No pet projects
Tam Dalyell highlights the Wellcome Trust’s contribution of 拢300 million to
the Joint Infrastructure Fund (JIF) to build up British universities’ research facilities
(Thistle Diary, 19 September, p 53).
Questions were asked in Parliament about whether this money could be used
freely, or would be spent on the trust’s “pet projects”.
I think it is important to say that this is a one-off injection of funds by
the Wellcome Trust to boost universities’ infrastructure and it is for three
years only, the period of the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review.
The contribution by the Wellcome Trust must be used for biomedical research,
as stated in the terms of Henry Wellcome’s will. However, the process by which
grants are awarded under the JIF initiative is completely independent of the
Trust’s own funding mechanisms and will use a procedure developed jointly with
the Office of Science and Technology, and agreed by a joint executive committee
comprising chief executives of the research councils as well as representatives
from the Wellcome Trust.
We have no “pet projects” earmarked for JIF, and we certainly do not wish to
influence JIF funding decisions towards our own interests. Applications to the
JIF, like the trust’s own funding processes, are subject to independent peer
review, and will be assessed by an international scientific advisory board.
The call for applications will be announced shortly, and we look forward to
receiving a diverse range of proposals that will make a huge difference to
British science.
Spuds' cousins
You report that the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment has
approved trials of potatoes containing virus resistant genes because
“potatoes have no wild relatives in Britain”
(This Week, 12 September, p 21).
I have had a lot of woody nightshade (Solanum dulcamara) in my
garden, and Keble Martin’s New Concise British Flora lists 11 species
that, like the potato, belong to the Solanaceae family, including deadly
nightshade (Atropa belladonna), black nightshade (Solanum
nigrum) and henbane (Hyoscyamus niger).
Evidently, the ACRE is not really “into” British flora.
Nasty foreign words
Readers might like to know the origins of the soon-to-be obsolete Ecu
referred to by Nigel Depledge
(Letters, 5 September, p 56).
In the early 1980s, a certain lady Prime Minister was attending talks in
Europe, at which this currency was to be named. Any use of a foreign word such
as “mark” or “franc” was vigorously opposed by the lady in question.
Finally, a compromise was suggested by a diplomatic French delegate鈥攁s
a concession to British sensibilities, they would refer to the money as the
European Currency Unit. When convenient, this could be abbreviated to Ecu. The
deal was cordially agreed forthwith.
However, this delegate took care not to point out that as far as the French
were concerned, Ecu was neither an acronym nor an abbreviation. Rather, it was a
well established French currency of previous centuries, equivalent to the
English word “crown”. No one in the British party cared to enlighten the Iron
Lady until they were safely back in Downing Street. Her subsequent reaction is
not recorded.
Vertical water
Sharon Basson asks what could disorient mayflies so much that they confused
mirror glass with expanses of water, and attempted to lay eggs on vertical windows
(Letters, 19 September, p 55).
In evolutionary terms, there’s no reason why mayflies need to know that water
is usually horizontal. The only substantial expanse of shiny, reflective
material would have been a body of water, so “shiny, flat and fairly extensive”
was good enough.
It is only in the past few hundred years that we humans have been creating
vertical and horizontal river lookalikes, tricking the mayflies.
Martian day
Paul Davies suggests that earthly life may have originated on Mars
(“Survivors from Mars”, 12 September, p 24).
In the absence of all external time cues, the human daily cycle settles at a
length of 24.9 hours鈥攏otably similar to the length of a day on Mars. This
would appear to support the notion that we may be the last Martians.
Bond backwards
Feedback pokes fun at The Art of Mixology for its reference to the
possibility of “bruising alcohol”
(12 September).
But Ian Fleming may add a twist of lemon to the tale.
When asking for a Martini, numerous people request that it is “shaken not
stirred”, in what they fondly believe to be a James Bond (Sean Connery) accent.
But my memory of Ian Fleming’s books was that what Bond actually said was
“stirred not shaken”. His reason for this preference was that shaking “bruised
the alcohol” and impaired the flavour.
Did Fleming create this idea of alcohol needing delicate handling?
For theories about this, see
The Last Word, 28 May 1994鈥擡d
A load of oysters
In the discussion on euphemistic names for food, Feedback slyly mentions
“Himalayan oysters” without further explanation
(Feedback, 22 August, and
Letters, 12 September, p 54).
When we sell prime lambs to the butcher, a deduction is made from the agreed
price for any that have not been castrated.
However, it is rumoured that the
butcher gets a bonus here, by selling the testicles from these ram lambs as
“mountain oysters”.
Letter
Jonathan Scurlock accuses Tam Dalyell of including “hoary old chestnuts” in
his critique of onshore wind energy but then produces a discredited nut of his
own.
