Breathe easy
Your article on Tyrannosaurus rex gave details of an experiment on
breathing ability
(“The dinosaur detectives”, 18 April, p 24).
It was stated that CAT scans of several types of dinosaur skull revealed
narrow nasal passages. I could find no mention of the oxygen levels in the
atmosphere at the time that these creatures lived. Wouldn’t raised levels of
oxygen have had an effect on breathing?
I am sure that anyone attempting to climb Everest would be well aware of the
difference oxygen levels can make.
Justice for Java
Like many others, Mark Ward makes the mistake of confusing Java, the powerful
language environment created by Sun, with JavaScript, the Web-scripting language
created by Netscape
(This Week, 25 April, p 5).
It is the latter that is used widely in Web pages to provide animated
graphics and that poses a security threat (along with other Web-scripting
languages) when run by the SCRRUN.DLL interpreter in Windows 98.
Java applets run inside the Java Virtual Machine. This has an elegant
security mechanism which prevents applets from remote machines accessing local
resources.
Torch song
I found the article on the preheated gas torch
(This Week, 18 April, p 6) of
great interest, but the idea is not new. A similar torch, using air and gas from
the public supply rather than propane, was invented by the late C. R. Burch over
forty years ago.
Burch was a friend, colleague and neighbour of mine, and the ability of his
torch to melt iron was demonstrated by an iron lid mounted on his front gate.
His house number was indicated by holes melted in the lid with the torch.
Patents were taken out in 1952 and 1953, and I understand that the torch was
on the market for a short time.
Wild and edible
The article on wild cherry saplings to be planted in Gloucestershire for
their wood states that “the fruit is inedible”
(This Week, 18 April, p 17). This
is not entirely true. Jam made with wild cherries is absolutely delicious. It
would be a pity only to make use of the wood.
Quantum determinism
Nineteenth-century physicists believed they had science all wrapped up. As we
all know, they were wrong. I believe that nominative determinism 鈥攖he
tendency of people to gravitate towards areas of work that fit their
names鈥攊s in a similar state of affairs
(Feedback, 25 April).
Fortean Times has an interesting piece in its May issue about a
llama/camel hybrid which in itself should be of interest to New
杏吧原创 readers. However, this miracle of biotechnology has been brought
about by artificial insemination at the Camel Reproduction Centre in Dubai by
one Lulu Skidmore.
We can only speculate about the nominative forces and counter-forces that
have been in play here. Which career would a Lulu Skidmore naturally gravitate
towards by the simple laws of Newtonian nominative determinism? Car racing?
Biker gangs? Or something even more lurid? Instead, we find her quietly
inseminating camels in Dubai.
I believe there are deeper principles at work here than mere nominative
determinism. Maybe the nominative Universe is fundamentally non-deterministic
after all? Do we see the beginnings of quantum nominative determinism here?
Letter
Following correspondence about people whose names sound like their jobs, may
I suggest a similar study for the information age: Web addresses that sound like
their content.
For example, rather than visit the New Mexico Museum of Natural History
website to hear the sounds made by dinosaurs
(“The dinosaur detectives”, 18 April 1998, p 24),
surfers could conserve bandwidth by simply trying to pronounce
www.nmmnh-abq.mus.nm.us/nmmnh/nmmnh.html aloud.
In extra time
Having just read a recent copy of New 杏吧原创
(This Week, 4 April 1998, p 21),
I am now aware that El Ni帽o is responsible for slowing down
the Earth’s rotation, making days last longer by almost half a millisecond.
What the article neglected to mention is that this additional time exists
during office hours on weekdays, and while waiting for the kettle to boil for
the first coffee of the day at weekends.
Over the top?
Your article on exposure to radiation in the womb, such as medical X-rays, is
a classic example of why arguments over radiation doses remain in the emotional
rather than the factual arena
(This Week, 18 April, p 4). Bruce Kimler’s
experiment irradiating rat fetuses with “just 62.5 milligrays” (more than 60
times the dose of interest, given that a series of pelvic X-rays on humans gives
a dose of 1 milligray) leads him to believe that even minuscule doses will have
an effect on brain development.
By the same argument I could expose a rat fetus (or an adult, come to that)
to 320 掳C and conclude that a 5-degree increase in room temperature could
lead to boiled blood, charred skin and a barbecued appearance in humans.
Using statistics like 2000 out of 100 000 rather than 2 in 100 (or 2 per
cent) is equally emotive and not worthy of a scientific journal that is usually
unbiased.
Letter
It is usual to express average exposure to radiation in millisieverts per
year, not milligrays per year as in your story. The former takes into account
the effects of different types of radiation. The average total dose most people
are exposed to is about 2.2 millisieverts per year, which would only be the same
in milligrays per year if all the radiation were beta and gamma rays.
