Letters : Spit and spider
Towcester Northants
You refer to the brown recluse spider, Loxosceles reclusa, found in
basements and woodpiles in the US
(In Brief, 14 June, p 13). Kindly warn readers
that this friendly arachnid also inhabits the wildernesses of Northamptonshire,
otherwise known as my house, and that I can personally vouch for its aggression
and painful bite.
Even now, a deceased specimen lies in a jar on my window ledge amidst a green
“slime city”. I sucked my finger and spat after being bitten. The tiny wound
healed without further ado.
Letters : Correction:
The news item on the Troms酶 symposium on Arctic ozone
(This Week, 7 June, p 11)
quoted from a paper by Kjell Henriksen. Regrettably, we did
not make it clear that this paper was written before Henriksen’s death last year
and was delivered at the symposium by a colleague.
Letters : Office sicknesss
London
I have just started to read the feature “Chemical warfare at work”
(21 June, p 30). It is my lunch hour. I now have a headache.
Letters : Don't think about it
Canberra, Australia
The quantitative analysis of unconscious perception
(New 杏吧原创, Science, 21 June, p 18)
establishes what has already been apparent in a vague
way, as the following traditional lines demonstrate :
A centipede was happy quite, until a frog in fun
Asked “Pray which leg goes after which?”
Which raised his doubts to such a pitch
He fell distracted in a ditch
Not knowing how to run.
Letters : Cretan coincidence
Bristol
Has anyone else noticed the irony in your 21 June issue caused by a report
about people being hit by a lot of water arriving on the island of Crete
(“Who killed the Minoans?”, p 36)
being followed by a report about water being
discussed by a lot of people arriving on Crete
(“Wacky water”, p 40)?
Letters : Sound invention
Blackburn Victoria Australia
In the late Thirties, when small “mantel” radios first became a possibility,
the tinny sound of a small speaker in a small cabinet caused engineers to look
for a way out. As it was well known that the ear “invents” a fundamental which
is absent from a harmonic-rich sound, the obvious answer was to accentuate or
invent a second-harmonic distortion component, which could easily be done with a
few passive components using valve nonlinearity.
I am thrilled to find that Philips engineers have now discovered that, by
using a special frequency-doubling chip, they can create a mathematically
identical effect (Technology, 14 June, p 20).
Other simple ideas were around at the time, such as a small pilot globe
connected across the loudspeaker voice-coil to produce a very passable volume
expander. All this and lots more is to be found in old textbooks.
I expect that any day now someone will invent a round thing that rolls along
the ground and minimises friction, only it will need a 200-megahertz Pentium
processor to do it.
Letters : Mini-moon
Hethersett, Norfolk
Congratulations to Paul Wiegert and his colleagues on their discovery that
asteroid 3753 is trapped in an orbit of the Earth
(In Brief, 14 June, p 13).
However, his comment that “no one had anticipated this sort of thing” is not
quite accurate. In his epic Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, the
philosopher and science fiction writer G. I. Gurdjieff, who died in 1949, wrote
about two objects orbiting the Earth: the Moon and a small fragment which he
called Annlios.
May I respectfully suggest that this asteroid might in future become known as
“asteroid Annlios” rather than the more prosaic 3753 in recognition of
Gurdjieff’s perspicacity?
Letters : Artificial stupidity
London
It was interesting to see the comments on Deep Blue 2’s use of artificial
intelligence to defeat Garry Kasparov at chess
(“Slaughter on Seventh Avenue”, 7 June, p 26).
Of course, unthinking intelligence is not the prerogative of supercomputers.
It is also common to many very intelligent people who make blunders that are
obvious to less intelligent but more experienced people. Government departments
are a rich source of unthinking intelligence.
The question is: how does one use artificial intelligence to a practical end?
I would like to suggest a new approach to the subject and propose the
development of “artificial stupidity”. The aim of such a machine is not to
suggest the best solution to a problem but the solution that people dealing with
the problem are most likely to come up with.
For example, the government currently pays around 拢400 a week to
incarcerate absent fathers who cannot afford to pay 拢40 a week
maintenance. An artificial stupidity machine would calculate that, as single
mothers are increasing at a rate of around 40 000 a year, then the solution is
to build more prisons. This is, of course, one of the government’s
proposals.
Such a machine would arrive at this solution much faster and more cheaply
than a committee. An artificial intelligence machine might suggest putting money
into studying why the divorce rate is so high, and suggesting means of
preventing it. But as the article shows, artificial intelligence works
differently from humans.
Letters : Gene sharing
by e-mail
Fraternal twins do not share “at most” 50 per cent of their genes as Bob
Holmes claims (New 杏吧原创, Science, 14 June, p 16).
They share on
average 50 per cent of their genes and may even share up to 100 per cent,
although the probability of this is admittedly very low.
Letters : Backdoor bees
Uckfield, East Sussex
At least in my back garden, the interaction between bumblebees and flowers is
more complex than your article
(“The plight of the bumblebee”, 21 June, p 26)
suggests.
