Letters : Damp patches
Wallingford, Oxfordshire
Feedback reports (22 February) that Andy Jones has nominated a paper in
Weather magazine last year (vol 51, p 95), “Drying patterns on roads in the
Scottish Highlands”, for a suggested new award for “fascinatingly dull
research”. Jones is wrong to do so, for the work described was neither research
nor dull.
The author, J. L. Monteith, was simply drawing attention to a widely
observable micrometeorological phenomenon and inviting possible explanations.
The physics is by no means obvious and therefore not dull, as many readers of
Weather, both professional and amateur, must have discovered, judging
by the fact that six replies were published.
Jones should take care to remember that science can be instructively applied
to the explanation of seemingly minor events.
Letters : Seven up
Birmingham
The reason the licence codes entered by Barrie Wells (Letters, 1 March, p 53)
will work with any copy of Microsoft Windows 95 is that the only criterion for
these codes is that they are divisible by 7. Hence 0000000000000007 will work
just fine.
The only justification for this that I can see is that Microsoft cares more
about making its software ubiquitous, than ensuring every copy is licensed.
Letters : Delayed bug
Ardross, Western Australia
I use my computer to keep records for income tax purposes and, like James
Follett (Letters, 22 February, p 52), was concerned about the “millennium bug”.
To test its potentially disastrous effect, I used my spreadsheet (Microsoft
Works) to calculate the interest on a hypothetical bank deposit from 1 January
1997 to various dates in the 21st century.
I found the program gave correct results until 3 June 2079, after which the
bug struck, rather tardily, and I received negative interest from then on. I
propose to invest a modest $5 at 5 per cent compound interest now in the
expectation that by June 2079 it will buy a new version of Works in which this
problem has been solved.
Letters : Munch menace
by e-mail
It may have been a lack of inhibition, caused by the use of a personal
stereo, that made the menace you described munch so noisily (Feedback, 15
February). But I think this is merely one example of a wider phenomenon whereby
people believe a reduction in their own awareness is shared by everyone else. In
this instance, he couldn’t hear anyone else, so assumed he couldn’t be
heard.
Another form of the phenomenon is: “I can’t see, therefore can’t be seen”.
This particular form is that it most often manifests itself in car users
(particularly taxi passengers). Feeling cosy and safely hidden away, all sorts
of people obviously think they are invisible to other road users, and decide
it’s the ideal time to investigate the contents of their noses
Letters : . . .
Prague
The workman who comes to realign a TV satellite dish is not an “engineer”. No
wonder the status of science and engineering is so low in Britain.
Letters : Dish operatives
Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire
Please tell Barry Fox that satellite viewers will not need an engineer to
modify or replace their dish aerials (Forum, 22 February, p 48).
The engineer will design the necessary equipment and define the tasks that
the aerial rigger should perform, leaving that gentleman to effect the
modifications in the field.
Letters : Young, Pretty and . . .
Burwood Highway, Victoria, Australia
In regard to your series of letters on coauthors (last seen in Letters, 8
February, p 51), my friend Bill Young at Monash University (Victoria) combined
with John Black in Sydney and the late Bob Pretty in Brisbane in a memorable
1989 paper on land use and transport.
I suspect it’s a myth that John Black coauthored a paper with a student
called Tan, but I couldn’t help thinking what a colourful bunch of authors they
would all make when I lunched with Michael Browne and Peter White of the
University of Westminster some years ago.
Letters : Buzz off
by e-mail
Your reference to the problem of losing contact with the Net when the call
waiting signal is received (Feedback, 8 February) struck a nerve. I get the same
problem when my apartment is buzzed from the entry phone in the lobby. And there
is no *70 solution for that. The only thing that I can think of is a crude
mechanical remedy鈥攃overing up my name with adhesive tape.
Letters : Plug shock
Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire
I, too, thought for many years that the risk of inserting loudspeaker plugs
into a European mains socket was rather a storm in a teacup (Feedback, 15
February). However, I recently had a communication from SEMKO, the Swedish
safety test authority, who informed me that during the past 30 years five young
children had died from electrocution because of this.
Why it should happen in the Nordic countries and not elsewhere in Europe I do
not know. Perhaps they tend to fit their power sockets further down the wall?
Anyway, it was enough for me to see it as a more serious issue.
I am pleased to have come up with a design that overcomes the problem, with
the additional input of other members of the British Federation of Audio. I hope
and believe that we will be successful in promoting this solution.
Letters : Alzheimer's link
Manchester
Your report on our work which identified a link between Alzheimer’s disease
and herpes simplex virus type 1, which causes cold sores, contains a slight
error (This Week, 1 February, p 10). When we examined brain tissues from people
who had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, 63 per cent of these patients had
HSV1 in their brains and possessed a variant of the apolipoprotein gene called
the apo&egr;4 allele. The article incorrectly gave this figure as 53 per
cent.
