Letters : Trek tricks
Wyton, Huntingdon
In the article “Illogical Captain”, Lawrence Krauss acknowledges today’s
floppy disc as an item which Star Trek got right (20 April, p 24). I
would like to list some other devices which have featured in Star Trek
and are either with us today, or will be in decades rather than centuries:
Doors: the infamous doors that go “shh!” are with us today. See your nearest
supermarket.
Universal Translator: programs that translate one language to another are
already available.
Voice-responsive computers/devices: with us today in limited (but improving)
form.
Communicator: see the mobile phone.
PADD Device: see the Newton or other hand-held computer.
Wall-sized monitor: see any pop concert.
Sick-bay diagnostic displays: see current ECG brain wave monitors.
Enterprise’s optical data network: see fibre-optic cable.
Recreation area/food garden (featured in the old series): see the New
杏吧原创 article on food for NASA astronauts (“One small step for a
tomato”, 13 April, p 28).
Tricorder (memory chip, VDU and sensor array): see Sony Discman, pocket TVs
and a portable micro-radar system which can detect movement/heartbeats.
Crew locator/comms badges: These devices let the computer (and captain) know
where a crew member is and if their life signs have stopped. Staff-locating
badges are under development. See previous entry for vital-sign reports.
I do have a few niggles about the article. Krauss was plain wrong when he
suggested Star Trek did not address the question of the soul, both as a
spiritual/cultural phenomenon and as a transported organism. Leonard McCoy of
the old series was widely known to dislike the transporter for just that
reason鈥攖hat is, potential destruction of the soul. The Bajorans in
Deep Space Nine are forever banging on about the soul.
Letters : . . .
Cambridge
Krauss repeats a common objection to film soundtracks, stating that
explosions would be inaudible in space. This question has puzzled me for some
time. Certainly, sound from most sources would be inaudible in space owing to
the absence of a medium in which it could travel.
In the case of explosions it is not quite so straightforward, since the
explosion itself produces an expanding ball of gas. If we think of the
high-school experiment in which an alarm clock is set ringing in a bell jar that
is then evacuated, we recall that the sound disappears as the pressure inside
falls away. Consider repeating the experiment with a stick of dynamite in place
of the alarm clock. Do we hear the explosion? (Don’t try this at home,
folks.)
Anyone close enough to an explosion to be hurt by it is going to hear it, so
whether or not it is audible obviously depends on how far away one is. The other
factor is, of course, the insulating property of one’s spaceship, being filled,
one would assume, with air at near normal pressures. We could give film
directors the benefit of the doubt by assuming that the sounds are a result of
pressure sensors (microphones) placed on the outside of the ship.
Letters : . . .
Worthing, West Sussex
Harry Harrison, rather than the Star Trek writers, invented the
“Bloater Drive” in Bil, The Galactic Hero. Take off to the
height of perhaps 200 miles, point your ship toward your destination, “anchor”
the rear of the ship in local space, and activate a field to weaken the strong
and weak nuclear forces in the fabric of the ship and its contents.
The spinning particles of your substance expand with centrifugal (or is it
centripetal?) force, and you and your ship expand in the desired direction. When
the nose of your ship has arrived, “anchor” the nose, “de-anchor” the rear and
reverse the nuclear-force weakening field. You and your ship contract into place
200 miles above the surface of your destination.
Letters : . . .
Douglas, Isle of Man
Even if the Klingon cloaking device did work, it would still be easy to
detect their spacecraft.
The star background would be altered as the light bent by the gravitational
lens caused stars to appear twice, and any galaxies directly behind the cloaked
vessel would appear as arcs.
Given the computing power and “sensors” available to the Enterprise, it would
be easy to spot these and fire phasers dead on target. No problem, sayonara
Klingons.
Letters : Morse on money
Melbourne, Australia
I spent some months in Canada in 1943 as a trainee in the RAF, eventually
flying in Bomber Command (51 Squadron RAF). We were trained to be proficient
in Morse code (Letters, 20 April, p 59).
The five-cent coins that Canada minted at that time were embossed with the
following code around the eight edges on one side:
.– . .– .. -. .– …. . -. .– . .– — .-. -.- .– .. .-.. .-.. .. -.
–. .-.. -.–
This translates to “We win when we work willingly”.
Letters : Boyhood Beaker
Paris, France
Vincent Kiernan, in his article on the scientific community on Ross Island
(“The far frontier”, 13 April, p 33), reports that the support staff refer to
the scientists as “beakers” and adds that “the term’s origin is obscure”.
