Letters : Benefits of booze
The gents with the powdered red wine extract (This Week, 22 February, p 4)
have a wee bit of explaining to do. All of the well-conducted, peer-reviewed
research published in such publications as The Lancet, British
Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine,
Cardiology and the like are unanimously agreed that the beneficial effects
of moderate alcohol consumption (up to 50 per cent fewer heart attacks and
overall lower death rate from all causes鈥攊n other words, a longer
lifespan) are the same for people who drink wine, beer and spirits.
It is the moderate (1 to 3 drinks daily) consumption of alcohol itself that
accounts for the beneficial effects. There may be some polyphenols, catechins
and other compounds in red wine that might give it a slight edge over beer and
spirits, but the difference is far from statistically significant. It will be
remarkable if this morsel about red wine extract will ever find any acceptance
except for those who believe any consumption of alcohol is the Devil’s brew.
Lewis Perdue
Sonoma, California
Norman Williams writes: As Perdue points out, there is considerable
epidemiological evidence that alcohol protects us against coronary heart
disease, irrespective of the form in which we drink it. But research also exists
which suggests that wine consumption confers additional protection.
Red wine differs from other forms of alcoholic drink in that it contains high
concentrations of phenolic compounds鈥攏otably flavonoids and
resveratrol鈥攚hich protect against inflammation and prevent blood from
clotting. The only way to establish whether alcohol or our powdered red wine
extract is more beneficial would be to compare their effects in a clinical
trial.
Letters : . . .
Guildford
The point you do not make is the scale of the threat. Sales of Bt have been
conservatively forecast to rise by 20 per cent per year and to account for
between 5 and 10 per cent of global insecticide sales by 2000. The risk of
resistance forming after continuous expression of the Bt toxin gene in the plant
must be a serious one.
Letters : Less is best
Ascot, Berkshire
In your editorial of 8 March, you make a compelling case that biotechnology
may negate the value of the bacterial pesticide, Bacillus thuringiensis
(Bt), by encouraging the development of resistance. But you then call for more
research on resistance and greater regulation of biological control.
Are these really the priorities? Throughout Asia today, tens of thousands of
vegetable farmers are learning how to manage the alien diamond-back moth
through an innovative, discovery-learning system called Farmer Field Schools.
These farmers go on to reduce their use of broad-spectrum pesticides by over 50
per cent and promote natural enemies of the moth introduced from the area of
origin of the pest (Slough, in fact). They use Bt only sparingly.
Meanwhile, back in the lab, we scientists draw up plans to manage pesticide
resistance so as to conserve the markets for pesticides and transgenics. It is
hard to avoid the simple conclusion that the best way to manage resistance to
any pesticide, biological or chemical, is to find a way to use it less, as these
Asian farmers are doing.
Letters : Grow your own
Bristol
The foresters who reported to the American Association for the Advancement of
Science drew some rather disturbing conclusions from their work in the Chimanes
forest of lowland Bolivia (This Week, 22 February, p 10).
According to Bob Holmes’s report, the principal conclusion appeared to be
that selective “creaming” of the forests for mahogany should be condoned because
this reduces the value of the forest and thus permits the conservation
organisations to buy it back at knockdown prices.
Maybe we should be realistic in the face of commercial and institutional
greed and accept that such relatively low intensity creaming is the most
appropriate and sustainable form of logging that we are ever likely to achieve.
But this strategy does not solve the question raised in the first place: if we
want to preserve mahogany as a species, and the commercial trade that goes with
it, then we have to ensure that mahogany regenerates.
Current systems of exploitation are not permitting this and continued
exploitation will lead to mahogany’s progressive decline and ultimately to its
extinction. This has already happened to the closely related Swietenia
mahogani.
Surely the most logical conclusion to draw is that in order to ensure the
survival of mahogany as a commercially traded timber, we need to “domesticate”
it and grow it as a plantation species, at the same time moving the commercial
trade towards sourcing only from plantations.
