Letter
“Insect” derives from the descriptive Latin term for an animal characterised
by transverse constrictions, literally cuts, between head, thorax and abdomen.
“Entomos” is exactly the same in Greek but it has never been used as a
substantive.
However, the derivative “entomological” is a perfect adjective for the
substantive “insect”; it carries exactly the same meaning and, moreover, it is
already in common usage and does not convey the aftertaste of “similar to” as
insectoid does.
Letter
Your article on sugar and alcoholism states that a simple test can identify
85 per cent of alcoholics
(This Week, 30 May, p 25). I have a test that can
identify 100 per cent of alcoholics: if they are male or female, then they are
alcoholics, otherwise they are not. (Unfortunately my test at present identifies
a lot of people as being alcoholics when they’re not.)
Later in the article, it is stated that the test correctly classified 66 out
of 78 volunteers, one-third of whom were alcoholics. This comes out to 85 per
cent. On this group, my test would have a success rate of only 33 per cent, but
on a group containing only alcoholics, it would do much better than the sugar
test.
The point is, the quality of a test is a function of both its false negative
rate (alcoholics identified as non-alcoholics) and its false positive rate
(non-alcoholics identified as alcoholics). The article doesn’t give either.
Fickle figures
In reporting that about 85 per cent of South African vehicles fitted with the
Tracker system have been recovered, Mark Symons unwittingly gives another
example of the need to place statistics in context
(Letters, 20 June, p 56).
Assuming a constant installation rate, his figures imply a theft rate over an
unknown time period of about 7.5 per cent of fitted vehicles, of which about 85
per cent are recovered. Useful conclusions cannot be reached from these figures
without knowing what the theft and recovery rates are for unfitted vehicles over
the same period and area.
In Tasmania, where a tracking system is not yet available, annual thefts are
around 1 per cent for around 250 000 vehicles. The recovery rate is about 95 per
cent. There are many advantages to living on an island. This is one of them.
Well reviewed
The largely informative report issue concerning the initial flight of the
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) experiment on the space shuttle Discovery
contained the statement that the “project was not subjected to formal peer
review”
(This Week, 20 June, p 5).
The AMS experiment was flown by NASA as a Department of Energy (DOE) payload
under a long-standing NASA/DOE agreement on the utilisation of the space shuttle
and space station. DOE was responsible for all aspects of payload preparation,
including peer review of the experiment and funding of the US share of AMS
construction.
AMS was reviewed for DOE by a panel of distinguished particle physicists and
space physicists which strongly endorsed the scientific merit. Only after this
step and the demonstration of the technical feasibility of the project did NASA
schedule the mission. This type of arrangement between NASA and another agency
is by no means unique. For example, NASA has flown payloads for the European
Space Agency (ESA) with very similar division of responsibility, including ESA
being responsible for the peer review.
Peer review is the scientific community’s way of ensuring excellence, and AMS
is no exception. We look forward to the results from this unique and important
experiment.
Favoured by fire
It is labouring the point to explain the present distribution of the redwoods
by differences in mycorrhizal fungi or water transporting ability. There is
little experimental support for either
(“How the north was won”, 20 June, p 34).
It has long been known that adult sequoias and coastal redwoods are
specifically fire-tolerant and that they need fire to aid germination and
establishment. By contrast, most of the firs and pines with which they grow are
sensitive to fire.
The obstruction of the proto-Gulf Stream would have reduced transpiration and
probably increased rainfall, making fire less frequent and favouring
regeneration of pines and firs. When occasional dry years came, there would have
been an accumulation of fuel so that fire would devastate the tree community,
favouring the spread of grass-shrub cover.
Bottomland trees such as swamp cypress need a long warm summer and the dawn
redwood is frost-sensitive. The climatic shift would have directly disadvantaged
both species.
This explanation, based on silvicultural experience and forestry practice,
seems less speculative.
Algal warming
Haven’t the people who promote the idea of encouraging algal growth to reduce
global warming missed something
(This Week, 20 June, p 10)? All that biological
activity depends on photosynthesis, which involves absorbing energy from the
sunlight.
So it will make the oceans warmer as a result, encouraging convection and
whipping up storms, while hastening鈥攇lobal warming.
Blindingly silly
With reference to your article concerning the construction of space mirrors
to illuminate cities at night
(This Week, 20 June, p 4), although I sympathise
with the plight of the astronomers, and have enjoyed star-studded moonless
nights, there are surely other side effects just as, if not more, important.
The time of year that many species moult is determined by the amount of
daylight, and others either navigate using the Moon or time their spawning by
the full Moon. Perhaps some of the biologists in your readership could describe
the effects that up to 200 “full Moons” in permanent orbit would have on the
ecology. It sounds to me as if it could be disastrous.