Our main concern is not to impede gene therapy with HSV1, as suggested in the
article, although we would advise caution. Given the strength of the link
between Alzheimer’s and HSV1, we’re excited about the prospects for preventing
the disease by immunising people against the virus or treating patients who
already have it with antiviral agents that might slow progression of the
disease.
Letters : Uncool for cats
Mount Rainier, Maryland
Further to your article highlighting the dangers of releasing the rabbit
calicivirus into the environment (“Australia’s giant lab”, 22 February, p 34), I
am sure you and your readers must be aware of the latest bizarre suggestion from
one member of Australia’s Parliament, Richard Evans, who recently proposed
unleashing feline viruses into the environment to eradicate all feral cats by
the year 2020.
Alley Cat Allies, the American feral cat network, has called upon the
Australian government to consider more efficient, cost effective, safer and more
humane methods of control, such as sterilisation.
Spraying viruses such as panleukopenia does not kill all the cats. On Marion
Island, when South African scientists sprayed the virus to kill 2300 cats, it
killed 65 per cent and left 35 per cent immune to the virus. In fact, it took 16
years of using many different methods, most pretty cruel and inhumane, to
eliminate this small feline population.
Then we have the distinct possibility that the virus could jump species,
killing the very animals it is supposed to save. The canine distemper virus
jumped hosts from unvaccinated domestic dogs who were living alongside the
Serengeti National Park in Africa, into the lion population in the park, killing
one third of these threatened felines. This surely is a lesson for all to heed:
managing the environment through biological warfare can indeed be a dangerous
endeavour.
Letters : Short time
Horley, Surrey
My explanation for why time flies with old age (This Week, 23 November, p 14
and Letters, 4 January, p 45) is, that as a 10-year-old, one year is a tenth of
the total time experienced in your life, as a 20-year-old a twentieth and so on.
As you age, a year becomes a smaller percentage of your total time experience so
you perceive it as shorter.
Letters : Fruits of research
Wolverhampton
Your comment about the Apple and Pear Research Council may have raised a
smile (Feedback, 1 March). But, of course, it’s not a government research
council, but a body that collects money from the industry (in this case top
fruit growers) and uses it to fund R&D.
With the cutbacks in government-funded research in recent years, levy bodies
such as the APRC have become important alternative sources of funding for
agricultural and horticultural research scientists in public and private
research institutes and universities. The demise of such organisations probably
means more scientists’ jobs are to be lost or are under threat.
There are a number of similar levy bodies which collect money from growers
and use it to fund research: the Horticultural Development Council, the Home
Grown Cereals Authority, the Potato Marketing Board and the small Processors and
Growers Research Organisation. Thankfully for many researchers, most of these
are still very much in business.
Letters : . . .
Leeds
In 1994 the British Department of the Environment’s Strategy for Sustainable
Development pointed to potential energy savings here of 20 per cent through
investment in energy efficiency measures that would pay for themselves within
three years. It also suggested a further 10 per cent saving on measures with a
payback period of five years. The potential for energy efficiency in Ukraine
must be colossal, yet the debate appears to be between nuclear or fossil
generation at a cost of one billion dollars, courtesy of European taxpayers and
care of Euratom and the EBRD.
If, as reported, the European Commission is keen to prop up European nuclear
business then it is a disgrace. Why does it not support European energy
efficiency business with accompanying education and skills programmes in
Ukraine? Is a billion dollars invested in this way not the obvious sustainable
strategy to improve the quality of life for Ukrainians and reduce their
dependence on energy imports from Russia?
Letters : Nuclear Ukraine
Kiev
I read with interest your coverage of the Ukrainian nuclear scene (Editorial
and This Week, 15 February, p 3 and p 4).
You mention the Ukrainian people’s need for safe economic energy. After
gaining independence, Ukraine found itself in a very difficult situation with
regard to energy and heat supply, especially in winter. The Ukrainian national
grid has had to respond to capacity shortages with large reductions in frequency
and power cuts even in the suburbs of Kiev.
After decommissioning Chernobyl, which supplies 5 per cent of electricity
generated in Ukraine, the situation will get worse. The only possible option is
to commission the two new nuclear units (Rovno 4 and Khmelnitsky 2) that are
very nearly complete. With the assistance of the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and other Western bodies, we can ensure
that the units鈥攚hich are of modern design鈥攁re completed to
international safety standards.
There are also economic and environmental considerations. Creating
replacement capacity at coal-fired generators would be very problematic because
of the lack of ready projects. It would take at least four years to develop and
implement such a project, to say nothing of the necessary financing. Simply
upgrading enough capacity to replace Chernobyl would cost some $2.5
billion. Moreover, it would require 4.7 million tonnes coal equivalent per annum
to produce the amount of electricity generated by Chernobyl. Purchasing
this fuel would cause additional economic burdens for Ukraine.
