Letters : One in the eyelet
Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire
Do I get a prize for being the millionth reader to point out the error in the
reference to “eyelet” cells
(This Week, 26 July, p 18),
which should be “islet” cells as in islets of Langerhans?
Your editorial in the same issue (p 3)
carries the statement in relation to
Jurassic Park that “all the dinosaurs created by overeager gene cloners
appeared dead at the end of the first movie”. Did the person who wrote that see
a different version of the film to the one I have on video? In the version I
have, the people escape the island by helicopter, leaving the majority of the
dinosaurs very much alive.
Letters : Father of the geese
jdjones@junction.net
William Sladen is not the pioneer of using ultralight aircraft to train geese
to migrate
(This Week, 19 July, p 15).
That distinction belongs to Canadian
naturalist William Lishman, whose book Father Goose was published in
1996. Indeed, it was Lishman who acted as technical adviser on the film Fly
Away Home, which was based on that book.
Letters : Murky waters
so3@npl.co.uk
You ask for volunteers to measure the “Sneaker Index” of the River Thames
(Feedback, 26 July).
May I suggest that you be supplied with copies of the relevant British
Standard, namely BS EN 27027:1994. This standard deals with the measurement of
turbidity in natural water. One method involves a black and white sectored disc
on the end of a graduated chain, which is gradually lowered into the water until
the disc disappears from view. The turbidity is reported as the length of the
chain (equivalent to the Sneaker Index).
Before the advent of electronic nephelometers (as the light scattering
instruments are known), this method was quite common. It still has applications,
particularly from small boats, where the operator’s legs might not be long
enough to reach the river bed.
Letters : Pumping it up
Nuthall, Nottinghamshire
PowerGen is correct in its claim that “Electricity can’t be stored. It’s
impossible to stockpile it”, contrary to what
Feedback (26 July) implies.
Devices that supposedly store electricity, such as batteries, actually store
some other kind of energy and convert it to electricity as it is needed. In the
case of batteries the energy is stored chemically.
However, PowerGen’s claim, while strictly true, does not give an honest
picture. This is because the electricity companies use a technology called
“pumped storage”, whereby they pump water overnight into a reservoir that is
high up then use it during the day to drive a hydroelectric power station in
order to meet peak loads.
Letters : . . . . .
Dublin
Ireland’s pumped storage facility is located in Turlough Hill in the Wicklow
Mountains. There is a virtual tour of it on the Web Site at
http://www.esb.ie/html/edua.htm.
Another proposed method is to store electricity as rotational energy in a
huge flywheel. However, you would need many tonnes rotating at thousands of
revolutions per minute on frictionless bearings. Would you feel safe standing
next to such a monster?
Letters : Nuke fields
Barry, Glamorgan
Why not dispose of nuclear waste by converting it into liquid form and
pumping it into exhausted oilfields offshore? These have been leakproof for many
millions of years, otherwise the oil would never have accumulated in the first
place.
Letters : Expensive junk
New York
People in the real world pay for Internet access, which means I pay to read
unsolicited spam
(Feedback, 19 July).
Anyone or any business sending me unsolicited spam forfeits my custom.
Letters : Vibrating spot
Bristol
We read with interest the article by Marcus Chown on work with oscillons in
vibrating sand
(“A pattern emerges”, 12 July, p 34).
We would like to suggest that the apparent stability of the oscillon in an
otherwise unstable dynamic system is highly reminiscent of Jupiter’s Great Red
Spot.
The spot has been observed for over 300 years. It is a huge storm 20 000
kilometres long. Various explanations, such as a “whirlpool effect” or a
“strange attractor”, have been put forward, but none has received complete
acceptance.
In the high-pressure atmosphere of Jupiter it is likely that the visible
surface, although gaseous, may act in many ways as a fluid. An oscillon could
perhaps be set up if there were sufficient constant vibration. We might imagine
that an appropriate vibration is set up as a result of tidal pull from Jupiter’s
satellites.
On the Jovian surface there are several smaller objects similar to the Great
Red Spot and it will be interesting to see whether or not they follow the same
patterns of attraction or repulsion seen with oscillons in the sand
experiments.
Letters : Dutch dirt
Llandudno, Gwynedd
David Rimmer refers to the Dutch approach to soil protection in his article
(Forum, 19 July, p 50).
Unfortunately he is just a little out of date. The Dutch
environment minister, Margaretha de Boer, announced a major policy reversal from
the previous “multifunctionality” approach to soil protection at a meeting in
Amsterdam on 29 May.
With estimated cleanup costs of $50 billion for contaminated sites,
she announced a “fundamental change in direction”, with more cleanup costs being
shouldered by industry. A reduction in costs would be achieved by both
“orientating remediation operations to a site’s designated use” and “preventing
dispersal of contaminants into the groundwater”.
