Letters : Tight squeeze
by e-mail
Pythons kill their prey by squeezing them gently around the chest, tightening
the squeeze a little every time the unfortunate animal breathes out, thus making
it increasingly difficult for it to breathe in again. Eventually it dies.
I think this is the reason why Chris Goy suggests those trying to squeeze as
many people as possible into small spaces should breath in first (Forum, 8
February, p 47 and Letters, 29 March, p 55). If they did the opposite it might
be possible to fit in more people, but the body count might be too high when
they were emptied out after the experiment was over.
Breathing in first ensures the minimum breathing space for each person to
sustain life.
Letters : . . .
London
Many people, when trying to squeeze into tight trousers or a tight skirt,
will draw in their abdomens and lift their chests. This somehow gets connected
to breathing in. If the people trying to squeeze into a small space are wider
around the waist than anywhere else, this sort of breathing will decrease their
maximum widths and more people should fit in.
Perhaps, also, breathing in helps psychologically, helping to reduce a
possible feeling of claustrophobia and lack of air. Similarly, if everyone
breathed out first they might run out of oxygen before they finished the
squeezing-in manoeuvre.
By contrast, singers are taught to breathe in such a way that the waist
expands, so a choir should probably not be asked to breathe in to fit in a small
space.
Letters : . . .
Chester
As John Jenkins says, breathing in surely makes one larger even though it is
usually requested on occasions where it is desirable to make one smaller.
I have often mused over these incorrect clich茅s. For an inexpensive
item one might say it was “cheap at half the price”. Surely, most things are.
Shouldn’t we be saying it was “cheap at twice the price”?
Similarly, an unwell person might say he was “feeling a bit below par”.
Golfers will tell you that it’s usually when they’re below par that they’re
feeling at their best.
Letters : Against the odds
York
In your article on Keith Devlin’s Goodbye, Descartes, there is a
description of a “game show” in which the contestant chooses one of three doors
(Review, 12 April, p 42).
In fact, the odds of collecting the 拢10 000 hidden behind one of these
three doors must be 1/2, not 1/3 or 2/3 as the article says.
This is because after the host opens one of the doors with a banana behind
it, there are now two doors unopened. One has the 拢10 000 behind it, the
other has a banana; therefore the chance of picking the 拢10 000 is 1/2.
This is true whichever door is picked.
The “many people who refused [to pay 拢10 to change their choice]” were
therefore making the rational choice.
The solution in the review is actually correct鈥攂ut it requires several
pages of the book to explain why. For a full explanation, go to Planet Science,
where you will find several site addresses dealing with the Monty Hall problem
and many more readers’ letters on the topic鈥抬诲
Letters : Condom correction
London
I was extremely surprised to read the title “Female condom fails to stop HIV”
(This Week, 12 April, p 7). On further reading it became clear that you had used
the term “female condom” as a misnomer for the chemical Nonoxynol-9, commonly
used as a spermicide.
As medical director of Chartex International, which manufactures and supplies
the female condom, I wish to make it clear that the female condom has indeed
been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as a method which “helps to
prevent pregnancy and sexually transmissible diseases including HIV”.
Studies have been conducted to demonstrate that the female condom, known
variously as Reality or Fem, provides an effective barrier to a number of
organisms, including HIV.
Letters : Therapy soon
Bristol
In your article “A price worth paying?” (12 April, p 14) you implied that
triple therapy treatment will not be available to patients in the Avon Health
Authority area. In fact the Avon Health Authority has made a clear and public
commitment to making it available to all patients who will benefit from it as
soon as possible after the start of this financial year.
We have identified more funds for this treatment and will be working with
Southmead NHS Trust to find more.
Letters : Magnetic moggies
Overijse, Belgium
I wish to draw your attention to a previously unrecognised risk to data
stored on magnetic media in a domestic environment (Feedback, 5 April).
We are a typical family鈥攖wo parents, two late-teenage children, four
oldish computers and two cats. The cats are dominant in the hierarchy; they have
all the luxuries鈥攊ncluding a third-generation technology cat flap (bought
from Harrods) which opens as they approach but which slams in the face of the
local toms. The computers are at the bottom鈥攂ut any computer failure sends
the stress levels in the rest of us soaring, as we curse and swear on a stack of
Microsoft manuals that we will make full backups every week.
Early in March, on the same day, two discs became unreadable on separate
machines鈥攐ne an ordinary floppy and the other a 100 megabyte Zip Drive
disc full of irreplaceable files. We held our breath as Norton Utilities pieced
the files back together, and went on a witch-hunt for possible causes 鈥攍ow
voltage desk lights, cordless phone, junk software鈥攚hich were all put away
or deleted.
The next week the same thing happened again. Paranoia ruled鈥攚hat stupid
games had our son been playing? Had he taken the discs to school?
Then, over dinner, Ruth, our daughter, said: “I saw the magnet on Titi’s (the
older cat’s) collar sticking to the metal filing cabinet as she climbed up to
the desk next to the computer.”