One species of short-tongued bumblebee is entirely unconcerned about the size
and shape of larkspurs. They simply go round the back of the flower, punch a
neat hole in the tip of the spur, and extract the nectar through the hole. I’m
not sure how many bumblebees, and of what species, are involved, but certainly
every larkspur in the garden has been dealt with in this way.
What I don’t understand is how the bumblebees know that this is a way of
getting nectar out of the flower. Surely the flower can’t be giving them any
guidelines, as the whole pollination process is being short-circuited.
Letters : Costly freedom
Southampton
I find myself in the odd position of applauding John Gummer’s criticism of
President Clinton’s Earth Summit speech while bemoaning Michael Meacher’s
conciliatory noises about the “positive” tone of the speech.
By not setting targets for reductions in greenhouse gases, Clinton is
signalling that he is beholden to American “business as usual” consortia such as
the Global Climate Coalition. The GCC, which includes oil companies such as
Shell, have attempted to rubbish the considered judgment of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that “the balance of evidence suggests
a discernible human influence on global climate”.
It all adds up to a chilling postscript to Caspar Henderson’s first-rate
piece on the difficulty of reconciling free trade with environmental protection
(“What price free trade?”, 21 June, p 14).
The balance looks set to swing even more heavily in favour of free trade as a
result of closed negotiations which have been taking place amongst the world’s
richest nations. The outcome will be a written constitution on global free trade
for transnationals. According to Britain’s Department of Trade and Industry, the
aims of this charter, known as the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI),
are the “liberalisation of investment regimes and investment protection”. In
simple terms, the MAI would outlaw all restrictions and controls that national
governments might wish to impose on foreign investment. The MAI is supported by both the
European Union and the OECD.
With the World Trade Organization and MAI on their side, transnationals would
be able to operate in such a way that we would have little power to discriminate
between organic and genetically modified food, or sustainably and unsustainably
harvested timber. The Montreal Protocol, which protects the ozone layer, would
be at risk, as would the Climate Change Convention.
The damaging effects of growing transnational operations and free trade
are unsustainable. Climate change is a direct consequence of these activities.
The desire for further “liberalisation” of the global economy is simply greed
for value-free economic growth.
Letters : Plague of rhinos?
Brighton
Australians should pause a moment and reflect before introducing the
rhinoceros to Queensland (This Week, 21 June, p 10).
Look what happened when
the rabbit and the cane toad were imported.
Letters : Selective sickness
York
On a two-hour train journey the other day, your article on sickness,
“Feeling a little strange?” (14 June, p 25) came to mind.
I have always suffered from motion sickness in cars, coaches and planes. Why
have I never had it on a train, and rarely on a ship or boat?
If, as suggested, the nausea is triggered by a discrepancy between the
signals coming from the eyes and from the balance mechanism, then wouldn’t a
sure-fire method of curing it be to shut the eyes? I’ve tried this and it
doesn’t work鈥攊f anything it makes matters worse.
Letters : Wirral was first
Bebington, Wirral
I feel that I must offer a slight correction to the first part of your
interesting snippet on the particle accelerator being built for medical use in
Abbazia di Mirasole (In Brief, 7 June, p 13) .
The first proton accelerator in
Europe built exclusively for radiotherapy is here at Clatterbridge on the
Wirral, and is a part the Clatterbridge Centre of Oncology, an NHS Trust.
Originally built for a Medical Research Council trial of neutron radiotherapy
of pelvic and head and neck tumours, the 62-megaelectronvolt cyclotron has
provided proton beam radiotherapy for treating eye tumours since 1989. We have
in fact treated over 750 patients using protons.
The well-defined physical characteristics of proton beams, particularly at
the Bragg peak, allow the tumour to be treated with little radiation dose to
adjacent sensitive tissues and unaffected parts of the eye.
Letters : Radar's role
By e-mail
George Schindler credits the M9 gun director with shooting down 89 of 91 V-1s
launched in August 1944 by the Germans
(Letters, 31 May, p 53). Surely
radar鈥攑articularly “gun laying” radar like the SCR-584鈥攄eserves some
of the credit.
Perhaps more?
Letters : Untypically toxic
London
Having read Debora MacKenzie’s article on “toxic teething rings”
(This Week, 14 June, p 10),
I would like to set the record straight on a few of the claims made.
The label “toxic” is a misleading and alarmist one for phthalates, which have
been used for over forty years, and as such are well researched and understood
materials.
The toxicology and product safety performance of phthalates are well
established. Phthalates have been approved for use in a number of medical
applications such as blood bags and surgical tubing and are used in life-saving
second skins for burns victims鈥攈ardly the mark of a toxic substance.
