Letter
The work of Ladislav Kovsc, a pioneer in the field of dyscalculia, and a
review of the literature on dyscalculia by M. Sharma, can be found in the 1986
summer edition of the journal Focus鈥擮n Learning Difficulties in
Mathematics, which is published by the Center for Teaching in Framingham,
Massachusetts.
Books on the subject include Dyslexia and Mathematics by T. and E.
Miles and Mathematics for Dyslexics: A Teaching Handbook by S. Chin and
J. Ashcroft.
Best of all brands
So lactoferrin can protect against endotoxin-induced shock in piglets
(In Brief, 25 April, p 23).
Great. Imagine my shock reading that Yoon Kim, the
researcher who discovered this, “hopes that formula containing lactoferrin might
be used to treat newborn infants who are at high risk of septic shock”.
In any up-to-date neonatal intensive care unit aware of the many hundreds of
bioactive components of milk, the serious and sometimes lethal consequences of
neonatal exposure to foreign antigens, and of the WHO’s recommendations about
infant feeding, such a formula is already in use. It’s called mothers’ milk.
Perhaps New 杏吧原创 needs to educate its readership as to the
extraordinary properties of this particular brand, which is regrettably not the
market leader in the US or Britain for reasons best understood in commercial,
not scientific, terms. Every year over a million children die for want of the
remarkable substance that is breast milk, and some of those deaths are in
high-tech American hospitals where bovine or vegetable-based formula is used,
with or without lactoferrin. It is a preventable annual holocaust, as one rabbi
said at a conference in Melbourne in 1993.
By the way, I understand that some experts are very cautious about adding
lactoferrin to formula, which companies have been experimenting with since the
early 1990s, as it might interfere with micronutrient absorption, for
example.
The article should have read “formula containing higher levels of
lactoferrin than breast milk”鈥擡d
Papers as PR
Your article on the commercial funding of science and scientists described an
editorial written by doctors with a vested interest in the drug they were espousing
(This Week, 9 May, p 18).
It is worth noting that there are other times when it is not even the
scientists who write these articles. Instead, they are written by the company,
or an agency employed by the company, and then submitted by the alleged
authors.
This is important because when the company chooses to put a heavy spin on the
article, there is more pressure on the authors to acquiesce. It is not simply a
case of the authors actively writing a piece which supports the company’s
position. They must, if they disagree with the piece, actively oppose the
company which provides their funding. It takes a very resolute person to do
this. If their objections are to the details and not the fundamentals, they will
usually find it easier to keep quiet.
I speak from experience, as I am employed by an agency that ghostwrites
scientific papers.
Caged aggression
The study of aggression in hens kept in slightly larger cages than the
standard battery cages
(This Week, 25 April, p 13)
shows that a piecemeal approach to animal welfare solves nothing.
The legal minimum floor space for a hen in a battery cage is 450 square
centimetres鈥攍ess than an A4 sheet of paper. The birds are crammed together
so tightly that most normal behaviours, such as nest building and wing flapping,
are impossible. The 300 million hens kept in European battery cages cannot even
display the aggression which is symptomatic of a seriously impoverished
environment.
This is not to say that hens should be kept in conditions where they are able
and likely to express aggressive behaviour. Rather, hens should be kept in an
environment that meets their welfare needs, such as in free-range and other
systems where the hens are kept in small loose flocks.
The European Commission’s Scientific Veterinary Committee condemned cages as
having “inherent severe disadvantages for the welfare of hens”. In view of this,
Compassion in World Farming believes that the European proposals on laying hens
should be strengthened and battery cages phased out.
Tobacco talk
The suspicions regarding the manipulation of a scientific meeting
(This Week, 2 May, p 22) justify some clarification.
Organising workshops to evaluate the scientific evidence concerning risks is
an important activity of environmental medicine, and over the years I have
organised about 20 such workshops on different subjects. I was unable to comment
before New 杏吧原创 went to press because I was running a workshop in
Washington DC on children’s health and mould exposure.
When the debate on environmental tobacco smoke started in the late 1970s, I
made plans for an international workshop. Traditional research foundations
showed no interest in sponsoring it and we finally approached the industry,
which gave support through the Tobacco Institute.
During the organisational work, I met with Donald Hoel, the representative of
the institute, and we discussed the format and the participants. I decided not
to invite Takeshi Hirayama because his data were already well known at that
time, and had been extensively discussed both in the scientific and popular
press.
I decided instead to invite two other scientists who were able to present
unpublished data from ongoing studies, thus adding extra and up-to-date
information. The seven studies on cancer available at that time (including
Hirayama’s) were extensively discussed during the workshop.
The results from the workshop were published in 1984 in the European
Journal of Respiratory Diseases (vol 65, p 1) and were at that time
considered the most thorough review of the subject. That some of the findings
might have been modified after another 15 years of intensive research is hardly
surprising.
The time gap also sheds light on the development of antagonism to the tobacco
industry鈥攊n the early 1970s, a workgroup was run by the National Cancer
Institute in the US and the tobacco industry, in which several scientists of
high repute participated, with the goal of developing a safer cigarette. This
contrasts with the almost pariah-like view of tobacco industry contacts
reflected in your article.
Tyre townships
Tam Dalyell writes of the difficulty of dealing with used tyres, and also of
the loss of lobster habitat in northern seas because of the destruction of reefs
(Forum, 9 May, p 55).
The solution to both problems is simple: create artificial reefs made of old
tyres. These are an ideal habitat for lobsters, whose populations are limited by
the availability of suitable crannies in which to hide. Tyres can be dumped onto
seamounts off the shipping lanes, buoyed and marked on charts, and will in due
course become veritable lobster cities (as many wrecks are) to be exploited by
local small-boat fishermen.