To learn more about the nuclear energy sector in Ukraine, visit the
Goscomatom Web site at http://www.gca.atom.gov.ua.
Letters : Lesson of the elm
London
There is a disheartening unmentioned irony in Stephanie Pain’s article on
Dutch elm disease (“War in the woods”, 15 February, p 26). Far from being an
advert for the further development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the
devastation of our elm population is a warning of the unintended and
unpredictable consequences of releasing alien organisms into the
environment.
Dutch elm disease seems to have arrived with Canadian timber in the 1960s.
Within two decades, most of Britain’s elm trees were dead. The impossibility of
recalling rogue organisms once released could not be more graphically
illustrated.
No amount of testing can fully predict the medium or long-term environmental
impacts of the GMOs presently being developed and marketed. It is not only that
GMOs can escape from cultivation鈥攖hey could also cross-pollinate,
transferring their alien genes to wild relatives. This is a recipe for the
development of superweeds or even superbugs.
No one can predict what impact these will have on our countryside but ravages
even worse than Dutch elm disease cannot be ruled out. Dutch elm disease is the
cautionary tale. Even in the event that genetic engineering helps “cure” it, we
won’t see mature elms for another century. How much better to have prevented it
in the first place. Let’s not make the same mistake all over again with
GMOs.
Letters : Bye-bye boys
Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire
Hurrah for Dolly. Since the sex of a cloned baby will be that of the donor,
we can be rid of men who anyway, judging from history, seem to be a rather
violent bunch.
True, there may be emotional frustrations, but since both creative writing
and the products of the fine arts seem to have been encouraged by frustrations,
we can look forward to a peaceful, cultivated brave new world that does not have
such masculine creatures in it.
Letters : . . .
Exeter
The concordat in no way addresses one of the main bugbears of research staff
contracts in the past 10 years or more. Most contract researchers have to sign
waiver clauses in their contract, an invidious practice which forces these
highly educated people to sign away basic employment rights (redundancy and
unfair dismissal) for the chance to work for wages which are regularly far below
those which they might receive in industry.
There is no mention that most of the research councils treat contract
researchers as second class citizens who are not permitted to be the principal
investigator on any research grant application and not even co-applicant on
grants from which they might hope to draw a salary.
There is also no mention of the iniquities in promotion and salaries, where
it is possible for salaries to decrease between one research grant and the next,
and for annual increments or promotion to be denied because “the department
can’t afford it”. Waiver clauses mean that the researcher can either accept this
without complaint, or lose the job because the contract is not renewed and a
younger, lower-rated researcher is recruited instead.
Letters : Scaled down
by e-mail
It was good to see the article by Neil Harris in your British edition on
conditions for contract researchers (“A better deal for contract researchers?”,
1 March, p 58). However, although you list the pay scales you miss an important
point, namely that the research councils are unwilling to pay staff on the
higher points on the scale, so in effect they only extend to 拢15 986 at
the old universities, and less than this at the new ones.
Thus after three years as a postgraduate researcher, one jumps back down to
the scale on starting a new contract, despite having three years’ more
experience and a PhD. At best one is offered no increase in grade, and at worst,
the same grade one was on three years previously. Is it surprising that people
find they have to move out of science to get an acceptable career structure?
Letters : . . .
Clydebank, Dunbartonshire
If the past is anything to go by, the reports on childhood mental illness
mentioned in Michael Day’s succinct article will receive the same treatment as
their predecessors. That is, they will be read, found interesting, and left to
gather dust; they, too, will become “forgotten”.
The time is long overdue for urgent action to help children with mental
illness. And, among other things, there is a great need for a significant
increase in the number and geographic spread of accredited courses for the
education and training of nurses in the specialism.
Letters : Lest we forget
Your article on “Britain’s forgotten children” (22 February, p 14) struck a
strong chord with me. My own childhood was warped by my depression鈥攁nd I
cannot even begin to compare my problems with those of the children described. I
am deeply aware of how lucky I am in comparison.
A bad personal situation at the age of 25 caused me to visit a doctor who
prescribed antidepressants, and I clearly remember when they (eventually)
started working and how the indescribable, malignant sensation inside me started
to fade. I had never known a time without it. In a way I never knew it was
there. I had not known that this feeling was not something that everyone
had.
Now I’m 30 and the past five years have been the happiest I can remember. I
can now hope for a better future, which I couldn’t before.
I know what factors caused my depression, but I don’t care. I should never
have had to grow up like this and no one else should. I’m lucky鈥攎y bad
time is over, but it is awful to know that others have what I have had.