. This must now be feasible with the continued miniaturisation of electronic equipment. This would transform the incoming sound to a frequency at which the ear retains the most sensitivity, so that much lower sound pressure levels could be fed to the ear drum. In practice, the characteristic of hearing loss is generally such that this would mean that higher frequencies would be shifted to lower frequencies.
Bearing in mind the brain’s ability to adapt, I think it quite likely that, after an appropriate length of use, it would “hear” the lower frequencies as higher ones, particularly if (as, for example, in my case) there is better hearing in the other ear, which would therefore hear the true frequencies.
Darwin's islands
Your article on the problems in the Gal谩pagos Islands is dangerously misleading (“On the origin of revolution”, 30 September). The implication is that the entire population of Gal谩pagos is anti-conservation. This is nonsense. Tourism is the chief economic activity of the islands and brings in over $50 million a year in revenue. The majority of the islanders, who benefit from the tourist industry, are only too well aware that they must conserve the islands if they are to protect their livelihoods.
Fishing is a marginal element in the economic life of Gal谩pagos and the number of people involved in it and supporting the recent strike is very small. Soon after the strike was declared, the local people who were opposed to Congressman Veliz and the strike committee set up their own “Committee of Peace and Goodwill” to represent the majority of the population. This committee is still in existence and indicates clearly that by no means did the strikers represent the opinion of the people of Gal谩pagos.
Fred Pearce also implies that the conservationists are not interested in the people, only in the wildlife. This is simply not true. The Charles Darwin Research Station and the Gal谩pagos National Park have been in the forefront of helping the development of a responsible and economically successful tourist industry from the very beginning. Gal谩pagos today has the highest income per capita of any province of Ecuador. It is not that conservationists did not take the people into account, it is that we did not foresee the consequences of the success of tourism.
Yes, we want to limit immigration to the Gal谩pagos, but so does everyone in Gal谩pagos. Even Veliz included it in his discredited and vetoed law.
You accuse conservationists of being confrontational. That really is rich, when the strikers laid siege to the national park and Darwin Station, wielded machetes and had molotov cocktails on site. The strike committee, including Veliz and the Mayor of San Crist贸bal, actually wrote to the President and threatened to take tourists hostage and to set fire to the national park. If that is not confrontational then I must be Lonesome George.
You say that the Darwin Station’s educational programme has evidently failed. It has not failed, it has simply been overwhelmed by the immigration of people into the islands.
I lived in Gal谩pagos for 15 years from 1964, so I have a very good understanding of the problems facing the people there 鈥� I faced them myself. It is precisely because of this that helped to set up the Gal谩pagos Conservation Trust.
When we launched the trust in April this year at the Royal Society I said: “Any conservation programme in Gal谩pagos must take into account one important consideration, the local human population. The long-term interests of the natural inhabitants and the human ones are virtually the same.” Recent events have served to confirm that fact.
None of this is to deny that Gal谩pagos is in crisis. The question that must be asked is: does the world care enough to save it?
Poaching peril
The Forum article by Barbara Maas (26 August) and the letter from Dereck Joubert (7 October) presented a misleading picture of the report Four Years After the CITES ban: illegal killing of elephants, ivory trade and stockpiles. Most unfortunately, both Maas and Joubert minimised the most important findings: poaching of African elephants has increased, while funds to protect the elephant have plummeted in real terms since the ban’s inception.
By comparing two post-ban periods, the report assessed poaching and the ivory trade after the 1990 ban. It found that poaching had increased in Kenya and other African countries between 1990 and 1993. This recent increase in poaching is of grave concern, but this point is missed by comparing the current level of poaching with that prior to the ivory ban.
It is this discouraging finding that most concerns us, and should concern everyone. An increasing number of dead elephants across Africa should sound an alarm in both law enforcement and conservation communities, rather than prompt efforts to minimise the significance of this finding.
Contrary to Maas’s argument, the importance of adequate funding for law enforcement budgets to protect elephants cannot be overemphasised. The ban alone will never halt poaching as long as there is a demand for ivory. It must be accompanied by vigorous law enforcement efforts coupled with improved community relations.
Law enforcement budgets in every country surveyed have repeatedly faced the budget axe or failed to keep pace with inflation in real terms. Maas also misses another crucial point. As law enforcement budgets decrease, detection of poaching also decreases, meaning the poaching increases are almost certainly being underestimated.
Despite Maas’s claim that the authors did not consult the “right people” in Tanzania the authors did use data on elephant population numbers provided by the Tanzania Wildlife Conservation Monitoring Unit for the relevant areas.
The report takes no position on whether stockpiles should be used as an economic asset. However, it is undeniable that ivory has an economic value and the very existence of such stockpiles is important in this regard. To date only two African countries have destroyed their ivory stocks. The absence of stockpiles in certain other countries with significant elephant populations could indicate that the ban is not enforced, since all of these countries should be accumulating ivory at least through natural mortality. In addition many of the ivory stockpiles that do exist are not secure.
The findings of the report serve as a reminder that just as the decision to adopt policies or change them is an important aspect of conservation, the task of monitoring and evaluating the effect on the ground of such changes is equally important and even more difficult. Alas the important 鈥� and ominous findings 鈥� of this post-ban study do not augur well for the long-term future of the African elephant.