This brings the Dutch much in line with Britain’s current “suitable for use”
approach.
Letters : Delayed reckoning
Auckland, New Zealand
According to your article
(This Week, 12 July, p 17),
genetically engineered
cyanobacteria require only CO2 and light to produce the raw material
for a biodegradable plastic.
What are the major by-products of the plastic when it biodegrades? If, as
seems likely, CO2 is a major product, the material is only postponing
the time when the absorbed CO2would again need to be reckoned with.
Letters : Blood money
London
“Blood donors in Europe and the US are rigorously questioned about their
sexual behaviour and drug habits”
(This Week, 26 July, p 14).
I don’t think so. I gave blood for the first time two months ago. The
“rigorous” screening consists of sending you into a small booth where you
complete a form containing questions about your exposure to HIV. It is
completely self-administered and self-policed. If you have doubts about whether
your blood is safe, you are instructed to leave.
That’s it. I would have thought an extra $2 a sample is a small price
to pay to include PCR testing. Blood donors themselves might even be prepared to
stump up for their post-donation tea and biscuits, to help cover the cost.
Letters : Market research
Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex
I hadn’t appreciated the fact that universities are raiding budgets to
subsidise research contracts
(This Week, 19 July, p 18, and
Letters, 2 August, p 49).
However, I have seen the effects on commercial research, in both private
companies and government agencies.
Universities can undercut these organisations because of their ability to
charge unrealistically low overheads. This is leading to companies downsizing
and restricting their output to particular areas of work in which the
universities cannot compete.
Some might comment that this is a good example of the market economy.
However, it is actually a good example of short-term gain versus long-term
loss.
What happens in 10 years time, when most of the commercial bodies are out of
the picture and the competition factor has been lost鈥攁nd when the
expertise that specialists once developed is instead widely dispersed among
generations of short-term contractors in universities? Where will the government
get its advice from then?
Dave Smythe’s letter (19 July, p 53)
criticising The British Geological
Survey’s involvement with Nirex touches but the tip of an iceberg. A large
number of (ex-)government laboratories now have a duty to earn at least some of
their revenue in external contracts. They cannot pick and choose
their customers, unless they want to go under very rapidly.
Smythe’s complaint harks back to a previous era when government researchers
were employed for the public benefit. Times have changed. Our loss, I fear.
Letters : Eye contact
St Albans, Hertfordshire
Rupert Sheldrake’s experiment reminds me of a time when, ambling dreamily
along in a peaceful Luxembourg park, I suddenly found myself looking up and left
into the eyes of a woman staring at me from a balcony on a block of flats about
100 metres away
(“Are you looking at me?”, 26 July, p 39).
When I was 10 there was a brief craze at school for a game using this sixth
sense. Half a dozen children formed a circle around one child, who stood relaxed
with eyes closed. The surrounding six decided, by nods and looks, who was “it”.
The chosen one then concentrated hard on the central child. Within a minute or
so, the central child swayed, fell towards and was caught by the person chosen
at random to be “it”.
The only time I knew the game to fail was when the central person was a
nervous child who could not relax properly鈥攎aybe this is one reason for
the variation among individuals reported by Sheldrake.
Letters : Harmful hunting
Arundel, West Sussex
Human societies, with very few exceptions, regularly kill large numbers of
animals of many species and types for a wide range of reasons
(Forum, 28 June, p 45, and
Letters, 19 July, p 52).
There is thus no obvious reason why whales,
given suitable safeguards, should not be harvested. There are, however, some
scientific and moral aspects, which are important for all civilised
societies.
First is that in developed societies, to prevent suffering and avoid animal
welfare problems, all human food and research animals must be instantaneously
stunned before slaughter. In whaling this cannot be achieved: explosive harpoons
clearly fail to cause instantaneous death or stunning.
Electrical stunning is not easy. It relies on the rapid induction of
high-density currents through the brain. If ineffective, it causes great pain
and suffering. It requires accurate placing of electrodes onto the cranium and
sufficient current to penetrate the skull to produce an epileptic fit. These
criteria clearly cannot be met with whales of any size.
The second important problem is the slaughter of pregnant and, worse,
lactating females, so that the calf is lost to future generations. Starvation of
suckling calves is an inhumane and pointless death. Ante-mortem determination of
pregnancy and lactation will prove very difficult.
Until these practical welfare difficulties are overcome whaling will continue
to cause unacceptable cruelty.
The third problem is the difficulty of estimating stocks of cetaceans and the
sustainable harvest. Given the wide variation in estimates of cetacean
populations, which seem inevitable in vast areas of sea, numbers will probably
always be uncertain.
Finally, the probable high levels of intelligence, communication skills and,
in some species, social organisation imply the potential for greater degrees of
suffering.