Letter
I recently witnessed in West African countries many splendid examples of what
used tyres can be made into: shoes, buckets, brightly coloured jewellery,
anti-insect door hangings, cooking implements, and so on. Not only tyres, but
just about any non-decaying materials are intelligently used and re-used many
times, showing up in products that are astounding in their practicality and
attractiveness, and sometimes in their whimsy and artistry.
Digital disaster
Most engineers in the broadcasting industry are well aware that the sound and
picture quality of digital television are likely to be considerably lower than
those of the current analogue systems
(This Week, 2 May, p 7).
Digital TV is designed to allow more channels, with pay-per-view and
conditional access, and has nothing to do with providing higher quality
anything.
How many viewers realise that they will not be able to record one digital
programme whilst viewing another, a facility we now take for granted? Do viewers
who live near the Welsh or Scottish borders, or those in Ireland who can pick up
British TV, realise that the programmes they currently watch may be unavailable
because their postcodes will identify them as living in the wrong area?
Letter
European viewers have already tuned in to digital sound. Digital TV has been
available in France for over two years and there are now well over a million
subscribers. Digital TV is also available in Italy, Spain, Germany and
Scandinavia, via both cable and satellite.
It is Britain that will discover the joys or otherwise of digital TV this
year, not “Europe”.
Planetary flatulence
“It was the Earth’s biggest ever fart,” begins Fred Pearce’s article “Winds of change”
(2 May, p 34). Then comes the line: “Between a half and two-thirds of
all bottom-dwelling animals disappeared.”
Well, I’m not surprised. Motto: don’t set up house in the bowels of the Earth.
Letter
We hope that Roger Silvester will be pleased to learn that the condition
which he described as “dysnumeracy” is recognised. It is called dyscalculia.
Silvester is quite correct when he says that little has been written about
the subject, but we do have a leaflet available for 拢1 and may be able to
help him or other readers further if they would like to call our helpline on
0118 935 1927 between 10 am and 12.45 pm or 2 and 4.45 pm.
Out for the count
Roger Silvester asks if anyone else suffers from dysnumeracy
(Letters, 9 May, p 58).
I have suffered from this condition all my life and am often being
reprimanded for being inattentive when asked to repeat values I had been told
seconds earlier. I have a chemistry degree and work as a development chemist,
so, like Silvester, I know I’m not stupid.
I too failed my maths O level twice and passed the third exam only because I
did mechanics. I have great difficulty with arithmetic that exceeds what I
learnt verbally as a child and yet I can quite easily remember anything using an
equation.
I once read an article about dyslexia that said dyslexia could be overcome by
spelling letters and words out loud and writing them down at the same time. It
would seem that a similar mechanism applies in dysnumeracy, as I could tell you
if two numbers were of similar magnitude if they were spoken, but wouldn’t be
able to relay that information if I had read them in a report.
My brother is dyslexic and I would be interested to know if anyone else with
dysnumeracy has dyslexic siblings (or parents).
Absurd accuracy
In the same issue that several readers discussed excessive precision
(Letters, 2 May, p 53) there was a report
(This Week, p 13) about a satellite to
be launched in 2001 that would have an orbit that would decay so slowly that it
“will fall back to Earth in 52 001”. Are orbit calculations really that
accurate?
I’m inclined to think that the initial orbit calculations referred to the
satellite falling back to Earth in “about 50 000 years” or “not before 50 000
years have passed”.
I also doubt that the satellite’s cargo of 80 CDs could contain “the complete
human knowledge”, but the fact that your reporter included these words in quotes
suggests that they have similar doubts.
Poison plates
I was interested to read
(This Week, 2 May, p 20) that people who eat off
antique ceramic tableware could absorb large amounts of lead.
The article states that the lead comes mainly from the paints. I would have
thought that this was unlikely, given that only part of the surface was
decorated and that before 1900 virtually all glazes (as opposed to paints)
contained large amounts of raw lead compounds鈥攐ften including “white lead”
(lead carbonate). It was widely recognised that the “dippers” who applied the
glaze to the rough biscuit ware were likely to absorb large quantities of lead
through their abraded skin, suffer from poisoning and, in many cases, an early
death.
Around the turn of the century, legislation was introduced which required the
glaze ingredients to be “fritted”鈥攆used into a low melting point glass.
This was ground in water to make a glaze mixture in which the (still high) lead
content was not in a form which could be easily absorbed. There was a steep
decline in deaths from lead poisoning in the pottery industry soon
afterwards.
Red for rats
Human mucus secretions are indeed often green
(Last Word, 25 April).
However, it is a little known fact (including, apparently, the authors of
many books on pet care) that the mucus secretions of domestic rats are red in
colour, even when they are healthy. I can vouch for this, having rushed my pet
rat to the vet with an apparent nose bleed.
CD firework
I was surprised that in the recent discussion covering uses for old and unwanted CDs
(Letters, 9 May, p 58), nobody seems to have mentioned
microwaving.
Simply place the offending disc in the microwave (shiny side up), turn out
the lights and switch on. Within a few seconds there’s an impressive “KZZZZAT”,
and blue lightning plays briefly across the surface of the CD. The disc’s
surface cracks in an aesthetically pleasing crazy paving/dried riverbed
pattern.
Not exactly useful, but very satisfying.
Letter
Leeds City Council regularly advertises vacancies for which the wage is
拢3.99950 per hour. Although the last decimal figure is zero, this still
represents a payment calculation to a thousandth of a penny.
Clarification:
The article on the theory that stone hand axes were made for sexual display
(This Week, 9 May, p 16) should have pointed out that
the theory was developed jointly by London-based scientist Marek Kohn and Steven
Mithen of the University of Reading.