Letters : . . .
Sydney
Flood Page’s link between researching (growing vegetables) and teaching
(selling them), seems tenuous if one compares academics to greengrocers, but
appears unshakeable when one compares them to market gardeners.
If you want to learn how to grow vegetables you go to a market gardener, not
to a greengrocer. The real question, therefore, is whether universities should
be commercial shops, as the new breed of education managers would have it, or
intellectual nurseries and cultural gardens, where learning is fostered and
protected.
There can be no learning without some vocational training; but vocational
training does not necessarily result in learning. Learning needs research to
develop and expand. Training does not.
Letters : Caucasian "native"
Chesham, Buckinghamshire
Barbara Jacobson misses the point that Arturo Sangalli had made about the
Umatilla tribe’s demand for the custody of the 9000-year-old Richland skeleton
(Letters, 25 January, p 49). There was no “desecration of graves” and this man,
dug out of the banks of the Columbia River, was not “yet another Native American
skeleton”.
A preliminary examination by two anthropologists, acting independently,
showed that the ancient skeleton had “Caucasian features” and therefore could
not be ancestral to the Umatilla or any other local group. Here, then, was a
piece of tangible evidence to challenge the received theory of the colonisation
of North America. The importance of the find has led to the success of a court
injunction delaying its reburial under the wholly inappropriate North American
Graves Protection Act.
Acquiescence to the blind demands for reburial would prevent the application
of more sophisticated scientific techniques, such as DNA analysis of the bones,
which could shed light on their origins. Similar absurdities under the above Act
have occurred elsewhere, with, for example, the skeletons of exhumed recent
European immigrants being reburied hastily in nearby Native American cemeteries
with no regard to the religious beliefs of the reinterred.
Sangalli was making the plea that representatives of the local tribes and the
scientists should meet and discuss the merits of individual cases, acting with
sensitivity yet avoiding the indignity of such mishaps. Fortunately this is now
happening, with the representatives of some of the Native American nations
recognising that the study of anthropological specimens can illuminate their own
history (involving their own practising archaeologists) as well as contributing
to the worldwide cultural heritage.
Letters : Denying grief
London
Congratulations to the Leeds University researchers who found that gerbils
became depressed, just like human divorcees, when separated from their lifelong
mates (New 杏吧原创, Science, 25 January, p 18).
But instead of being moved by the fact that small creatures also grieve when
deprived of companionship, they thought how useful this could be as a model for
studying the biochemistry of depression. Why, the brains of unhappy gerbils
might provide clues to finding yet another new drug to relieve depression.
A glance in MIMS (Monthly Index of Medical Specialities) shows that
there are already over 30 antidepressants on the market, while many
pharmaceuticals companies are about to launch new ones. Our society has some
strange values, among them a wish to deny grieving or mourning.
Yet depression in response to loss is natural, and while people need
emotional support to go through it, they will not gain in the long run by
suppressing it. Those who advocate drug treatment for emotional distress seem to
regard our brains and minds as mere chemical systems that have gone awry, and
which can be put right by tweaking the neurotransmitters or their receptors.
I believe this diminishes us as human beings鈥攁s does inflicting
distress on hapless gerbils in order to achieve these somewhat dubious aims. Do
we really want a world which is prepared to increase unhappiness in one species
in order to mitigate it in another?
Letters : Sleeping teachers
London
Colin Flood Page said that no research had been done on the question of
whether or not teaching and research excellence at universities were connected
(Forum, 18 January, p 43). In 1989, when I was vice-chancellor at Salford
University, I published a paper in Nature (vol 337, p 223, 1989) which
showed that there was such a connection at the University of Salford in the
1980s, but that it was not a simple relationship.
I argued that good researchers attracted bright young PhD students who, if
properly and appropriately used in the teaching programme, led to the
undergraduate students obtaining better classes of degrees.
There is also the point that research is published and publication, unlike
teaching, is an inherently public act open to objective assessment.
Academics who do not publish might teach brilliantly but they might also have
gone to sleep intellectually. Undergraduates cannot always be relied upon to
detect this.
