Letters : Correction
Correction: The In Brief picture story in the 5 April issue (p 13) stated
that the aircraft “Snoopy” had participated in a 拢10 billion European
project to improve storm forecasting. The true cost of this project is 拢10
million.
Letters : Programmed for sex
Padua, Italy
Aaron Lynch claims that a cultural gene, a “meme”, accounts for both sexual
promiscuity and its “proselytic advantage” over monogamists (Review, 8 March, p
42). Such an advantage, however, has nothing to do with cultural propagation and
proselytism. It is a result of merely biological genes.
As was pointed out in a British Medical Journal review of Channel
4’s Sex and the 杏吧原创s, “we have evolved for conditions of mild
female promiscuity or multiple mating. Sex with a regular male partner, it
seems, is not a sound genetic investment for the female of the species:
infidelity ensures a wider gene pool and better sperm quality. And this is
widely reflected across the animal kingdom . . . Female chimps mate one to four
times an hour with 13 or more different partners during their 12 days of maximal
fertility” (British Medical Journal, vol 313, p 307).
Considering that chimps and humans descend from a common ancestor, it is
hardly surprising that the historically very recent promotion of monogamy fails
in its attempts to undo millions of years of sound genetic programming.
Letters : Take out the rabbit
Adelong, Australia
The greatest curse of Australia over the past two centuries has been the
“Homesick Pom” syndrome, whereby such pests as rabbits, foxes and even sparrows
were deliberately introduced along with myriad weeds, the latter mostly for
garden or medicinal use and quite often accompanied by insect pests. It was only
thanks to the long sea voyage that we escaped picking up more of the Old World’s
scourges.
With the cost of control or eradication of these pests on vast areas of
relatively poor land, the most attractive and practical solution lies in
biological control (“Australia’s giant lab”, 22 February, p 34).
Contrary to the views of some latter-day experts, the myxomatosis campaign of
the late 1950s was an outstanding success. I well remember the effect of this on
the rural sector: land that was virtually worthless due to rabbits doubled and
trebled in value, farm incomes rose with rising crop yields and increased
livestock, labour and capital once committed to rabbit control was freed for
farm development, and the City prospered along with the bush.
There is a lesson for the gloomy conservationists who maintain that the
predators of rabbits will turn their attention to other species as rabbit
numbers decline. With myxomatosis, as the rabbits decreased, so did foxes and
feral cats. The small native marsupials suffer as much from destruction of
grazing and refuge by rabbits as they do from direct predation. Take the rabbit
out of the equation and all aspects improve, including soil erosion and land
degradation.
As far as a species jump is concerned, the new calicivirus has killed
millions of rabbits in China alone and travelled through Asia to Europe, killing
millions more, at times in intimate contact with other species including man,
and so far has remained species specific.
I can assure you of this: if the calicivirus works half as well as the
combined effects of the myxoma virus and the European rabbit flea, it will add
tremendously to Australia’s wealth and wellbeing.
Letters : Wrong on rain
Letchworth, Hertfordshire
Robert Matthews’s article is an excellent example of the purely linguistic,
as well as mathematical, confusion that can occur when discussing matters of
probability (“How right can you be?”, 8 March, p 28).
As the premise of his main example he states that “forecasts of rain by the
British Meteorological Office are 80 per cent accurate”. My interpretation of
these words is that if the Met Office forecasts rain it will be right 80 per
cent of the time. Matthews, however, interprets them to mean that on 80 per cent
of the occasions that rain actually fell the Met Office had made a correct
forecast which, as demonstrated in the article, is not at all the same
thing.
In fact, to complete his argument Matthews needs an additional assumption
that on 80 per cent of the occasions when no rain actually fell the Met Office
had also made a correct forecast, which he takes for granted without
explanation. Unless this is an unstated extension of the original premise, the
original words are being further interpreted as applying to “all forecasts to do
with raininess”.
While the base-rate effect is clearly a source of misunderstanding of
probabalistic events, I would suggest that a greater degree of confusion is
caused by poor descriptions of the probabilities in the first place.
Letters : . . .
Chicago
Regarding the 1978 Harvard study cited in the article, your readers may be
interested and relieved to know that for the past decade there has been a great
and ongoing effort to educate US interns and physicians on the importance of the
base-rate effect, probably in large part due to those quite legitimately
“worrying” studies.
Robert Matthews writes: Maynard-Smith is quite right. The precise meaning of
forecast accuracy is a vexed question, and should have been dealt with more
explicitly in my article. In general, two accuracy figures need to be stated:
the probability of rain being forecast when it does rain, and of no rain being
forecast when it stays dry. Met Office data show that these are 73 per cent and
85 per cent respectively for the London area forecasts. I took them as both
being 80 per cent for numerical simplicity; using the real values leaves the
conclusions of my article unchanged.
Letters : Hardly interfering
London
Barry Fox makes a number of claims regarding the nature and extent of
interference which will be caused by digital terrestrial television (DTT) which
I would like to clarify (Technology, 22 March, p 22).
There will be a number of situations where, in order to accommodate a planned
digital transmitter with relatively large coverage, an existing analogue relay
station with relatively small coverage needs to have a change of frequency.
However, transmission will continue on both the old and the new frequencies
until viewers’ sets have been retuned and this work will be completed before the
digital service starts. There will therefore be a continuity of service for
existing viewers.
