Letters : Soviet practices
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Your article on the Alexandr Nikitin case in St Petersburg raises several
important issues that would interest scientific researchers, ecologists and
human rights campaigners (This Week, 19 October, p 7).
However, the headline stating that the treason case has been dropped was
misleading. Nikitin was formally charged with treason on 30 September. This
charge, based on secret decrees that have been seen by neither Nikitin nor his
lawyer, has not been withdrawn. A press spokesman for the Russian Federal
Security Service (FSB) in Moscow merely gave his opinion that Nikitin could not
be sentenced to death. This, significantly, has not been confirmed in St
Petersburg.
The reversion to Soviet practices in this case has repercussions for the
freedom of scientific research and for the development of ecological clean-up
programmes essential to Russia as well as other countries in the northern
hemisphere. There is a danger that the country is going to revert to its former
paranoia about the military secrecy of all scientific, technical and industrial
information. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “How many sheep in our country have
tails is a military secret.”
It is not only that Nikitin is facing an unjust sentence. International
actions like the six joint projects of the Arctic Military Environmental
Cooperation agreement (mentioned in Debora MacKenzie’s article) will become
inoperable. Western finance is unlikely to be forthcoming for many nuclear and
other hazardous waste disposal operations.
Members of the European Parliament have already condemned the Nikitin case as
“politically motivated” and the Parliament may be asked to punish Russia with
economic sanctions. Amnesty International has now adopted Nikitin as a prisoner
of conscience, only the second such case since the break-up of the USSR.
Only speedy action by the authorities in Moscow will restore the confidence
of those who feel that this is a test case for Russia’s willingness to accept
international responsibility for environmental pollution on a gigantic scale
throughout the Arctic and the Eurasian landmass.
Letters : Europirates
London
Your editorial and This Week article on CFC smuggling (26 October, p 3 and 4)
were excellent, but the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) wishes to
emphasise that more evidence of CFC laundering exists within Europe than the
European Union cares to recognise. The problem may be genuinely smaller than in
the US due to the lack of phase-out taxes and vehicular air conditioning, but EU
complacency is far greater. For example, in contrast to everywhere else in the
developed world, CFC consumption by the refrigeration sector has actually
increased in Europe.
Examples of illicit trade in CFCs have been uncovered only when government
authorities have been bothered to look. Authorities in the Netherlands found six
companies guilty of illegal import of CFCs and one of illegal export in 1994.
Greenpeace Greece and a Spanish group called CODA have also identified companies
engaged in illicit laundering of CFCs. In a similar case, an unlicensed shipment
of 225 tonnes of CFC-11 from Volgograd, Russia, was intercepted in Germany on
its way to a Paris-based firm. Austrian imports of CFCs more than doubled from
1993 to 1994 as speculators shipped material into the country when such activity
was legal in Austria but prohibited in the EU. This was subsequently sold in
other EU member states as legal intercommunity trade when Austria joined the EU
in 1995.
At the EU subcommittee on illegal imports (which closed itself down after its
second meeting), the British delegate emphasised that there were around 4000
tonnes in unlicensed imports into Britain in 1995. It is hardly surprising to
read that many of the illegal shipments uncovered by Operation “Cool Breeze” in
the US were shipped from Russia via Britain. French data also showed unlicensed
imports of 1454 tonnes of CFCs but other authorities failed to provide
information.
The EIA agree completely with Duncan Brack’s (and John Gummer’s) conclusion
that the EU must act decisively on illegal trade and obvious loopholes such as
importing, packaging and re-exporting to non-EU countries.
Letters : Born to battle
Bedford
Matt Ridley hits the nail on the head with the application of game theory to
society in “Born to trade” (26 October, p 34). But is the game of “prisoner’s
dilemma” a better description than he would like to admit?
The “tit-for-tat” strategy (“I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine”),
while good for a selfish individual, is dangerous for society. As well as being
responsible, through mutual cooperation, for many advances in society, is it not
also responsible, through mutual defection, for wars, the arms race and the
poverty trap?
Mr Homeless, by virtue of his position, is unable to scratch the back of Mr
Comfortably-well-off, and so Mr Comfortably-well-off has no reason to scratch
the back of Mr Homeless. Consequently, Mr Homeless will stay Mr Homeless, until
such time as this vicious circle is broken by the unilateral cooperation of
others.
Such “altruism” is rare, and should be encouraged. It is a sad fact that
present economic and political thinking suggests otherwise.
Letters : . . .