Letters : Lost days
Oxford
I am sorry to see that one of your gullible correspondents has repeated an
old chestnut about the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1752 (Letters, 25
January, p 50).
There were indeed public demonstrations with the rallying slogan “give us
back our eleven days” but they had nothing to do with fear that the government
was shortening everybody’s lifespan. To believe that you would have to believe
that our not so distant ancestors in the middle years of the Age of Reason were
totally daft.
The riots were perfectly logical. Agricultural rents and tithes were
calculated on an annual basis but fell due on the four quarter days of
Midsummer, Michaelmas, Christmas and Lady Day.
When the government lopped eleven days off the calendar all payments fell due
the best part of a fortnight earlier than was customary. And, as if this wasn’t
enough, lacking any adjustment, the landlords and clergy were going to get
eleven days’ rent for nothing.
If banks and building societies tried to pull the same trick today I have a
feeling that modern people would respond the same way.
Letters : . . .
by e-mail
Why not just call the story “Return of superstring” or something else a
little less sensationalist? It was almost embarrassing to be seen reading a
magazine professing to have the theory of everything. I felt as if I had bought
one of those UFO mags. In fact, it was so embarrassing I had to hide it inside
my copy of Penthouse.
What was inside was of course as brilliant as ever.
Letters : You read it here
Texas
I very much enjoyed reading Michio Kaku’s article on the quest for a unified
theory of all the particles and forces of nature (“Into the eleventh dimension”,
18 January, p 32). He captured the tremendous excitement that has gripped the
theoretical physics community and our optimism that eleven-dimensional (M)
theory (where “M” stands for Magic, Mystery or Membrane) may have brought us one
step closer to that Holy Grail.
However, Kaku may have created the impression that interest in eleven
space-time dimensions and supersymmetric mebranes is something new. It is
perfectly true that at the height of the first superstring revolution 10 years
ago, the favourite candidate for such an all-embracing theory was based on
one-dimensional strings moving in a ten-dimensional space-time. Nevertheless, a
small minority of theorists, of which I was one, expressed nagging doubts. Why
did there seem to be five consistent string theories鈥攕hould not a Theory
of Everything be unique? Why did superstrings live in ten dimensions when
supersymmetry allows for a maximum of eleven dimensions? And if one is going to
replace zero-dimensional point particles with one-dimensional strings, why not
two-dimensional or higher-dimensional membranes?
Unfortunately, these views were met with considerable scepticism by the
orthodox superstring community. One string theorist I know would literally cover
up his ears whenever the word “membrane” was uttered within his earshot. The
mood of the times was summarised by Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann with the
words: “Eleven-dimensional supergravity (Ugh!)”.
It was with great foresight therefore, and not a little bravery, that New
杏吧原创 published an article “Membrane at the end of the Universe” by
Christine Sutton and myself (30 June 1988, p 67) which dealt precisely with
these issues and even discussed the way in which ten-dimensional superstrings
follow if supermembranes are wrapped around a curled-up eleventh dimension.
(Kaku may not have been aware of this when he wrote: “So at last physicists know
where superstrings come from: they originate in the eleventh dimension from
M-theory.”)
These supermembranes even got a mention shortly afterwards in Kate
Charlesworth’s wonderful Life, the Universe and (Almost) Everything
cartoon. So please do not be humble; this was a case of New 杏吧原创
being a decade ahead of the Nobel prizewinners.
Letters : Talking sense
Chichester
I was delighted to read that the US Environmental Protection Agency is
working on audible warnings for agrochemical product containers. I suggested
this nine years ago and was “pooh-poohed”, even though the technology existed at
that time. Now it seems the initiative has been taken up in the US, as
usual.
What a pity that so many good ideas born in this country are strangled at
birth.
As far as labelling is concerned, until we have some simple, clear labelling
regulations in this country, the health and safety of users of agrochemicals,
and indeed of many other consumer products, will always be in the balance.
When you consider that no one goes through a day without having to read a
product label, many of which are inadequate, confusing or just plain
nonsensical, it’s about time product labelling was given the higher profile it
deserves.
