Letters : Quick patents
Hong Kong
I was delighted to see the publicity for our new patent system
(This Week, 28 February, p 7).
Unfortunately, there has been a misunderstanding.
We do offer a short-term patent that is valid for eight years. However, a
full search through past patents is needed only for a standard patent, valid for
20 years, and this can be done by either the Chinese Patent Office or the
British Patent Office. For more detailed information, please see:
http://www.houston.com.hk/hkgipd/new_law/patinf.html
Letters : . . .
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
In the same issue as your editorial, Patrick Holden of the Soil Association
says: “Organic farming is the only sustainable way to produce agricultural crops
without pollution and loss of biodiversity”
(Letters, p 54).
Leaving aside the fact that no one can agree what organic farming is,
asserting that it is the only way is just plain nonsense. There are many
scientifically proven nonorganic ways of reducing pollution and retaining
biodiversity.
What does a movement with a fanatical following that claims to be the only
way, rejects science and has factions that argue about what it stands for remind
you of?
The US Constitution wisely separates state and religion. Perhaps the US
Department of Agriculture should leave organic folk to decide for themselves
what their buzzword means?
Letters : Defining argument
Hatfield, Hertfordshire
The editorial on a rethink of American plans to allow genetically engineered
crops and food to be sold under the “organic” label, states that logic might be
on the side of the original decision to broaden the definition of organic food
(7 March, p 3).
It argues that everything we eat has been “genetically engineered for thousands of years”.
But there are many reasons why organisms whose genes have been modified
directly鈥攔ather than by breeding鈥攎ust be treated with great caution.
First, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) engineered to produce
insecticide-like substances can harm beneficial insects such as bees. A case in
point is oil seed rape producing protease inhibitors.
Secondly, what about the danger of genes being transferred from GMOs to other
organisms? There is much evidence that this can and does happen. The use of GMOs
can lead to weeds having increased resistance to herbicides, for example.
Further risk stems from the use of viral genes in some GMOs, since such
sequences can be acquired by other viruses, potentially leading to increased
virulence. And the dangers of transferring antibiotic resistance genes to
bacteria do not bear thinking about, especially in the days when our
pharmaceutical armoury seems to be shrinking due to increasing microbial
resistance.
Thirdly, GMOs such as herbicide-resistant soya or maize will in the long run
benefit no one but their developers and a select elite, herbicide manufacturers
being the prime example (the latter and the former are often one and the same).
Certainly the environment, already overflowing with toxic agrochemicals, will
not gain. Nor will the people who ingest the harmful chemicals that the use of
GMOs encourages.
Genetic engineering of animals is a separate issue, too broad to be discussed
here, but it does not take much imagination to see that many people might be
opposed to it purely on ethical grounds. The opportunity to express such
opposition must not be denied through lack of labelling.
Finally, GMOs are patented. Besides being dubious ethically, patenting life
is an act of extreme arrogance on the part of the biotechnology industry and
another reason why the organic movement worldwide rejects GMOs.
You state that “organic farming . . . should not rule out contributions from
science”. It seems to me that you have got it the wrong way round. Organic
farming is a poor relative of intensive methods when it comes to science
funding. But it is a misconception that organic farming is not based on
science鈥攑lenty of science is needed and a lot of new science is done.
Letters : Oh, the agony
In your article on pain, NMDA was incorrectly described as a neurotransmitter
(This Week, 21 February, p 9).
NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) is in fact a drug (agonist)
that mimics the effect of glutamate (glutamic acid), an amino acid
neurotransmitter, at one of its receptor subtypes, namely the NMDA receptor.
This derives its name from the agonist, NMDA.
Letters : We hopped
Thames Ditton, Surrey
Many thanks to Jay Pasachoff for drawing attention to the Caribbean eclipse
(Letters, 31 January, p 50).
My wife and I took his advice to “hop on a plane if you can” and were
rewarded with a splendid view of this spectacular phenomenon from Antigua. The
travel agent reacted in the same bemused manner as that depicted in your
accompanying cartoon.
I am most grateful, for I saw no information about this event anywhere else.
Perhaps it was as well that there was little publicity this side of the
Atlantic, otherwise all the planes might have been full. There were certainly
lots of eclipse watchers from North America, many of whom had no idea that there
will be a European eclipse next year. We are not yet a global village.
Letters : . . .
