Letters : . . .
London Colney, Hertfordshire
It is quite clear that the only quick action for the Treasury in regard to
taxing the Internet is to bring back the “window tax”.
Letters : Credit, not crops
Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire
The tone of your article on global food production (This Week, 9 November, p
6) suggests that the solution to present and future world hunger lies with
improved crop yields. This is dangerously misleading. At present yields, the
world’s food production is enough to feed a second planet. The major problem
facing the 1 billion hungry people today is not shortage of food, it’s lack of
money to buy the food that is already plentiful. If food was the solution to
hunger, how come there are 30 million people going hungry in US, the world’s
major food producer?
Alleviate poverty and you solve global hunger. The most significant advance
in this area will take place next February at the Microcredit Summit.
Microcredit allows the very poorest to become self-supporting by helping them to
start small enterprises; they will then be able to buy the food that’s already
plentiful. The goal of the summit is to make Microcredit available to 100
million borrowers by 2005. That’s one tenth of the global poor.
This programme and similar socio-political initiatives are far more likely to
reduce global starvation than any improvements in crop technology.
Letters : Mind those models
Horsham, Surrey
Ferren MacIntyre of the University of Amsterdam displays laudable caution
over the issue of computer modelling (Letters, 2 November, p 54). The population
study he refers to is only one example of an increasing reliance on computer
simulations evident in even a cursory search through my archive of New
杏吧原创 issues, with cyber-spiders (“Arachnophilia”, 10 August, p 24),
model winds (New 杏吧原创, Science, 13 July, p 15), mystery asteroids
(New 杏吧原创, Science, 26 October, p 16) and volcanoes (“When
volcanoes get violent”, 26 October, p 28), to mention but a few.
There are lies, damn lies, statistics and computer models. Perhaps that’s a
little unfair, but it does highlight one of the dangers associated with computer
modelling which concerns a peculiar trait people display wherein material
presented in the form of statistics is automatically given credence much greater
than it deserves.
I cannot dispute the value of this branch of science as a tool, but as a
programmer myself I am all too aware of the pitfalls. Even if there are no bugs
in the software (or in the floating point coprocessor) and the researchers are
not influenced by preconceptions leading to desired rather than realistic
results, common sense suggests to me that many of the systems being modelled are
too complicated to be done much justice unless approached by large and very
thorough teams.
All I can suggest is that New 杏吧原创 carries frequent warnings as
to the validity of such techniques along the lines of those in financial
publications such as “The value of investments may go up as well as down”. How
about: “The validity of computer simulation results may be low as well as
high.”
Letters : Food fears
Darwin, Australia
You write about a genetically engineered yeast which oozes “six times as much
sulphite into beer as normal yeast” (Technology, 9 November, p 22). This
illustrates my worst fears about food technology. People in whom exposure to
sulphites provokes an asthma attack will react whether the sulphite is there by
genetically engineered means or as an added preservative.
Natural and artificial food chemicals which can cause health and behavioural
problems are increasingly added (or, in the case of genetic engineering,
encouraged) in even the most basic foods. Regulatory bodies assure us that if
our food is labelled correctly, consumers will be able to choose.
Their reasoning does not take into account unlabelled food such as restaurant
meals; foods for which there is no alternative (such as preservative-free bread,
unobtainable in many Australian supermarkets); and consumers who can’t read (a
recent nationwide survey showed 30 per cent functional illiteracy in year 9
students).
Letters : Ratting on people
Angaston, South Australia
Marion Bennett’s objection (Letters, 9 November, p 50) to your rat-phobic
reporting (“Year of the rat”, 5 October, p 32) was to the point, except for one
thing: while getting off on rats, she actually turned around and demonised her
own species. She calls genocide in rats “a natural survival process that occurs
everywhere in nature”, while genocide in people she puts down to “twisted minds
and irrational hatreds”. If she were more objective, she might find real insight
into the problem of race-hatred and genocidal tendencies in people, since we too
are animals.