Letters : Well-known rocks
Holmrook, Cumbria
It is scarcely credible that Stuart Haszeldine could say that little is known
about the rocks underlying the Sellafield area (This Week, 11 January, p
10).
To date, our investigations have included 27 deep boreholes, with over 25
kilometres of drilling, in the Sellafield area, together with extensive
geophysical investigations. We have carried out extensive testing down and
between the boreholes. We have monitored water pressures at 163 locations down
the boreholes at 2 to 30-minute intervals for between two and four years, and
taken groundwater samples at 57 different locations.
The potential repository zone is one of the most intensively studied blocks
of rock in the UK, if not the world.
We will not prejudice our safety assessment by proceeding with the next stage
of the investigations鈥攖he Rock Characterisation Facility (RCF), or rock
laboratory鈥攂efore we have established the baseline conditions. Nirex
published a report on baseline conditions at the proposed RCF, together with the
views of an international review panel of independent experts, at the beginning
of January. The panel “unequivocally supported the Nirex conclusions that
baseline conditions have been established”.
As the Royal Society stated in a 1994 study, the RCF is needed as the next
step to resolve uncertainties in assessing whether Sellafield is suitable for
radioactive waste disposal. Not least, work in the RCF will help us address
questions about gas transport of radionuclides. If we cannot show that the site
is safe we will not seek to dispose of radioactive waste there.
Letters : Good old stuff
Hull, East Yorkshire
Your article on reducing skin drag (“Secrets of a perfect skin”, 18 January,
p 29) refers to recent work on a modified F-16 aircraft whereby air is “sucked”
through fine holes in the upper surface of the wing to reduce surface turbulence
and drag. It also mentions that the fan used more energy than it saved on this
occasion.
In the early 1960s, this was apparently tried on a pair of modified aircraft,
with not-so-fine holes in both upper and lower surfaces (the X-21 project). The
researchers claimed a near-doubling of range. Far from drawing excessive power,
the compressor, which exhausted backwards, was even claimed to add a little to
the thrust of the aircraft. The only real drawback was apparently clogging of
the holes, making maintenance impractical for commercial use at that time.
Perhaps, being a larger aircraft, the larger wings of this earlier project
were more suited to laminar flow control than the smaller wings of an F-16. Or
the lower cruising speed of the earlier aircraft made it more suitable. Or the
holes in the F-16 were too small. Or is it yet another case of the old stuff
working better?
Letters : . . .
Melbourne
A university is a seat of learning. University students have the opportunity
to learn by being exposed to ideas expressed by people whose calling in life is
to be at the cutting edge of knowledge鈥攖hat is, active researchers. To
attempt merely to “teach” these students is to miss the point of what university
ought to be about.
Letters : . . .
York
Flood Page argues that university teachers need not be researchers. How does
he propose that we train the next generation of researchers?
Letters : . . .
Southampton
Research at the frontiers of knowledge in a subject area, together with
personal application of the fruits of that research, lends a degree of authority
which simply cannot be achieved by the regurgitation of other people’s work.
It is very stimulating for students to carry out their projects in a research
environment alongside research students working with the teachers on more
advanced, but clearly related, problems. The postgraduate researchers can
provide motivation and tutorial assistance to the students.
In these days of diminishing financial provision for teaching, the
availability in the teaching laboratory of modern equipment which is purchased
for research work is a bonus for those teaching at advanced level. The teacher
who also uses such equipment for research is well placed to exploit its training
potential to the full.
Letters : Losing your bottle
Harlow, Essex
The polycarbonate soft drink bottles referred to by Guy Gratton (Letters, 25
January, p 50) are also used to power pneumatic auxiliary controls in
radio-controlled scale model aircraft. They are dangerous if over-pressurised as
they fail explosively and can fragment.
The American standard allows for a filling pressure of just over 5 bars. I
assume that British bottles have similar design ratings. These bottles are quite
likely to fail at any pressure above 8.5 bars and pressurisation above this
level in models, even after strapping with glass-reinforced tape, is not
recommended. Several have exploded as the result of pressurisation from electric
tyre pumps at around 10 bars.