Mahogany is a species that is clearly suited to a plantation environment: it
is tolerant of a wide range of site and soil types; it is an aggressive
coloniser, growing well in full sunlight but also tolerant of shade; it grows
well as a monoculture or as a part of a mixed species forest; and it is
malleable, responding well to conventional forest management and silvicultural
techniques.
If we really want to ensure mahogany’s survival, then we should look first at
the obvious and proven solutions before pursuing strategies which may ultimately
prove counterproductive.
Letters : Dim swots
Berkshire
I too have wondered why many successful people are apparent failures at the
outset (Forum, 1 March, p 51). Could it be that failure drives certain people to
work harder? Possibly this is the case for some individuals, though I am
inclined to believe something else.
An individual who can quickly absorb information and manipulate this to some
degree will be successful in exams. Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, the two
scientists mentioned in the article, had two things in common: first, they were
not entirely successful in an educational environment; secondly, they produced
ideas which revolutionised aspects of science鈥攁nd this is where the link
is to be found.
I would postulate that the people who can absorb information easily generally
do not question the information they are absorbing. So they are accepting of
current ideas and are unable to find the weak link in a scientific argument,
which could otherwise be exploited to produce radical ideas and new
theories.
This illustrates the wide gulf between education and intelligence (and why IQ
tests don’t tell you how intelligent someone is).
And in case you were all wondering, you’re right. I came nowhere near the top
of the class in my degree.
Letters : . . .
Perth, Australia
Now that cloning Scottish sheep is possible, is it possible to clone that
other great animal鈥攖he haggis鈥攁nd then implant a DNA extract of
“tatties” and “neeps” so that a “Burns Supper” can be made from the same
animal?
Letters : No true clone?
by e-mail
The scientific press tell us that Dolly the cloned sheep is genetically
identical to the adult sheep from which it was cloned. The procedure used by the
scientists who cloned Dolly was to remove a nucleus from one cell and add it to
an anucleated egg cell from another sheep.
Presumably the mitochondria of the egg cell, mitochondrial DNA and all, were
descended from the “egg parent” rather than the “nucleus parent”. Accordingly,
Dolly is not genetically identical to either parent.
Surely if one wanted to clone, say, Adolf Hitler, one would want to use all
his DNA (mitochondrial as well as everything else) to make an accurate copy? So
is Dolly identical to any pre-existing sheep?
Letters : . . .
Swadlincote, Derbyshire
If your correspondent Ronald Watts (Letters, 8 March, p 49) is correct in his
explanation that falling off cliffs would select very quickly for those with
wings, when will we see the first flying lemmings?
Letters : Insects did it . . .
Perth, Western Australia
I was intrigued to read that flight began when dinosaurs or some other
terrestrial vertebrate took to the air during the Jurassic (“Birds do it…did
dinosaurs?”, 1 February, p 26).
I had always imagined that insects were the first organisms to achieve
flight, appearing in the fossil record during the Carboniferous some 150 million
years before Archaeopteryx leapt or flew into the air. Indeed, some
Devonian fossils have been tentatively assigned to that immensely successful
winged insect group, the Pterygota, hinting that flight may have begun well
before the Carboniferous.
Perhaps vertebrate flight evolved when a hungry Archaeopteryx was
desperately leaping off branches to catch the abundant but somewhat elusive
lunches that were flitting by just out of reach?
Letters : Mind the cracks
Princes Risborough
With reference to Valerie Gibbons’s letter, I would counsel caution to Mr and
Mrs Gibbons on their farm road walks (Letters, 8 March, p 50).
Just because they have now rationalised one explanation for the avoidance of
cracks, it doesn’t mean that the bear won’t eat them.
Letters : . . .
Canberra, Australia
Hazel Muir, writing on the possible existence of leptoquarks discovered at
the ZEUS installation, may be onto something when she refers to the
“supersymmetric world” as a possible explanation of the findings.