Maybe our instincts, lagging behind the evolution of our cultures, aren’t far
advanced beyond those of our prehominid ancestors. Perhaps the instinctual human
animal, no less than the instinctual rat, finds genocide a logical adaptive
response to inter-cultural, inter-racial and other conflicts of interest, and
for reasons resembling or identical to those that motivate genocide in rats.
Then, our culturally created morality should operate against this instinctive
tendency, and normally does, failing only in the absence of effective moral
education and/or constraints.
Letters : Space reversal
Warsaw
Ambulances are usually labelled in the front “in reverse”, so that the label
could easily be read when seen in the rear-view mirror of a vehicle ahead of the
ambulance. So let me ask a question. Who was to go ahead of Buran, the Russian
space shuttle, on its maiden (and only?) flight?
It is not really necessary to read Russian to find out that the label on the
rocket to which Buran is mounted (Technology, 9 November, p 23) is a mirror
image of the actual name (“Energia”). So the question remains: who was to read
it in its rear-view mirror. Martians?
The picture was indeed erroneously printed in reverse鈥擡d
Letters : A bit costly
Guildford
Having read Tam Dalyell’s comments regarding a “bit tax” on the Internet
(Thistle Diary, 9 November, p 48), I think the Treasury need have no fears about
a fall in revenue.
Having seen my telephone bill skyrocket after acquiring an Internet
connection, the Treasury should be doing very nicely on the VAT on my phone
calls.
Letters : Pump up the vacuum
Hounslow, Middlesex
In your article on stopping stolen cars you refer to “stiff steering and
spongy brakes”, and imply that pumping the brakes would help stop a car quicker
if the engine has been disabled (“Stop now or the car gets it”, 9 November, p
24).
Car servo brake systems are powered by a vacuum derived (usually) from the
inlet manifold. Since, if the engine is not running, no “new vacuum” is
produced, it makes sense to conserve what you have, and brake with one steady
pressure on the pedal. Pumping the brakes uses up the vacuum, leaving you to
stop the car with muscle power alone.
Letters : Seeing knowledge
Cambridge
Roy Porter implies that the close association between words for seeing and
knowing comes from the 17th century optical revolution (Review, 16 November, p
44). It is in fact much older. In Ancient Greek the standard words for “know”
and “see” are the perfect and aorist tenses respectively of the same verb, whose
root is the same as that of the Latin “video”, which has a similar duality of
meaning. Vision has in fact always been the queen of the senses, since so much
of what we want to know concerns objects that are out of reach, silent, and do
not smell.
Mirrors, of course, go back long before silvered glass. The ancient world
used polished metal, and Narcissus admired his reflection in a pool of water.
Long before Castiglione, the Athenian statesman Alcibiades monitored his facial
expressions: there is an anecdote that he threw away his flute because it
discomposed his features.
Letters : Making myths
via Internet
Even if the report in the Cape Times was untrue, it cannot be ruled
out that on some occasion, somewhere in South Africa, a hospital cleaner once
unplugged vital life-support systems and so gave rise to the urban myth
(Feedback, 28 September and 30 November).
For some reason, driving test examiners do not wear seat-belts. When I sat my
driving test in 1980, my emergency stop was so sudden that the examiner flew
forwards and struck his head on the windscreen. He was not injured, and
afterwards I recounted the amusing incident to my friends.
About a year later, I was intrigued to hear a version of the story which was
still largely accurate, except that the unfortunate examiner had died as a
result of his pencil going up his nose and into his brain. A BBC radio programme
has since given an alternative version in which the examiner was actually
catapulted through the windscreen.
Unless it can be shown that such accidents are a common occupational hazard
for driving test test examiners, I claim credit for creating the truth behind
this particular urban myth.
PS: My emergency stop could not be faulted, and I passed the test.
Letters : . . .
via Internet
About four years ago I spent a night in a British hospital. I couldn’t sleep
and saw an “incident”: the patient next to me had a heart attack, a nurse found
him, started cardio pulmonary resuscitation and called for help. A couple of
doctors and various other staff rushed in, the curtains were pulled around the
bed and a piece of equipment (I assumed a defibrillator) was plugged in on my
side of the curtain.