If Gratton has been using pressures of around 13 bars I can only say that he
has been extremely lucky so far.
Letters : . . .
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Beards are of course the natural state鈥攐ne doesn’t have to do anything
special and they just happen. On the other hand, scraping the hair off your face
every day with a sharp instrument is very unnatural鈥攄ownright weird in
fact. And being highly logical folk, scientists tend to reject the illogical
social pressure to shave.
Letters : . . .
Lewes, East Sussex
When Brookes speculates that scientists rely on their beards for little bits
of catalysts for chemical reactions, he is closer to the truth than perhaps he
knows. Amorphous substances will often refuse to grow crystals until a
microscopic crystalline fragment of the major component is introduced.
Students of the splendidly hirsute Adolf von Baeyer (Nobel Prize in Chemistry
1905) used to say that he carried seeds of all organic compounds in his beard,
so that intractable oils, gums and tars would often crystallise after the beard
had waved over them.
Letters : Hear it for beards
Ash, Canterbury, Kent
It never ceases to amaze me how much anxiety beards cause to beardless men.
Martin Brookes reveals the source of his own particular paranoia in his
confessed desire, and concomitant inability, to grow one (Forum, 18 January, p
42). For a postpubescent male Homo sapiens of Caucasian extraction,
well-developed facial hair is the normal state.
Rather than perpetuate the feeble old cry of “what are bearded men trying to
hide”, perhaps we should ask what the artificially clean-shaven are trying to
prove. It is clear to me that the cult of youth promulgated by the
American-dominated media industry is to a large extent responsible.
Brookes’s examples are feeble and unconvincing. Darwin grew up in a society
where respectable men of maturity and status would no more consider appearing
clean-shaven than they would admit to being antimonarchistic. Surely the real
reasons for the difference in the public perception of the two Davids is that
while Attenborough emanates from the heady establishment background of Oxbridge
and the BBC, and long ago traded any pretence of being a working scientist for
celebrity status, Bellamy with his gruff, earthy tones still manages to promote
research and take a rebel stand on environmental issues. Could we ever imagine
someone without a beard spending his fiftieth birthday in a Tasmanian jail for
protesting too loudly about the rape of that island’s forests?
Beards are more than usually prevalent among the ranks of geologists,
ecologists (and, dare I say, ornithologists and animal behaviourists) because
these areas of scientific endeavour are the last bastions of individuality,
where research seldom has any immediately obvious commercial applications. As
such it is as yet not dominated by the financial constraints of the men in grey
suits who seem to prowl malevolently in the background of so many areas of
“pure” science.
Rather than give in to the cautious mediocrity of dancing clean-shaven to the
accountants’ tune, we should all applaud the integrity and individuality of
those whose pure science will not bring them patents and profits, but peacefully
extend the knowledge of mankind. In the future world, most of them will be
bearded.
Letters : Blind people's Web
Ipswich
Toby Howards makes some good points about the way in which the visual content
is increasing in complexity on the Web (Review, 18 January, p 41). In this
context, a design issue he could have usefully included in his review is the
provision of access to the Web for people who are blind or visually
disabled.
Blind and visually disabled people can and do use the Web. The Royal National
Institute for the Blind, like many other charities, maintains a Web site. A
simple text browser and conventional screen reader can be used to provide access
to the Web for blind and visually disabled people. Centre Software at Birmingham
University offers a guide and supporting shareware for this (A Guide To
Internet Access For Visually Impaired People by Shane Murnion, Centre
Software, RCEVH, University of Birmingham, School of Education, Edgbaston,
Birmingham, B15 2TT; Tel 0121 414 6733).
To aid Web page authors, guidelines have been developed, with example html
code, to show how easy it is to make web pages accessible to the terminal
systems used by blind or visually disabled people. These can easily be
downloaded from http://www.trace.wisc.edu/world/web/index.html and are an
invaluable component in the toolkit of any serious Web page designer. They will,
I don’t doubt, add significant value to a Web page design activity when used in
conjunction with the guidelines reviewed by Howards.