We had a delightful image of the small and powerful magnet which operates the
reed switch in the cat flap waving gently over the discs on the desk as she
purred her way to sleep in the warmth. So: magnetic moggies cause dodgy discs.
You have been warned.
Letters : . . .
via e-mail
A couple of years ago the image on my computer screen mysteriously started to
show a slow hula-hula girl wobble. It was very distracting and it would start
and stop unexpectedly. Sometimes it wiggled all day and other times just for an
hour or two but it never seemed to wiggle whenever anyone came to look into
it.
After a bit we noticed that it only did it on really hot days (it was
summertime) and we eventually put it down to heat exhaustion. Imagine my
surprise when I went into the next office one day to find an oscillating fan
directly behind my screen on the other side of our party wall.
Letters : Due mention
Swansea
Following Garry J. Tee’s fascinating letter I have to point out that Julius
Lilienfeld’s 1925 development of a field-effect transistor structure did not
continue to be overlooked (Letters, 29 March, p 55).
In our book published in 1971, Field-effect Electronics
(Butterworth), William Gosling, W. G. Townsend and I detailed that development,
along with Lilienfeld’s highly significant later work and that of several other
investigators鈥攃omplete with diagrams.
Letters : The tornado touch
by e-mail
There are serious flaws in the logic behind using the seismic detection
method for tornado warnings (Technology, 5 April, p 26). The notion that a
“tornado works like a plunger trying to lift up or press down on the Earth’s
surface” is untested at this time and it is not clear that nontornadic severe
thunderstorms would not have the same effect. A large-scale test, particularly
of non-tornadic events, is necessary before the method can be used for public
safety.
Even if the creators are correct, their own description of their
method鈥攚hich requires the tornado to touch down before the warning is
activated鈥攎eans that the first touchdown will occur without warning. In
cases such as the tornado in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 24 April 1993, where the
tornado touched down in the middle of the city, such a system would mean that
warnings would not be in effect when the tornado begins. In the Tulsa event, 6
of the 7 fatalities occurred within a minute or so of the initial touchdown.
The combination of radar, spotters, and improved communication have lowered
the annually averaged death toll from tornadoes in the US from nearly 200 as
recently as the 1970s to fewer than 40 this decade. It is not obvious that
seismic detection methods will provide substantial improvement beyond that.
For more information on the origins and detection of tornadoes, see
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/edu/tornado/.
Letters : Watch the watchers
Walton on the Naze
I am writing this on a cheap PowerMac which, with the addition of some
拢1000 of software, is capable of editing a video recording down to pixel
level. I could for instance put a totally different face on a moving figure,
change a vehicle numberplate, or put an item into someone’s hand. When the
edited video is recorded back onto tape, it would be virtually impossible to
detect the fakery.
Video tapes are now accepted as evidence in criminal trials, and the thought
of what professional equipment could produce is horrifying (This Week, 12 April,
p 4). Rather than put all our trust for this Orwellian state of affairs in the
hands of just another department of the government (which can never be
guaranteed not to turn pathological), would it not be more sensible to fit every
closed-circuit TV camera in a public place with a low-power transmitter such as
those freely on sale for under 拢10?
Anyone within a few hundred metres could tune in to the signals at will. The
courts could then refuse to accept as evidence any tape that was not backed up
by an identical one from a third party, like Neighbourhood Watch. It then
becomes harder for fraudsters to fabricate evidence.
If the signals from your local neighbourhood surveillance cameras were
available in your own home, there would be many advantages. Those who had been
threatened could look out for ambushes, those confined to their homes could do a
useful service by recording for the Neighbourhood Watch, and it could even show
you when the queue outside the Lottery shop is too long, so you could have
another cup of tea.
Letters : Secret suicides
Bagamoyo,Tanzania
On reading the article about suicide among young Chinese women, I was
interested to see that the suicide rates in Africa were reported as 3.1 per 100
000 people, lower than any other continent (“No way out”, 22 March, p 34).
I don’t have any better figures (I don’t think there are any), but I would be
very surprised if they were this low. There are very few mental health
professionals here in Tanzania. Mental health is very much a hidden problem, as
it is, I would imagine, in many African countries.
One of the problems with existing statistics, as you note, is the definition
of suicide. A Tanzanian doctor friend stated the problem quite clearly: a
schoolgirl finds out she is pregnant. She takes an overdose of
chloroquine鈥攚idely available as an antimalarial, costing 1p per
tablet鈥攂ecause she has heard it may cause an abortion. She is very
depressed and confused, and she dies from the overdose. She was, however, also
aware that chloroquine overdose can be fatal, because another girl from her
school died after taking it last year.
Was that an accident or suicide? Because suicide is not discussed here,
health workers, the family and the school will say that she took the overdose by
accident because she wanted to abort. In another country the view might be
different.