Yes, Britain was dotted with windmills in the 19th century but they were not
clustered on hilltops in tens or hundreds, glistening and flickering over some
of our finest upland landscapes. Nor were they 200 feet or more high. Most were
less than half of this and were well suited to the lowland landscape of
villages, hedges and trees.
However, I am encouraged that Scurlock believes that the industry may have
learnt a lesson from repeated opposition and will shift to less sensitive
lowland and offshore sites. If this happens before any more damage is done, I
would be the first to become a supporter.
Tackling AIDS
Your article on AIDS draws attention to the differing results of two trials
which investigated the impact on HIV transmission of treating other sexually
transmitted diseases (STDs) in East Africa
(This Week, 11 July, p 24).
The results of a trial in the Rakai district of Uganda, presented by Maria
Wawer and colleagues at the Geneva AIDS conference, showed that periodic mass
treatment for STDs in the general population had no measurable effect on HIV
transmission. These findings were contrasted with the results of an earlier
trial in Mwanza in rural Tanzania, which showed that improved treatment for STDs
at primary health centres reduced the incidence of HIV by 40 per cent.
According to your article, periodic mass treatment cut “the rate of
gonorrhoea, syphilis and chlamydia by half”, yet had no impact on the incidence
of HIV infection. This statement is not supported by the data presented in
Geneva. After 20 months of intervention, there was no difference in the
prevalence of either gonorrhoea or chlamydial infection in the Ugandan
study.
The prevalence of serological syphilis was 5.6 per cent among those treated,
and 6.8 per cent in the comparison arm鈥攁 reduction of only 20 per cent.
The incidence of syphilis, which is more likely to cause ulceration that may
enhance HIV transmission, showed no significant difference between the two arms
of the study.
Careful consideration needs to be given to explanations for the differing
results of these two studies. The trials were conducted in different populations
with very different levels of HIV prevalence. It may well be that the relative
impact of STD control on the spread of HIV depends on the stage of the HIV
epidemic.
Moreover, the trials investigated different strategies for STD control. In
Uganda, little STD treatment was available between the mass treatments (given
every 10 months), while in Tanzania the population had continuous access to
effective treatment services. It may be that mass treatment for STDs, unless
supported by clinical services, is ineffective in controlling either STDs or HIV
infection.
How to handle fish
Mark Feldman attacks New Zealand’s quota management system (QMS), in which
fishermen or fishing companies are allocated a quota that they can keep or sell
as they choose. But he fails to compare this system with other fisheries
management schemes
(Forum, 29 August, p 46).
Such analysis would reveal that New Zealand’s fisheries are in a better state
than any others in the world.
A 1997 assessment showed that only 11 of the 179 QMS fish stocks were being
overexploited. Management strategies are in place to rebuild these 11 stocks,
and none of them is “lingering on the edge of a population crash”.
Feldman claims: “In some fisheries, waste makes up about half of the landed
catch.” Dumping is unavoidable when catches are limited. However, the QMS
includes measures to minimise these problems, such as an observer system,
disincentive payments and severe penalties. Preliminary estimates suggest that
in the major, high volume New Zealand fisheries, less than 5 per cent of the
total catch is discarded.
Feldman also claims that: “The reliance on theoretical models to manage
fisheries has proved to be highly risky鈥攎ore direct research is needed.”
Without stock assessment models, Feldman’s “direct” data would simply be
meaningless. We would not have a clue about the state of New Zealand’s fish
stocks.
The Ministry of Fisheries welcomes constructive debate on the QMS. It is not
a perfect system. No system can be. However, Feldman offered no credible
alternative.
French kick off
Everything mentioned in the article by Michael Brooks
(“Liquid genius”, 5 September, p 24)
was discovered about 10 years earlier by a French team in
Saclay. Eric Varoquaux and Olivier Avenel won a British physics award, the Simon
Memorial Prize, for their work.
I refer to the Josephson effect, wherein a steady pressure difference across
a small aperture causes an oscillating flow through it, as well as the quantised
phase slips in which vortices suddenly appear in the superfluid. More recently,
Varoquaux and Avenel built a superfluid gyrometer, and were the first to use it
to detect the Earth’s rotation.
Richard Packard and Seamus Davis, the physicists who are referred to in the
article, have done beautiful work too. They have confirmed the earlier findings
using a different weak link arrangement and more direct experimental techniques.
The quantum whistle is a spectacular demonstration of the existence of the
Josephson effect.
Fizzy analogy
Could you please explain how “cooling the surface waters” would “reduce the
amount of the gas (carbon dioxide) they would hold”
(This Week, 5 September, p 12).
As any comparison of opening cold and warm champagne bottles would
demonstrate, carbon dioxide, like all gases, is more soluble in cold water.