Phthalates are not carcinogenic to humans. Only one,
di(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP), was suspected of being a carcinogen when, in
the early 1980s, it was shown that feeding high levels of it, other chemicals
and hypolipidaemic drugs to rodents caused an increased incidence of liver
tumours. However, it has since been demonstrated in many studies that these
effects are specific to rodents. Administration of phthalates and hypolipidaemic
drugs to non-rodent species such as marmosets and monkeys (which, being
primates, are metabolically closer to humans) does not lead to liver damage.
In addition, the hypolipidaemic drugs which caused problems in rodents have
been used by humans for many years with no ill-effects. In a decision dated 25
July 1990, the European Commission stated that DEHP shall not be classified or
labelled as a carcinogenic or an irritant substance.
The unusually high results of migration tests from teething rings were
specific to one particular manufacturer. This would seem to indicate that this
is a specific product quality issue, rather than an inherent problem with the
materials used to make teething rings.
Letters : Ranking rubbish
London
Your report on the study for the European Commission on the “waste hierarchy”
by Coopers and Lybrand and the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the
Global Environment (CSERGE) reveals some of the problems of summarising a
complex report in a few paragraphs (This Week, 21 June, p 6).
As your reporter was informed, the ranking of landfill as a better
environmental option than incineration assumes that energy recovered from
incinerators displaces electricity from the average electricity mix in the
European Union. For policy purposes it is far more meaningful to assume it
displaces the marginal (highest cost) source in the grid merit order. In
Britain, for example, this has the effect of ranking landfill below incineration
in the waste hierarchy.
Assuming he was correctly reported, it was also slightly disingenuous of the
Commission official to say that the study “ignored” the amenity effects of
landfill. First, this omission was agreed by the Commission, since there were no
European studies for us to call on, and secondly, the very limited evidence we
have from the US suggests that the amenity effects of landfill are unlikely to
be very different from those of incineration, thus not affecting the
hierarchy.
Finally, the terms of reference for the study required that we assumed new
standards for landfill and incineration. Self-evidently, existing plant falls
below those standards, so one cannot use the report to rank existing practice,
as the report itself makes very clear.
We do sympathise with those who have to report on an extremely lengthy
document when deadlines are short, but we hope readers will get a clearer
impression when they read the actual report.
Letters : Phone-for-all?
Hong Kong
So the deregulation of the phone industry is going to mean the world’s poor
will never get access to telecommunications. Instead, greedy multinationals will
get all the cash (“Hanging on for the phone”, 14 June, p 14).
Nice contrariness, but I don’t think so. First of all, the huge payments made
by the developed world to developing nations for accepting incoming
international calls have not been spent on infrastructure. This has been the
case since the 1930s and Lisa Sykes gave dramatic illustrations of the effect it
has had (phones per 100 people in Liberia: 0.2).
The US currently complains that about $5.5 billion a year is paid out
to places such as the Philippines. Infrastructure has only really started to be
built since the market was deregulated.
This payment should not be considered a subsidy by rich nations to poor ones:
it’s more like the old saying about the World Bank whereby poor people in rich
countries give money to rich ones in poor countries. That outpayment to the
Philippines doesn’t come because Wall Street fat cats are constantly ringing
Manila but because migrant or immigrant workers are calling home.
Actually, an international consortium is arguably more likely to wire the
villages鈥攁s Sykes points out, they can be compelled to roll out rural
lines in return for a licence. A state-owned monopoly has to fight for
government cash against a host of deserving causes like education and
hospitals.
Deregulation may leave us prey to multinational vultures but is it seriously
going to be worse than being prey to an inefficient and possibly corrupt
monopoly?
Letters : Not me, guv
by e-mail
In “Art for the masses” (14 June, p 30),
Margaret Wertheim concludes: “If we
trust statistics as a guide to politics and sex appeal, why shouldn’t we trust
it as a guide to art?”
We? Please count me out.
Letters : Advice ignored
London
I am surprised that Tam Dalyell omitted one of the most controversial aspects
of the debate on genetically modified maize
(Thistle Diary, 14 June, p 49).
His reference to the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes (ACNFP)
misses out the fact that the committee actually proclaimed the maize to be
unacceptable on account of a gene coding for ampicillin resistance, which could
propagate resistances to this important antibiotic and compromise its use in
both human and veterinary medicine
(see This Week, 4 May 1996, p 7).
The ACNFP report on the maize states: “transfer of this particular bla
gene to free-living bacteria or to gut or rumen bacteria in animals fed
unprocessed genetically modified maize could severely limit the efficacy of
clinical and veterinary medicine. For these reasons, the ACNFP considered that
any risk of transfer of this bla gene and its associated bacterial
regulatory sequences, however low, was unacceptable.” These reservations were
overruled by the European Commission, a decision taken, as Dalyell notes, under
heavy American pressure.
Britain has the legal right, under a safeguard clause in the European law on
genetically modified organisms, to stand by its own scientific advice and ban
the maize here. It should do so, and should also back our European neighbours
who so far have shown themselves better guardians of public health and the
environment than Britain.