I don’t feel there is anything special about China or Asia in general; this
sudden discovery of large numbers of suicides just means that better record
keeping has reached them first.
Letters : The deer hunters
You rightly described Patrick Bateson and Elizabeth Bradshaw’s report on deer
hunting as “the first step for the science of the hunted”. But your conditional
agreement with the hunts’ position鈥攖hat the ban inflicted by the National
Trust may be precipitate鈥攊s based on the wrong reasoning (Editorial, 19
April, p 3).
Bateson’s report has not been subjected to peer review, and his data have not
yet been published. Questions have been raised by other scientists regarding
both the methodology of the blood sampling, and some of the assumptions, which
appear to be subjective, if not downright anthropomorphic, rather than based
solely on the data obtained. The reference to Bambi’s mother in the foreword
sets the tone and is, incidentally, inaccurate as she was shot鈥攏ot
hunted.
Bateson’s conclusions about the welfare of the hunted deer fly in the face of
knowledgeable observations by those who see the deer at close quarters, during
the hunt and often days and weeks later. His report acknowledges that a ban
would “disorganise the management of red deer” and that “an increase in
indiscriminate shooting might increase the proportion of injured deer and also
reduce the overall red deer population on the Quantocks”.
Urgent peer review of the data and the conclusions drawn may show
that the stress incurred is not excessive, and that the overall management and
welfare of the deer herds of Exmoor is well served by hunting. It is no
coincidence that Exmoor is the only place in England which hosts a large and
healthy herd of red deer.
If further study reveals that stress does equal suffering, the moral
considerations go way beyond hunting and would have serious implications for all
our interactions with animals.
Robin Hanbury-Tenison
London
British Field Sports Society
Bateson concludes that hunting causes “the animal to experience conditions
far outside the normal limits for the species”, so far as stress is
concerned.
But is that so? Polygamous stags are probably also severely stressed during
the autumn rutting season, when for several weeks they spend a lot of time
trying to round up hinds for their harems and vigorously defending them against
all comers. Challenging rivals by roaring at them, they lock antlers with
potential seducers, and often inflict quite serious injuries.
During the rut the stags stop feeding, and they are emaciated and quite
exhausted by the time they have finished mating. And a defeated harem holder
often goes into a decline and dies during the winter, probably at least in part
from stress experienced in the rut.
The condition of rutting stags is of course within the normal experience of
the species, but it was not dealt with in the Bateson report.
Charles Goodhart
University of Cambridge
Bateson and Bradshaw reply to their critics in this week’s Forum, p
51鈥抬诲
Letters : Blabbing browsers
London
Herbert Blankesteijn wonders what information his browser discloses as he
visits Web sites around the world (Letters, 5 April, p 56). The answer to that
question is: more than he imagines.
For instance, picking a random visitor to a Web site I run, I can tell that
they work at the Atomic Energy Comissariat at Saclay in France. They are using
version 2.01 of Netscape, which is running on a Silicon Graphics
workstation鈥攑robably an Indy.
They came to my site through a link from a site in the US, the home page of a
lad called Bryan who hopes to come to King’s College to study pharmacy when he
leaves college. In all they spent a little over 5 minutes reading some of the
pages on our site, and then left.
Control of the information that your browser gives out to all and sundry on
the Internet is a big issue among those concerned with privacy, and there are
various groups of people out there working both to hide and to harness this
information. A little searching on the Web can reveal many interesting facets of
this side of Net life鈥攂ut will, of course, reveal your interest in the
area to the people who run the sites you visit.
Letters : . . .
Bath
Whenever you look at a Web page, certain information is logged by the Web
server (if desired by the Webmaster): one of these pieces of information is the
make of the browser.
This allows everyone to make up the figures, depending on which sites you
chose. For example, the default start-up site for Netscape is
http://home.netscape.com. If you look here you will probably see Netscape as
the most popular browser.
Letters : Bad booze
Wolverhampton
What the exchanges about the beneficial effects to health of polyphenols in
alcohol ignore is the detrimental effects on behavioural and other health
patterns that chemical additives in booze can have
(Letters, 29 March, p 53).
It has been claimed that there are 19 added ingredients in wine alone, none
of which we are allowed to know about, as the whole alcohol industry is exempt
from the food labelling laws. This is at the behest of national governments and
the European Union, and is as good an example of cover-up and protection of an
industry as the scandal of BSE.
Some examples: caramel colouring in whisky produces hideous nightmares;
certain red wines produce hyperactivity and nightmares; some ingredients in
beers (and processed foods) produce itching haemorrhoids; glycerol in vodka
produces anal seepage (not surprising, since glycerol is used medically to
counteract constipation).
The Papworth Hospital researchers (This Week, 22 February, p 4) would do us
an enormous service if they analysed alcoholic drinks for these hidden
ingredients and let us know about them. Or are they, like the Medicines Act and
the Advisory Committee on Drugs, covered by the Official Secrets Act?