Letter
There is increasing evidence of marine mammals becoming disoriented by
existing sonic sources (such as sonar) and becoming lost or, even worse, beached
as a result.
Is this technology so vital that we must swamp the oceans with even more
confusing signals?
Unsound idea
I was very impressed with your announcement that data will now be transmitted
through water on the same frequency that dolphins use
(This Week, 27 June, p 14).
It strikes me that this is somewhat analogous to cetaceans using huge Tannoy
systems to transmit their digitised data over the land.
Has the Newcastle team considered the impact of their invention on the rather
sensitive ears of dolphins and friends?
Letter
Reg Varney starred in On the Buses, Mutiny on the Buses and
Holiday on the Buses alongside Michael Robbins; Michael Robbins
appeared as a security guard in The Great Muppet Caper, which also
featured John Cleese; John Cleese appeared in Kenneth Branagh’s Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein, starring Robert de Niro as the monster; Robert de
Niro appeared in Sleepers alongside the one and only Kevin Bacon. Do I
win a prize?
Sadly, no you don’t. But thanks for these and the many other solutions
offered to this problem. This correspondence is now closed鈥擡d
Letter
One possible solution is: Reg Varney to Barbara Windsor (Mutiny on the
Buses) to Jim Dale (Carry on Doctor) to Rik Mayall (Carry on
Columbus) to Carrie Fisher (Drop Dead Fred) to Tom Hanks (The
Burbs) to Kevin Bacon (Apollo 13).
Ubiquitous Varney
Maewyn Cummings reports that a major film buff was unable to link Reg Varney
with Kevin Bacon
(Letters, 4 July, p 54).
The “Oracle of Bacon at Virginia” (http://www.cs.
virginia.edu/~bct7m/bacon. html) gives him a Bacon number of three.
Reg Varney was in The Great St. Trinian’s Train Robbery (1966) with
George Cole; George Cole was in Mary Reilly (1996) with Julia Roberts;
Julia Roberts was in Flatliners (1990) with Kevin Bacon.
It remains a surprisingly small world.
Blinking good advice
I noticed your piece about Hewlett-Packard’s advice to blink periodically
(Feedback, 27 June).
This isn’t as daft as it sounds. An increasing number of people are visiting
their doctors because of “dry-eye”鈥� the eyes become itchy, due to lack of
moisture on the surface of the eyeball.
When using a computer, there is a tendency to stare at the screen and not
blink as much as usual, hence the reminder to blink occasionally, which wipes a
film of tears over the eyeball.
I have even heard of some IT departments incorporating a small programme to
flash “BLINK” on users’ screens periodically as a reminder.
Real-time shopping
There is one way in which online shopping could provide a socially useful
service, save energy, and rejuvenate the village shop
(Letters, 20 June, p 54).
Suppose a large supermarket provides and pays for a virtual shopping facility
in a small local shop. Enough screens would be provided to give customers time
to browse. Then local shoppers, including the carless and infirm, can place an
order there for their weekly groceries and pay over the counter.
The supermarket packs the orders at its nearest branch and delivers in boxes
or returnable trays to the shop. The shopkeeper then breaks out the orders and
delivers to the customer’s home, or pages the customer that the goods are ready
to collect.
For everyday needs such as milk and fresh bread, the customer benefits from
the convenience of a local shop, which might not be viable without this extra
trade. They also have the advantage of weekly choice from the large range
carried by the supermarket without the trouble, expense and extra fuel
consumption of a car ride.
The customer also can also use a top-of-the-range virtual shopping interface
without the expense of having one at home. Combination with other retailers
selling DIY, electrical goods, clothes etc. would enable the supermarket
fronting the operation to make a small local shop capable of selling any
product, large or small, in a virtual shopping mall with the
size and ambience of a corner shop.
This might even provide a payoff for the hunter-gatherer sufficient to
overcome the entirely sensible objections to virtual shopping raised by Tim Bradshaw
(Letters, 20 June p 54). Distribution is the key. Except in the special
cases of computer software, information and entertainment, a virtual shop still
has to resolve how to deliver real goods.
Letter
“Insectoid” won’t really do as the standard adjective for insects, because it
means “having the form of an insect” and could equally apply to a six-legged
walking machine, for example.
If I had to make up a word, I would go for “insectal”, which isn’t in the
dictionary either.
But there’s no difficulty in continuing to use the word as its own adjective.
There is no adjective for “plant” either, and no one complains about having to
use this as an adjective (“plant life”).