Closer examination of the picture of ZEUS reveals that it is reversed. Is
this a printing error, or a result of the fifth force?
Letters : Russian doll theory
Southampton
So, the current flavour of the month is “leptoquarks” (New 杏吧原创
, Science, 1 March, p 14). The last hot topic was membranes, as encapsulated in
the mysterious 11-dimensional M-theory (“Into the eleventh dimension”, 18
January, p 32). There seems to be a curious progression here, with scientists
discovering more and more new particles and forces in order to attain a unifying
Theory of Everything (ToE).
Why do I have the feeling that the endless testing of the Standard Model by
smashing particles together at ever larger energies is a dead-end route? Do
particle physicists really believe that a hierarchy of more powerful particle
accelerators鈥攜ielding an endless succession of Russian doll
theories鈥攚ill lead inevitably to some sought-after ToE? A so-called ToE
discovered in this way would be a mere outline, at best, of the richness of
the Universe.
Despite the early 20th-century’s amazing revolutions in physics, we are still
hidebound by the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus’s conjecture of reality
being constructed out of building blocks which he called atoms. Perhaps we
should rework the thoughts of another ancient Greek philosopher, Anaxagoras. He
postulated the concept of “something in everything”. In other words, there are
no fundamental entities. Instead, the Universe is like a hologram, in which the
whole image is contained within every segment.
Letters : . . .
Buxton, Derbyshire
Clearly, the widespread use of Bt in crops has a damaging impact on insect
species which rely upon them as a food source. Populations of birds, for
example, may then suffer as their food species decline. Yet the regulations
which are supposed to ensure the environmental safety of genetically modified
crops do not evaluate this possibility.
Each crop is assessed on a case-by-case basis with no consideration of the
cumulative impact of an array of crops containing the Bt gene. While one Bt crop
alone may seem innocuous, a whole array of crops with inbuilt insecticide is a
completely different situation.
Crops containing the Bt gene could increase the harm already caused by
intensive agriculture.
Letters : Truth about trousers
Fife, Scotland
In John Cornwell’s review of Richard Brennan’s book Heisenberg Probably
Slept Here (Review, 8 February, p 45) he notes that the book records the
anecdote about J. J. Thomson’s new trousers. Brennan’s story, however, is
different from the episode that took place around about the time I arrived at
the Cavendish in Cambridge in the autumn of 1935.
Sir J. J. and Lady Thomson were still living in the master’s lodge in Trinity
College, although he was about 80. He was also reputed to be getting a bit
absent-minded. The story goes, as far as I can remember, that he came down to
breakfast, as usual in his dressing gown. He then went up to dress and left for
the lab.
Lady Thomson, a few minutes later, went upstairs and was horrified to see his
trousers lying on the foot of the bed. She hurried to the phone and rang the
porter’s lodge. The porter said he saw J. J. go out and ran out to stop him but
he got away. Lady T. was dismayed and nearly fainted. The porter continued,
saying: “I tried to catch him to tell him that he had forgotten to take the
sales tab off his new trousers.”
So all was reasonably well鈥攈e had not gone down Trinity Street in his
underpants.
Letters : Dirty old Clyde?
Edinburgh
May I respond to your article on waste in the Clyde estuary (This Week, 8
March, p 4). Holy Loch is not “one of the dirtiest stretches of coastal water in
the world”. It would not be, as your article rightly says, “a celebrated source
of Scottish sea trout and . . . fished for salmon” if this were the case.
Elevated levels of metals were detected in sediments, but many of the samples
contained visible particles of metallic clinker and slag which will have
contributed considerably to recorded concentrations. Our samples were not
confined to sediments more than 10 centimetres deep and the sampling method was
very carefully selected to ensure that the surface sediments were successfully
captured.
Our report identifies only one water sample as containing mercury above the
European Union Environmental Quality Standard for sea waters and one that
contained a high level of a semivolatile organic compound.