Gases are indeed more soluble in cold water. However, whether CO2
enters or leaves the sea depends on the relative concentrations of CO2
in the air and the water, and on the wind speed. Thus, although surface
waters may cool as a hurricane passes, large quantities of CO2 may enter
the atmosphere because of the high winds and waves鈥擡d.
Wind screams
Jonathan Scurlock’s letter about wind energy is typical of those who
support these unsupportable structures
(Letters, 19 September, p 54).
Look through the files of the local planning office and you will discover
that letters supporting planning applications come from people who live more
than 20 miles from the proposed wind farm. These include members of
organisations such as Greenpeace and the Westminster Club who live more than 100
miles away. On the other hand, letters opposing the application come from people
who live within a 5-mile radius.
Those who live within a mile of a wind farm will confirm that they are about
as quiet as the M1 motorway, depending on wind direction.
On the rebound
Your article claims that improving energy efficiency
simply makes people use more energy
(This Week, 5 September, p 18).
The Khazzoom-Brookes postulate, as
this idea is called, seems to be rediscovered every decade or so. It shows that
economists’ ignorance of engineering is at least as dangerous as the
reverse.
As Clive Bates noted (Letters, 26 September, p 52), the “rebound effect” of
buying more services when efficient energy use lowers their marginal cost can be
real but is very small. For example, efficient fridges don’t make you reset the
thermostat lower so the milk freezes, nor do efficient washing machines make you
wash clothes that are already clean. There are similar limits on rebound effects
in driving, television watching and so on.
Even when it comes to heating and air conditioning, the rebound effect
becomes significant only in such cases as a hovel, where lagging allows
previously unheated space to be warmed to a more tolerable temperature. But in
such cases, people’s well being greatly improves鈥攖he purpose of using
energy鈥攁s does the efficiency of providing comfort.
Though “rebounds” can in principle mean that overall energy savings are
slightly smaller than otherwise, the savings will never be less than zero.
Nothing that can be bought with the money saved by improving energy efficiency
contains more energy than the direct energy purchase that was saved in the first
place.
On the contrary, informed customers can multiply energy savings by using the
money they’ve saved to improve energy efficiency even further鈥攂y investing
in lagging and lighting improvements, say, rather than speedboats and
helicopters.
Price matters, but the dogma that people’s decisions are influenced mainly if
not exclusively by price is clearly wrong. For example, electricity prices in
Seattle are half those in Chicago. Despite this, people in Seattle in the 1990s
have saved electric energy far more than people in Chicago. This paradox arises
simply because the electricity provider in Seattle assists efficient choices
whilst the one in Chicago inhibits them.
Can't pay, won't pay
I certainly agree with the conclusion that economics must allow for the
possibility that people are human
(“Let’s get emotional”, 19 September, p 38).
I’d like to offer a different explanation for the clean air study mentioned
in the article, however. This gives two scenarios. In the first, people are
prepared to pay only a small sum towards cleaning air which is already polluted.
In the second, they demand ten times that (or even much more) in compensation
from a factory planning to pollute their clean air.
The behavioural economists say this is because people use different emotional
reference points when they think about clean and dirty air. My explanation is
simpler (and less charitable): it’s selfishness.
It all boils down to a question of who pays. In the first scenario I pay, and
if the sum is too large, I’ll have to make a serious sacrifice. I might not be
able to afford to go on holiday, or I might have to wait another year before I
replace my computer.
In the second scenario the cost is borne by a large, nasty and presumably
profitable industrial concern. The compensation is merely my way of making sure
that the fat cat directors and shareholders share with me some of the profit
they will make by ruining my clean air. Besides, I could use the money to pay
for that holiday or computer. Or even to pay for the cost of moving to a place
where the air is still clean.
Such environmental selfishness colours our judgment about many environmental
issues. If I can take the moral high ground by opposing seal hunting and the
ivory trade, signing a petition about the rainforests and giving my spare change
to Greenpeace or the Worldwide Fund for Nature鈥攚hy not? It’s cheap at the
price.
But, if my moral superiority has to be paid for by getting up two hours
earlier every day to commute to work by public transport instead of by car, if
I’m forced to cancel my holiday abroad, and if my oil, gas and electricity bills
go up to the extent that I have to wear two cardigans and furry slippers to keep
warm in winter . . . Well, I’m afraid the price may just be a bit too high.
I wonder if behavioural economists could come up with a way of arranging our
economic and political affairs so that efforts to deal with environmental issues
are not derailed by my, and most other people’s, all too human desire for a
cleaner world but only at minimal cost to our own comfort.
Letter
Bennett Daviss tries to explain the “irrational” working hours of New York
taxi drivers in economic terms. But the reason they do not work longer on
profitable days is probably that they were knackered.
Job satisfaction did not seem to enter the equation. Not all people go to
work just to make a profit鈥攁part, perhaps, from the economists.