Letter
The OED gives the etymologically correct “insectile”, which seems well-enough
established, if not often used.
Insectish
Of course there’s an adjectival form of the word “insect”
(Feedback, 4 July).
滨迟’蝉鈥攅谤鈥�”颈苍蝉别肠迟”.
A word’s function is defined by what it is used for, and the form “insect” is
used as an adjective as well as a noun. We say “mammalian growth”, “bacterial
growth”, and “insect growth”.
It’s not particularly unusual for a word to fill more than one role. Would
you suggest that because “sheep” fills the role of both singular and plural that
there is therefore no plural of “sheep” and we should invent one?
On the Web
When my Apple Mac started behaving erratically recently I was amazed to
discover that the cause of the problem had been a spider’s nest.
Apparently the strong cooling fan had been drawing fluff and dust from the
room into the computer, providing the spiders with a perfect environment to live
in.
Dust and fluff provided material for their nest, and because the computer ran
almost 24 hours a day they had warm and dry conditions as well. Intrigued, I
decided to use the Internet to attempt to find any other people with similar
experiences. I was unable to find any record of such events since the “original”
bugs in the huge computers of the 1950s, which gave rise to the present day
useage of the word.
Have other readers discovered animals causing their computers to malfunction?
Or have computers been immune to invasion since the fifties? Will problems like
mine become more common as yet more computers become “connected to the Web”?
Letter
I am a brilliant but impecunious installation artist and I am trying to
collect enough CDs to make a new piece which fuses art and technology.
My problem is that due to the scale of the project, I am several thousand CDs
short of the required number. I can offer a genuine, caring and productive home
for your readers’ unwanted discs. All donors should receive an invitation to the
first showing of the piece.
Disc decor
I know I am rather late, but I just saw a copy of New 杏吧原创, 9
May. There are many letters on uses for CDs
(p 58).
I just thought that I should tell you that I have used around 14 000 CDs to
plaster my bedroom wall.
Paths of least effort
Chris Kuether wonders why campus designers don’t let pedestrians determine
where walkways should go
(Letters, 13 June, p 52).
I remember a newly appointed dean of a US university faculty ordering that
the campus paving, which was arranged in a formal geometrical pattern and seldom
used, be torn up, returned to grass and new paving laid on the paths of least
effort eroded by generations of students and staff in their movements between
doors, gateways and social foci.
Venerable journal
I was pleased to see reference to an article published in Current
Biology and not surprised that the journal is considered so venerable that
it could already have reached volume 149
(This Week, 20 June, p 18).
However, the correct reference to the article on dyslexia that is referred to
is volume 8, p 791. This article is available online at
http://biomednet.com/library/cub and appears in the 2 July issue of the
journal.
Letter
An alternative, and more thorough method of dealing with the landmine problem
could be to exploit the thermal capacitance of mines to pinpoint their
location.
This system involves heat-soaking an area of Earth at night-time from a
helicopter 150 metres up with a high-intensity military flash weapon. The mine
will interrupt the heat-soak profile of the flash into the ground. Thus the mine
will produce a signature to an infrared night scope.
Once identified, the mine can be dispatched on the spot by rifle (although
the resultant blast will spoil the system for a period). Alternatively, the mine
could be marked using a rifle-fired dye cartridge and dealt with the following
day.
Soundly destroyed
Lawrie Lyons suggests destroying landmines with by sonic boom from aircraft
(Letters, 27 June, p 54).
Sorry, it’s not that easy. The new landmines (the ones that contain just
enough explosive to maim but not kill and cost about 50 cents each with a bulk
discount) incorporate a “leaky dash pot” mechanism that requires quite a long
application of pressure compared to the pulse of a shock wave from an
aircraft.
This was originally designed to prevent an explosion triggering any adjacent
mines. Clever, aren’t we.
Counting shy birds
Paul Clark is quite right to point out that the mark-and-recapture method
depends on all individuals having an equal chance of being recaptured
(Letters, 20 June, p 55).
In fact all ecological census methods incorporate that
assumption in some form or other.
I’m doing a lot of work on passerine bird census methods and they are all
based on the assumption that all species are equally observable. This is clearly
not the case, as some species of passerines (particularly warblers) are
notorious for being very shy and the presence of observers can skew results
because they scare individuals away. Other species have the opposite problem of
being too bold and could be counted twice.
The keys to reducing the errors to a statistically acceptable level are to
use skilled observers and standardise the search method.
For particularly shy/rare species you can use more specialised methods. For
example, British ornithologists use the characteristics of individual calls to
count the number of bitterns.
As with all research you have to admit to the shortcomings of your method and
account for them in the discussion of your results.