The sources you list for this radiation are strangely selected. Ground
sources constitute only 14 per cent, while the nuclear industry accounts for
less that 0.1 per cent (and atmospheric bomb tests only 0.4 per cent). Medical
X-rays account for about 12 per cent (not up to 50 per cent as you claim). But
why not mention that nearly half comes from radon and thoron in our homes, or
that 10 per cent is derived from cosmic rays?
Religious atheists
As a lecturer whose teaching includes the philosophy of science and
science-religion issues, I read with interest your recent editorial on the
evolution versus “creation science” debate
(Editorial, 18 April, p 3).
As a traditional evangelical Christian, I firmly believe (as I understand you
do) that science and metaphysics should be kept separate. This is the Baconian
tradition on which Western science has largely been built, and was held by the
overwhelming majority of the many famous scientists who have been Christians.
Creation science does tend to mix up the two. I find, however, that the
pillars of evangelical atheism like Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins do just the
same鈥攎ix up apparently “scientific” ideas with metaphysical words like
“purposeless”, “chance” and “blind”.
Interestingly, the American National Association of Biology Teachers was
prevailed upon last autumn to drop the words “impersonal” and “unsupervised”
from its official description of evolution, precisely because it recognised that
these are metaphysical and not scientific terms. Let us hope that British
textbooks eventually catch up with this.
Your editorial, however, makes several extraordinary suggestions. One is that
“cosmologists might argue that God’s job would have to end at the big
bang”鈥攊mplying a picture of a God who only sets things off and then lets
them run on their own. But Christian theists believe that God is responsible for
the continuation of all reality.
Secondly, you suggest that since there is more than one view of creation none
of them can be taught. But why not teach all the main ones, and let people
decide?
Thirdly, you see the multiplicity of religious views as an “obstacle to
believing in any of them”. But atheism is also a “religious view” (held with
great faith and tenacity by some of its adherents). As humans we cannot avoid
making a decision on “religion”鈥攖o live as though there is no God
implicitly adopts a religion of godlessness.
Finally, you suggest that “religion has fixed tenets” whereas “science asks
endless questions”. Surely, however, there are also what come to be fixed tenets
in science, and there are always aspects of open quest in religion?
Cattle fodder
In your story about the uses of chicken feathers
(This Week, 11 April, p 16),
I noticed the sentence: “At present, the feathers are mostly autoclaved to
produce a low-value feedstuff for poultry and cattle.”
We have already had the scandal of BSE, with cattle fed on infected sheep
remains. Is there a chicken disease that cows could catch as well?
In my innocence, I thought that cows ate grass. Perhaps they are also fed on
minced-up old mattresses, sawdust, sweepings from hairdressers’ floors, old
tyres鈥攁nything so that they can be fed as cheaply as possible.
Icy Australia
I read with interest your article on the dinosaur remains discovered at Flat
Rock, 150 kilometres southeast of Melbourne and, in particular, the suggestion
by Tony Thulborn that the poles were not as cold in the Cretaceous as has been suggested
(This Week, 18 April, p 13).
I was recently walking along a cliff path not far from Adelaide when I was
excited to see clear evidence of a glaciated pavement where the softer upper
sediments had slumped into the sea. This striated pavement was exactly the same
as those seen in the Highlands of Scotland, dating from the cold Quaternary.
The overlying sediments in the Australian section were stratified water-laid
sediments consisting of gravels of various degrees of coarseness which I took to
be shallow lake deposits laid down in a freeze-thaw process.
On the map that accompanies the article this would have put this exposure at
around 70掳 South, close to the then pole. I have no doubt that more
experienced field workers in Australia will confirm that there was a glacial
period in Australia during the Cretaceous.
Infinite difference
At the beginning of your feature on the role of nothing in mathematics
(“Zero, zilch and zip”, 25 April, p 40)
appears “the `proof’ that 1 = 2 because both equal 0 when they are divided by 0”.
Not so. They would both equal infinity. The “proof” actually depends on 1 脳 0
= 2 脳 0.
Endless saga
I was interested to read your In Brief story on the latest in the war against bacteria
(18 April, p 23). So this time the good guys (us) have created a
beta-lactamase blocker that prevents the bad guys (bacteria) from producing the
enzyme that stops penicillin from preventing the bacteria from creating its
outer shell.
I wonder where it will all end? If we continually force bacteria to mutate
through “unnatural selection”, then I can’t see how it can end.
I predict that in 10 years’ time, the same sentence describing the latest in
the never-ending struggle against bacteria will be a page long and people will
be turning blue trying to say it in one breath.
Perhaps it is time to take a different tack?