There may be other circumstances where a small number of viewers, normally
only those technically “out of area” for a current transmission, will suffer
some interference from the new digital service. In these circumstances the
digital broadcasters will be obliged to restore reception at no cost to the
viewer. It is by no means certain that any viewers using the Cefn-mawr
transmitter in Wales who are affected in this way will have to change to English
transmissions. All current predictions are at an early stage of development, and
the Independent Television Commission (ITC) and the BBC are working hard to
establish a solution to this potential problem.
Interference and reception issues in relation to DTT are dealt with in detail
in two ITC documents which have been in the public domain for five months. These
are the ITC Draft Code of Practice on Changes to Existing Transmission and
Reception Arrangements and the ITC Note for Applicants on Coverage of
Digital Television. Both documents are available from the ITC Information
Office, tel: 0171 255 3000.
Since these documents were published, field measurements have shown that the
scale of potential interference difficulties is likely to be much smaller than
that which was initially predicted as a “worst case” based only on theoretical
calculations.
Letters : Parallel Poe
Maarssen, the Netherlands
Your review of David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality (22 March, p
44) contains a typical error, probably originating from the book itself, namely
that the idea of parallel universes was first proposed in 1957 by Hugh Everett
of Princeton University. He should in fact be credited as the first scientist
who proposed the idea. The idea of parallel universes is demonstrably much older
than 1957 and a “multiverse” can be found in the work of the Italian philosopher
Giordano Bruno (1548鈥�1600).
Another “philosopher of nature” (as the founding fathers of science once
called themselves) who explored the idea of parallel universes was Edgar Allan
Poe (1809鈥�1849) in his brilliant essay Eureka (1848) in which he
prophesied so much of modern physics and astronomy, including the big bang (see
Letters, 7 September 1996, p 50). In this hardly known yet influential essay Poe
gave an accurate description of parallel universes in different dimensions,
including some of the weird consequences of that idea:
“Let me declare only that, as an individual, I myself feel impelled to
fancy鈥攚ithout ring to call it more鈥攖hat there does exist a limitless
succession of universes, more or less similar to that of which we have
cognisance鈥攖o that of which alone we shall ever have cognisance at the
very least until the return of our own particular Universe into unity [NB: Poe
also foresaw a final big crunch!]. If such clusters of clusters exist, however
and they do鈥攊t is abundantly clear that, having had no part in our origin,
they have no portion in our laws. They neither attract us, nor we them. Their
material鈥攖heir spirit is not ours鈥攊s not that which obtains in any
part of our Universe. They could not impress our senses or our souls. Among them
and us鈥攃onsidering all for the moment, collectively鈥攖here are no
influences in common. Each exists, apart and independently, in the bosom of its
proper and particular God!”
Letters : Tuning circle
lucy@hour.com
It seems to me that we are at a crossroads in musical tuning, similar to that
which mathematics passed through a couple of hundred years ago. Many still seem
to judge the validity of a tuning system only by its proximity to integer
frequency ratios and the “harmonics” which are arrived at by simplistic
logic.
I am convinced that John Harrison managed to break through this barrier in
the mid-18th century. At the end of a very successful scientific career, during
which he produced three major inventions and won the prize for longitude with
his horological designs, he devoted his last years to the study of musical
tuning.
In his book Concerning Such Mechanism… he very clearly states his
conclusions: that the “Natural Notes of Melody” may be derived mathematically
from pi. He gives no experimental details, except that he used monochords, and
clearly understood and criticises whole number ratio logic and practice.
After this book was published he wrote a 182-page manuscript, A True and
Full Account of the Foundation of Musick, or, as principally therein, of the
Existance of the Natural Notes of Melody. This was unpublished but
catalogued by Messrs H. Sotheran of London in 1921. However, it has since been
lost.
I have seen only one page of this manuscript, about ten years ago. The page
was a diagram of a clock face, with the note names written around the
circumference, and marks where later steps of fourths and fifths would arrive.
From this page and the title, I suspect that the missing manuscript revealed
Harrison’s experiments. I heard that the offices of Sotheran were destroyed
during the Blitz.
I wish to attempt to reconstruct Harrison’s experiments, for I believe that
they will give us much greater insight into his thinking and possibly provide us
with “scientific proof”. Any help, pointers or comments about this manuscript
will be appreciated.
Letters : Wild pest
Nairobi, Kenya
Your short article on rinderpest incorrectly stated that the virus does not
infect wild animals (In Brief, 8 February, p 11). In fact, many wild ruminants
(such as buffalo, kudu, eland, giraffe, wart hog and bushbuck) are extremely
susceptible to it. There have been at least four major outbreaks in eastern
Africa this century affecting wildlife on a large scale.
A rinderpest outbreak in southern Kenya/northern Tanzania has already killed
60 per cent of the Cape buffalo and 90 per cent of the kudu in the Tsavo
ecosystem spanning that border.
It does appear that the virus does not remain permanently in wildlife
populations as it does in cattle, but it can sweep through them for a period of
up to two years, causing high levels of mortality.
Letters : Inflated Works
Lincoln
John Blockley’s proposition to invest $5 to purchase a new copy of
Works in 2079 doesn’t take into account inflation (Letters, 22 March, p 54).
Even if bank interest keeps 2 or 3 per cent ahead, he will need to start the
account with approximately half the purchase price of Works鈥攁nd then, of
course, he will need a bit more to pay for the extra squintillion megabytes of
RAM that you will need by then to run any Microsoft software in the first
place.