Kiernan seems to have forgotten the puppet series Supercar, one of the
earliest of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s creations (childhood memories suggest
that it was broadcast in the late 1950s). Professor Beaker was the scientist who
gave the brave Mike Mercury, Supercar’s pilot, the technical advice that always
saved him when everything seemed lost.
At first I thought Beaker appeared in Fireball XL5, but then I
remembered that the source of intelligent advice for Steve Zodiac was Robert the
Robot. It’s true that Beaker on The Muppet Show is a more recent
character (Letters, 4 May, p 56), but for Beaker with a scientific connection I
will stick to Supercar.
Letters : . . .
Afonwen, Flintshire
Supercar’s Dr Beaker, together with his boss who I think was called
Professor Calculus, was the first in a noble tradition of boffins-on-strings
which, I recall, included Professor Mathew Matic in Fireball XL-5 and
Brains in Thunderbirds.
Letters : What year is it?
Colombo, Sri Lanka
As one of the perpetrators of the “millennium myth” in my novel The Ghost
from the Grand Banks, I have been very interested in your correspondence on
the crashing computers (Letters, 20 April, p 58).
Talking of such myths, I have heard that the stories of panic in the year 999
are indeed complete fabrications鈥攊f only for the reason that very few even
knew what year it was in those days.
Letters : . . .
Correction: The article headlined “Oral vaccines boost first line of defence”
(Technology, 20 April, p23) should have mentioned the large contribution that
Lothar Steidler and his colleagues in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at
the University of Ghent, Belgium, made to the research described in the item. We
regret any confusion this omission may have caused.
Letters : Starfish sighted
Bristol
Earlier this year, Fred Pearce quoted Dyfed Wildlife Trust’s claim that the
Asterina starfish colony at West Angle Bay had been wiped out by oil from the
“Sea Empress” disaster (This Week, 2 March, p 5).
My understanding is that the uncommon Asterina phylactina was only
distinguished from the more common Asterina gibbosa a few years ago and
that the two species are not easy to tell apart, though A. gibbosa is
generally larger (up to 7 centimetres in diameter, as opposed to A.
phylactina’s 15 millimetres).
On April 29 (at about 8.30 am) I observed a small Asterina in a shallow
mid-tidal rock pool on the south side of West Angle Bay. Whereas it was of
phylactina size, it was not clearly patterned, nor were the feet obviously
red. Unless I was seeing an immature specimen of another genus, then this was an
Asterina that had either survived the severe oiling or been imported in
some way. It would be interesting if an expert on Echinodermata could check this
at site.
Letters : Clock work
Barry, Glamorgan
The idea of operating flight simulators faster than “real time” is not so new
(“Faster than a speeding brain”, 20 April, p 44).
Aircrew navigators have told me how they trained on similar devices in the
Second World War. Aircraft fuselages were used so that several members of a
bomber crew could be trained to work together. The navigator’s clock ran at up
to twice normal speed, so these simulators earned the nickname “sweat
boxes”.
Letters : Inventing the wheel
Downham, Kent
I can supply extra information on Jaguar’s claim that the wheels of its cars
are aligned to 0.00000176 of a degree (Feedback, 27 April, p 84).
I wrote to the Advertising Standards Authority complaining about Jaguar’s
absurd claim, and the ASA wrote back to say that the advertiser had told them
that the figure in the advertisement should have read “0.0167 of a degree”
(sic), and that this number would be used in future. So Jaguar’s angular
resolving power is a mere factor of four better than the naked eye of a Coventry
metal basher, not an amazing order of magnitude better than the Hubble Space
Telescope.
Let’s hope Jaguar applies better quality control to its cars than it does to
its advertisements.
Letters : By any other mane
Kasane, Botswana
After spending some 25 000 hours studying lions in Botswana I have come
across just three maneless lions, so they are as rare as David Featherbe records
in the latest issue of New 杏吧原创 to arrive at our camp in Botswana
(In Brief, 24 February, p 8).
When speculating about why male lions have manes you have left out the most
important reason. When male lions attack each other they mostly rear up on their
hind legs and slap out at each other’s heads and necks. The neck and throat are
vulnerable and a full-bodied mane acts as protection against blows.
Remember that it is not necessary and often not desirable in nature for a
conflict to end in the death of the vanquished, so much of this fighting is for
display, with the mane giving protection, and many of these battles for
territory are won on psychological grounds. Most male lions that we’ve seen
killed as a result of fighting have died as a result of bites to the lower back,
not the throat, indicating ganging up by two aggressors.
The mane is also an indication of gender, of course, with much evidence
suggesting that lions really have difficulty recognising individuals at a
distance in the absence of smell or voice clues.