The extent of debris on the Loch floor is not “almost a quarter”. Some 5 per
cent of the bed of the loch is covered by widespread or continuous debris and
about 18 per cent by scattered items. Much of the debris is scrap metal but it
includes a variety of items such as innumerable soft drinks cans, a pair of
sunglasses and a Christmas tree鈥攑resumably artificial.
Radioactivity has been monitored in the loch over many years by the Ministry
of Defence and the local regulatory authorities. The article implies monitoring
was carried out just once by the MoD, whereas there are in fact thorough survey
reports, all available in the public domain and all of which indicate that
radionuclide contamination of human origin is very low.
Finally, may we point out that Graham Shimmield was not “summoned” to a
meeting. He was unable to attend the public meeting in Dunoon on 21 February. To
ensure that his concerns were properly noted, the MoD arranged a special meeting
on 3 March. This was attended by Shimmield and representatives of Environmental
Resources Management, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the Scottish
Office Marine Laboratory and MoD. At that meeting we were able to answer many of
Shimmield’s queries, although the MoD accepted his continuing reservations about
the risk associated with the cleanup operation.
Letters : Patently first
Auckland, New Zealand
The Examiner at the British Patent Office was not the first to discover the
significance of the FET (or NPN transistor), patented by Julius Lilienfeld on 28
January 1930 as US Patent 1745175.
Feedback asserted (1 March) that: “It is now too late to find out whether the
inventor was just an armchair dreamer, or succeeded in making a working FET.”
But that entire Patent 1745175 was reproduced by the US patent attorney Theodore
L. Thomas, in his memorable article “The twenty lost years of solid-state
physics”, published in ANALOG Science Fact鈥擲cience Fiction, March
1965. Thomas explained that Lilienfeld was a professor at the University of
Leipzig, and that he filed that patent application in Canada on 22 October 1925
and in the US on 26 October 1926.
The US patent gave Lilienfeld’s address as Brooklyn, and Thomas told that
Lilienfeld became a citizen of the US in 1935 and that he died in 1963.
Furthermore, Lilienfeld was granted the US Patent 1877140 on 13 September 1932
for an amplifier for electric currents, which Thomas interpreted as NPPN and
PNNP transistors; and Lilienfeld was also granted the US Patent 1900018 on 7
March 1933 for another NPN transistor, and for a reversed biased P-N junction
used as a variable capacitor.
Lilienfeld’s attempted explanations of how his devices operated are
wrong鈥攂ut that did not affect the validity of his patents. On 3 October
1950, the US Patent Office granted 3 patents, all with the title
“Three-Electrode Circuit Element Utilizing Semiconductive Materials”. In
particular, Patent 2524035 included a theoretical explanation of how a
transistor operated鈥攚hich could not have been done when Lilienfeld was
granted his patents.
In 1956 the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to the team of US physicists
whose work was patented in 1950. In his 1965 article, Thomas asked the awkward
question鈥攈ow could it have been possible for Lilienfeld’s patents to be
overlooked?
Letters : Ozone bozos
Lancaster
Colin Robinson’s experience that global warming and ozone depletion are
widely perceived as one and the same thing (Letters, 8 March, p 51) is backed up
by Jane Dove’s research (Environmental Education Research, vol 2, p
89).
She found that only 4 per cent of BA(Ed) undergraduates could convincingly
explain the greenhouse effect, while over a third believed the effect was due to
sunlight passing through holes in the ozone layer. I tried out her questionnaire
on a group of graduates with almost identical results.
Perhaps the confusion stems from the fact that CFCs are not only greenhouse
gases, but are also implicated in ozone depletion.
Letters : Make yourself small
Birmingham
When I breathe in it appears to me that the volume occupied by my body
increases owing to the inflation of my lungs.
It therefore puzzles me when writers such as Chris Goy (Forum, 8 February, p
47) suggest that, in order to squeeze as many people as possible into a small
space, they should all breathe in.
Surely it would be much more helpful if they all breathed out?