Huddersfield, Yorkshire
Over-accurate measurement has also been used in psychology. Shortly after
pocket calculators became available, the head of a local infant school was
recording reading quotients (reading age expressed as a percentage of
chronological age) to three decimal places.
Letters : . . .
Anthony.Hegedus@fin.rrd.com
I remember being in a restaurant last year where an item on the menu was
described as a “227-gramme fillet steak”. Obviously the item used to be a
half-pound steak, and after a directive to “go over” to metric, somebody made a
literal translation.
This is not quite as bad as a story my father told me. Back in the 1970s, he
was trying to buy wood panelling. He asked for 50 metres and the shop assistant
kindly informed him that the product was not sold by the metre, it was sold by
the unit. He asked how long a unit was, and back came the answer: “One
metre.”
Letters : After the dot
pjsmith@serjeants.co.uk
Following your correspondence on excessively precise values
(Letters, 7 March, p 56),
you might like to know that the speed limit on my local canal is
6.43 kilometres per hour.
Letters : Table talk
E_Lin@classic.msn.com
Feedback confesses that the story of Sabena Belgian World Airlines’ magnetic
tables was untrue
(7 March).
Urban myth or not, last week I did find this type of table on a train from
Frankfurt to Berlin. The warning should therefore not be for air travellers but
for users of certain German trains.
Weird also is the German airline Lufthansa’s warning against the use of
laptops with CD-ROM drives. The announcement says it is against federal laws to
use them on board. Yet there seem to be no restrictions on laptops that don’t
have CD-ROM drives. The specification of CD-ROM drives puzzles me, as no other
airline I have flown with has done so.
Do the Germans know something others don’t? Or is German airspace more
vulnerable to Class 1 lasers?
Letters : Time for a change?
Nunney, Somerset
The appellation “scientist” has passed its sell-by date. Witness the response
of our village postmaster to your magazine’s title. “New 杏吧原创?
Making atom bombs in your kitchen, har, har!”
Perhaps you could call your journa1 “New Ecologically Responsible Devotee of
Science”. The acronym, though, is unfortunate. Any other suggestions?
What do readers think? DoesNew 杏吧原创need a new name? If so,
suggestions please鈥擡d
Letters : Nonhuman bodies
Banbury, Oxfordshire
You will probably be getting lots of letters from indignant cataloguers about
your little gibe about authors that aren’t human
(Feedback, 7 March).
“Nonhuman authors” include “corporate bodies”鈥攖he bane of
librarianship students trying to make sense of literary responsibility.
The most notorious corporate body is probably Parliament鈥攁 body (you
can argue among yourselves about whether it is human or not) which cannot have a
personal name like Joe Snooks. “Parliament” is nevertheless the author of
Hansard, statutes, and so on. Other such bodies, which have spawned numerous
offspring, include international organisations such as the WHO and the UN.
When one of these bodies (or worse, one of its sub-bodies) puts out an annual
report, say, it has to be listed or catalogued under the name of the body, since
it would be lost forever if listed under the name of the typist who actually put
it together.
“Where authorship is less clear” refers (among others) to works written by a
person or a committee on behalf of a corporate body, and those produced by
subcommittees or by combination or succession of groups of people. How about the
Book of Common Prayer, for instance? (No, it is not listed under
“God”.) Or Gray’s Anatomy, which is umpteen editions away from Gray
himself?
If Feedback produced a book of essays celebrating the life of, say, the first
editor of New 杏吧原创, who should it be catalogued under? Feedback,
the chairman of the group who put it together, the compiler, the celebree (a new
word I have just made up) or the author of the first item in the collection?
Fortunately, these days most librarians have their cataloguing done for them,
but someone somewhere still has to decide these things in the first place. The
Library Association has produced a vast book of rules for such decisions.
Letters : Pretty romantic
hoenerlage@labor-keeser-arndt.de
London is not the only northern European city with a flock of green parrots
(Feedback, 28 February, and
Letters, 14 March, p 60). We have a flock of about
20 here in Hamburg, Germany. They seem to have lived happily in the valley of
the river Alster for years now.
The story is that a pair of them escaped a few years ago. The female was
recaptured, and the male sat alone and sad in front of her window. Out of pity,
the owners let the female go again.
A very romantic story. Hamburg loves them.
Letters : He ain't heavy
Boeretang, Belgium
I was really delighted to read about Mark Hadley’s view of general relativity
and quantum physics
(“All the world’s a time machine”, 7 March, p 38).