Lastly, I doubt very much if a large mane is a mating selection clue, as
males tend to dominate the mating selection process and we’ve seen more than
enough cases of small-maned males mating successfully.
One added point though: a large mane today in many places in Africa may
actually be a genetic handicap for lions, as trophy hunters search out the
biggest and the best they can find. Already in the area in which we work, the
hunters have depleted the stock of male lions to such an extent that cubs that
have grown have mated with their sisters and mothers just before being shot
themselves. We will see more and more maneless male lions like David Featherbe’s
in the future.
Letters : Morphine misery
Shrewsbury, Shropshire
With reference to Andrew Summers’s letter (27 April, p 54) and your article
“Give a drug a bad name” (6 April, p 14), terminally ill patients are rarely
debriefed, and while still alive often tell doctors what they think they want to
hear. My experience stems from having had leukaemia, successfully treated with
chemotherapy and radiotherapy (now eight years ago). The large doses of steroids
I was given destroyed my hip joints. This was diagnosed as terminal bone
cancer.
In the course of eleven months, various anti-inflammatory drugs and
painkillers plus radiation were tried with little or no effect, so I was put on
morphine tablets. Diamorphine liquid produced mouth ulcers. A syringe driver
worked in delivering the morphine, but required the daily visit of a community
nurse.
Looking back, my perception is that morphine did not stop the pain but dulled
both it and my propensity to complain about it. As my hips deteriorated, the
dose was increased again and again, but the pain grew worse. In desperation, my
GP and I decided to seek the help of an orthopaedic surgeon to investigate the
possibility of a “regional nerve block”. Fortunately, the consultant was
familiar with steroid damage and had read my notes. Two hip replacements, 10
days apart, put things right.
Coming off the morphine was another matter. I had never experienced anything
that could be considered a “buzz” from the morphine, only a “who gives a toss”
attitude. Without my knowledge or consultation or, it transpired, any advice,
the dose was reduced by 50 milligrams per day. This was not noticed by me until
the halfway point was reached, when I became abusive to the staff and other
patients and could not understand why. This was followed by long periods of
crying and depression relieved by periods of disturbed sleep. The hallucinations
were not as gross as in Trainspotting, but were as disturbing to
me.
Also, having watched my father die from cancer, complete with syringe driver
full of morphine, begging everyone to put him out of his agony, I have decided
that if my time comes again, the day anyone mentions morphine, I’m off . . .
Letters : Melting marshes
Hove, Sussex
Fred Pearce’s article on hydropower was not only engrossing but just a little
alarming (“Trouble bubbles for hydropower”, 4 May, p 28). Decomposing
vegetation, particularly in man-made lakes and reservoirs, wetlands and
marsh-like environments, produces huge volumes of carbon dioxide and methane. No
doubt some researchers somewhere are taking this into account in calculating the
probable progress of global warming. And, no doubt, if the global mean
temperature rises a degree or so the “greenhouse” gas evolution from such
sources will multiply dramatically? So what research is being done into the
effect of global warming on a somewhat bigger “marshland”, the permafrost
zone?
Much land at higher latitudes is permafrost. If the global temperature rises
to the point where even the surface of the permafrost zones begins to thaw for
much of the year, how much greenhouse gas is going to be produced by the swathe
of potential bog which would sweep westwards from eastern Siberia to northern
Canada?
On such a vast scale, are the reactions which generate the gases sufficiently
exothermic to produce an accelerating thaw? Does anyone know at what global mean
temperature we can expect to see continual surface water and plant decomposition
in such areas?
Letters : Stick to the net
Basel, Switzerland
Your recent article on the problems experienced with the use mefloquine
(Lariam) for malaria prophylaxis comes as a useful reminder that
chemoprophylaxis is not a magic tool for protecting travellers against malaria
(“Malaria pill stands accused”, 27 April, p 14). Quite apart from the problem of
side effects, no drug regimen offers anything close to total protection.
It might be time to re-emphasise primary prevention measures and expect
travellers to be a little more aware of the dangers and mode of transmission of
malaria. Insect repellents, when used consistently, are effective in preventing
mosquito bites until bedtime. Mosquito nets treated with a safe and long-acting
pyrethroid insecticide offer excellent protection against biting during the
night.
In trials conducted in four African countries over the last four years this
simple technology was shown to have outstanding efficacy against malaria in
children. In the only comparative study carried out in a Kenyan boarding school,
untreated mosquito nets, which are much less effective than the
insecticide-treated ones, were shown to have the same protective efficacy as
chemoprophylaxis with proguanil/chloroquine. We can now harness this discovery
for travellers and help them to take their protection in their own hands,
without nasty side effects.