The lead obviously wasn’t long enough and the plug pulled out of the socket
at what I guess was an unfortunate moment (doctors seem to have an extensive
vocabulary of profanities). It was plugged back in and the same thing happened
twice more before a nurse was stationed to hold it in place. It didn’t exactly
inspire confidence.
Letters : Learn from birds
Werribee, Victoria, Australia
The article on aircraft vortices (“Trails Of Destruction”, 16 November, p 28)
reminded me of a TV documentary I saw many years ago on the same problem.
Spraying operations conducted by cropdusters had been suffering from problems
due to wingtip vortices disrupting the spray pattern at the edges, resulting in
spray drift and losses of chemical.
They turned to nature to solve the problem and created a series of metal
fingers that extended out from the wingtip and prevented the formation of
vortices. These also had the added advantage of lowering fuel consumption. The
metal finger design had been inspired by the wings of an eagle.
Perhaps the scientists and engineers trying to solve problems relating to
flight should have a bird in hand when settling down at the drawing board. After
all, they have been flying for a lot longer than we have.
Letters : Dirty bonfires
Gwynfryn, Wrexham
The letters concerning pollution caused by Guy Fawkes night (Letters, 16
November, p 60 and 7 December, p 55), reminded me that some measurements of
atmospheric dioxin concentrations have been made before and after 5 November. In
1994 this was a Saturday and so most celebrations would have taken place on that
night alone.
Dioxins are important because they are toxic to some animals at extremely low
concentrations and tend to accumulate in the food chain.
The study referred to was carried out by AEA Technology. The researchers
sampled ambient air in a residential area of Oxford at least 200 metres from the
nearest bonfire.
Samples were taken for the key 24-hour period from 6.00 pm on 5 November
until 6.15 pm on 6 November and also over two 48-hour
periods鈥攐ne immediately before and one immediately after the key 24-hour
period.
Dioxin concentrations rose fourfold from a starting background level of 0.15
picogrammes [toxic equivalent] per cubic metre before bonfires were lit to 0.65
pg[Teq]/m3 during peak bonfire burning, and fell afterwards to 0.17 pg[Teq]/m3.
The background levels before and after were similar to the average value for
British urban locations.
It seems reasonable to associate this short-lived increase in dioxin
emissions with bonfires, especially as wood combustion is known to be a dioxin
source. However, the influence of fireworks cannot be ruled out.
Letters : Fishy figures
Halifax, Nova Scotia
I greatly enjoyed your brief article about our research on using genetically
engineered fish as donors for islet cells (Technology, 16 November, p 20). It is
clear, succinct and beautifully written. I would like to point out one minor
error which makes it look as if I am mathematically challenged.
The quote that states, “To get the 1.4 million islet cells needed for a human
transplant, you need 10 pigs. To treat 10 000 diabetics a year, you need a
million pigs” should actually read, “To get the 1.4 million islets needed for a
human transplant, you need 10 pigs. To treat 100 000 diabetics a year, you need
a million pigs”. In the following paragraph the number 10 000 is also
substituted for 100 000.
Letters : Mummy's the word
Manchester
We wish to clarify an important point in relation to your article on an
international mummy tissue bank (This week, 23 November, p12). At the Manchester
Museum, we have no brief to undertake any kind of tests on the tissue of the
royal mummies in the Cairo Museum. Such work is the sole prerogative of Egyptian
scientists working in Egypt, and will therefore be conducted exclusively by
staff of the Cairo Museum.
The work of the Manchester Mummy Team in conjunction with the Medical
Services Corporation International of Arlington, Virginia, will be using modern
forensic techniques to trace the incidence of schistosomiasis in ancient Egypt
from tissue samples in mummies from museum collections held entirely outside
Egypt. It is from these mummies that our international tissue bank will be
developed, as an important research tool for future studies.