I share his opinion that gravitons do not exist.
In fact, this conclusion can also be reached by the following simple
reasoning: if gravitons exist, they must have a mass, because the gravitational
field itself gravitates (Einstein’s field equations are nonlinear). As a
consequence, gravitons would have to be exchanged between gravitons, and these
exchanged gravitons would in turn exchange gravitons, and so on. This would mean
that space is filled with an infinite number of gravitons, which would mean it
has an infinite mass.
Since this is impossible, gravitons cannot exist.
Letters : Come on, Eileen
eberst@cableinet.co.uk
I expect Eileen Collins will be surprised to learn that your Newswire column
has renamed her Arlene
(This Week, 14 March, p 7).
Letters : Honourable discharge
Wellington, New Zealand
With reference to your comment concerning the translation of a German
computer manual
(Feedback, 24 January),
the information is correct. When
installing a card or extra memory chips in a computer, it is necessary to
discharge yourself with respect to the computer, so you are both at the same
potential.
Computer technicians have wrist straps and the like for this, but us ordinary
mortals leave the computer plugged in, but with the power turned off at the wall
socket. The earth wire in the electrical flex is still connected and thus
ensures everything, including the operator, is at earth potential. Every piece
of equipment is first touched to the computer chassis and is then at earth
potential.
The German advice was spot-on.
Letters : Domestic males
ben.studios@paston.co.uk
I thought that Jan Reid might like to know that she got off lightly
(Letters, 7 March, p 56).
A good friend of mine had to go into hospital for a few days, leaving her
husband to fend for himself. To show he was up to the job, he decided to make
the house shipshape for her return. Visiting her in hospital two days later, he
proudly announced that he had been washing his clothes and had already done 15
washes. She was perplexed, as she thought she had hardly left an item
unwashed.
He explained that he had diligently read the instructions and that the label
on his favourite shirt stated “wash coloureds separately”. I was not told
whether he risked putting pairs of socks in together.
Letters : . . .
Innsbruck, Austria
When we were children, every time our cat had kittens she tried to take them
out of the house to the garden when they were a few weeks old.
It always seems a little cruel when cats carry their kittens by their necks,
so we took a kitten out to help the mother. But even though the cat saw all her
kittens in the garden, she “remembered” that she had left one behind.
Back in the house, she was very confused, and we had to bring a kitten back
to put things in order. So cats can probably only count up to one.
Letters : . . .
Leeds
Southern African farmers know that if you want to catch or surprise
crop-raiding monkeys or apes, four people must go into the crop and three
emerge.
Letters : Counting crows
Penrith, Cumbria
Your article about counting abilities reminded me of when a friend of mine
used to go shooting crows
(“It all adds up”, 7 March, p 42).
If the crows saw him coming with a gun, they would all fly off and stay out
of range until he went away. He tried hiding in some trees, but the crows stayed
out of range until he came out. Then he got a friend of his to go and hide in
the trees with him for a few minutes. When his friend came out of the trees, the
crows returned鈥攁nd got shot.
I think this shows that crows can count to one, but not two.
Letters : Typecast
Sheffield
Further to Frank Harburn’s observations on graduate unemployment
(Letters, 7 March, p 54),
as a recent graduate with a 2:1 in environmental biology, I have
discovered that there are two types of job in the world of science.
First, there is the “type A” job, the menial laboratory position (salary
about 拢9000 a year) that requires applicants to possess a relevant BTEC
and GCSE maths. Then there is the “type B” job, the science position (starting
salary about 拢11 000) that requires a good degree and at least two years’
experience.
I can’t get a type A job as I am overqualified and “will just leave when a
better job comes along”. I am therefore unable to gain the experience required
for a type B job. It seems that I am unemployable in my chosen field.
Until employers realise that they can pay a qualified scientist peanuts to do
a menial job for at least the two years needed to gain experience, I will
continue to be unemployed.
Letters : Best of luck
Glasgow
What a coincidence! We received two premium bonds together with New
杏吧原创 and the birth of our twin girls
(Letters, 28 February, p 53).
That was a lucky day!
Letters : The longest month
Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire
In the item on CompuServe’s “750 free hours in a month” offer
(Feedback, 14 March),
you give the maximum length of a month as being 744 hours.
This isn’t correct. The true maximum length in Britain is 745 hours in
October, as this has a 25-hour day when the clocks are put back.