Chichester, West Sussex
I’m not sure how Ridley measures success, but I would have said there was a
fundamental flaw in his argument. If human beings are such successful
wheeler-dealers, how come there’s so much violent dispute, poverty and
inequality across the species?
Probably considerably less than half the human race could be said to lead
comfortable, secure lives. I don’t call that success鈥擨 call it a recipe
for disaster.
Letters : Speaker speak
Upwey, Dorset
I read Richard Goulden’s response to Feedback’s comments on speaker cables
with even more amusement than his own (Feedback, 21 September, p 88 and Letters,
19 October, p 58). This letter reveals in every detail how misunderstanding can
lead one down the garden path of alternative theories that have no validity
whatsoever.
Putting resistors in series with loudspeakers will undoubtedly have some
effect: unfortunately for Goulden, speaker manufacturers always optimise their
products for use without series resistance, and deviation from this always
results in a departure from the manufacturers’ intentions 鈥攕urely it is
heresy to suggest that all speaker manufacturers have got it wrong.
It is hard to imagine why Goulden believes that the reactive components of
the load current are outside the negative feedback loop鈥攖he only place
that load currents can go is into the amplifier output stage, and this most
definitely is inside the feedback loop. Any competent amplifier designer is well
aware of the nature of the expected loads and ensures that the design is stable
and accurate under these conditions.
Goulden refers to a “Darlington pair” input comparator. I presume he means
“long-tail pair”鈥攁n entirely different configuration. I’m glad he isn’t
designing my amplifiers.
In the course of my employment by Thomson Marconi Sonar, I have cables
designed by one of the handful of cable manufacturers in this country. This
company also manufactures many of the expensive audio cables sold under a
variety of other company names. Their representative tells me that they simply
dream up some new bizarre, complicated and expensive configuration for a cable
and then hawk it around the specialist audio cable suppliers. Someone eventually
takes it up, attributes a variety of audio attributes to it and then sells it at
a vast mark up to gullible customers. I think maybe Goulden is one of these
customers.
Letters : Particle particulars
Williamstown, Massachusetts
Kate Charlesworth’s delightful “Life, the Universe & (Almost) Everything”
about particle accelerators (26 October, p 52) understates the advantage of
particle colliders by saying that when “magnetic fields steer 2 particle beams
in opposite directions along the same path; this doubles the amount of energy
released”.
First, energy varies with speed squared, so a beam hitting something coming
at it with the same speed is hitting it at twice the speed and so produces four
times the energy. Further, as Richard Wolfson and I explain in Physics:
“From conservation of momentum, much more energy is available in the head-on
collisions…In a fixed-target accelerator, much of the energy goes into the
forward motion of the collision products; in a colliding design, all the energy
is available to create new particles.”
Letters : Hells on Earth
Aberdeen
I was on board a British Airways flight when I read in their
Highlife magazine a quiz for “fans of the Caribbean”. One of the questions
read: “Tourists love to send postcards from a village called Hell. Where is
it?”. At the bottom of the page the answer was printed: “Hell is on Grand
Cayman”.
After landing, I purchased the latest issue of New 杏吧原创 and to
my amazement, one of the first things I read was a description of Hell as “a
small town in Norway” (Netropolitan, 26 October, p 21). I am not superstitious,
but I cannot stop wondering how many Hells there are on this Earth.
Since then, I have learned that there is also a Hell-Ville in Madagascar.
Letters : Cognac clue
Birmingham
Patrick Young states that the link between airborne hydrocarbons and the
growth of microorganisms that can destroy rock was established in 1966
(“Mouldering monuments”, 2 November, p 36).
Similar phenomena have been observed earlier. In the Cognac region of France,
there is a black fungus or lichen that encrusts the stonework of buildings where
barrels of brandy are stored. It feeds on the alcohol vapour (known locally as
“the angels’ share”) produced by the evaporation of the stored cognac.
It is said that, during the Second World War, occupying German troops were
able to locate hidden stores of cognac by the telltale black marks above the
doors and windows of warehouses.
Letters : . . .
Correction: And here is a belated apology. A technical error meant that an
article (“Radioactive forests will bring power to the people”) appeared twice in
This Week in the Australian edition of New 杏吧原创 on 26 October.
Also: The article “Pterosaurs let their fingers do the walking” (New
杏吧原创, Science, 9 November, p 18) stated that the pterosaur
Quetzalcoatlus “had a neck up to 2.4 metres long which it used to dig for
shellfish”. While the theory thatQuetzalcoatlus dined on shellfish has
been proposed, it is disputed by some palaeontologists.