It's in the blood
I find the Editor’s comment on my letter
(Letters, 16 January, p 52)
out of touch with diabetes monitoring over the past 10 years or so.
To suggest that blood glucose testing is only required in severe diabetes is
contrary to what most diabeticians (in this hospital certainly) think. Diabetes
is diabetes and may become severe if there is inadequate blood glucose
control.
Cooking by computer
I read with interest the Christmas competition about blunders of the modern world
(Feedback, 19 December 1998).
How about a competition for predicting the
killer consumer product of the next millennium?
I do of course have my own idea to kick it off. As an IT professional, I
watch with utter dismay as central processing unit speeds increase. It is
apparent that CPUs will eventually approach speeds of 2.4 gigahertz.
As this is close to the frequency of the radiation used by microwave ovens, I
would like to propose that all new PCs of this ilk are fitted with a side door,
so IT staff like myself can reheat our pineapple doughnuts without having to
drag ourselves away to the kitchen鈥攚here we might have to interact with
other humans.
Mark Hughes is correct. Microchip makers are already working on technologies
that will allow computers to run鈥攁nd thus emit radiation鈥攁t
frequencies way up into the microwave band.
The American chip maker’s trade body, the Semiconductor Industry Association,
predicts that microprocessors will be running at 1 gigahertz鈥攚hich is
where the microwave band starts鈥攂y 2006.
So special measures may be necessary to shield the user. And there will
probably be a similar furore over what effects these microwaves might have on
people to the one we are now getting with mobile phones鈥擡d
Correction:
The article on groundwater contamination by de-icing fluids
(This Week, 9 January, p 7)
stated that Devon Cancilla of Western
Washington University in Bellingham found tolyltriazoles in water under an
airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In fact, Cancilla worked at another, unnamed
airport. The Milwaukee study was by Steven Corsi of the US Geological Survey,
who did not identify individual chemical components. Corsi is based in
Middleton, Wisconsin, not Madison.
Letter
I have asked my mother to provide proof that Father Christmas does not exist.
Naturally, no proof has been forthcoming, as my colleagues at school had
suspected. We all know that Father Christmas must exist鈥攁fter all,
who eats the mince pies and drinks the brandy?
However, I have long since given up trying to explain quantum field dynamics
to my parents.
Letter
Surely Sean Smeltzer realises that Santa simply steps outside our time
continuum. Every child in the world is then visited, even if it takes Santa 10
years of his own time.
He then steps back into our time continuum and sits in our local store for my
children to visit. I don’t know why Smeltzer needs it to be so complicated.
Santa dynamics
I was propounding the theory that Santa Claus is a quantum entity and thus
delivers presents simultaneously to as many children as necessary something over
a year ago, so the theory has either spread via the bush telegraph or it was
just an idea whose time had come
(Letters, 16 January, p 53).
There was a corollary dealing with the possibility that a child might observe
Santa and thus disrupt his entire present-giving schedule. Since this would
cause a loss of presents to millions of innocent children, this must be deemed
an inherently “naughty” action, and, as is well-documented, Santa doesn’t visit
naughty children. Hence, fortunately, this never actually happens.
You may object that there is a causality problem here since the naughtiness
that prevents Santa’s visit occurs only if Santa actually visits, but devotees
of quantum theory regularly swallow larger camels than this.
Putrefying pizza
I enjoyed the item about 脰tzi delicacies
(Feedback, 16 January).
It reminded me of an occasion about
25 years ago when I visited an Etruscan cemetery near
Rome. The list of fare at the local cafe included “Pizza
Necropolitana”鈥攆lavoured with mummy dust perhaps?
Rocking rocketeers
We were flattered that your reporter came all the way to Washington DC just
to catch a performance by our rocking and scientifically literate a cappella group, the Chromatics
(Feedback, 9 January, p 96).
Teachers, planetarium staff and other worthies among your readers might be interested in our educational
project, “AstroCappella”, especially as we have free stuff to give away.
The AstroCappella music CD contains six upbeat astronomically correct songs,
written, performed and professionally recorded by our eight-member group, most
of whom work at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
The songs cover radio and X-ray astronomy, the Doppler shift, the Sun, the
Hubble Space Telescope and the nearest stars. The CD comes with a book
containing classroom activities and other information for each song, written in
collaboration with high school teacher Kara Granger.
Did we mention that they’re free? The project is funded by outreach grants,
and thus the AstroCappella CD and activity book are available at no cost to
teachers and other educators while supplies last. E-mail us at
astrocappella@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov, or check out our website at
www.pagecreations.com/astrocappella/.
Floral modesty
Your article on competition among flowers
(“Flower power!”, 9 January, p 22)
implies that sociobotany is a new development.
In fact, Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae (Stockholm, 1740) produced a
precursor with his “sexual system”, which had an elaborate typology of plants
based on the disposition of their reproductive parts. It used the analogy of
human sexual relations, including polygamy, clandestine marriages, husband and
wife having separate beds, many males in one bed, and so on.
It was soon replaced by more “natural” principles of classification, but not
before outraged scientists had attacked Linnaeus’s method as “lewd” and
“lascivious”, saying that the Creator would never have allowed “such loathsome
harlotry” as several males to one female. One commentator said that no textbook
of botany should bring “the blush of injured modesty to the cheeks of the
innocent fair” (see www.hku.hk/philodep/tm/linnaeus).
Pain-free test
You report on experiments to spot breast cancer by ultrasonic emissions
(This Week, 16 January, p 9).
Such a replacement for mammograms would be welcome.
The Journal of the American Medical Association measured pain levels
in 116 women during mammography. They found that 91 per cent felt pain and 15
per cent felt intense pain as their breasts were squashed against flat X-ray
plates. Hormone replacement therapy, the monthly cycle and younger women’s dense
breast tissue can make mammograms difficult to read.
Swedish researchers have discovered that treating women who have had a false
positive mammogram result costs as much as a third of the total cost of
providing screening for all women. Researchers from South Hospital in Stockholm
monitored 352 women who had false positive readings. These women made 1112
visits to doctors, had 397 biopsies, 187 follow-up mammograms and 90 surgical
biopsies before being found not to have had cancer.
Junk of all junk
After an extremely nail-biting experience lasting a good couple of hours
recently, I could at last smile. No, my wife hadn’t given birth. I had taken the
plunge and installed Microsoft’s “Internet Explorer 5 beta”.
On firing up the new e-mail client, Outlook 5, I was interested in one of its
new features鈥攁 junk mail filter. “I wonder how that works,” I thought.
I checked the options before I used it to see what control I had over what is
classed as junk mail. The only setting turned out to be a sliding scale, which
increases or decreases the threshold for what is classed as junk. I left the
settings as default and applied it to my inbox.
Checking my junk folder, I found many adult messages and “cheap offer”
messages, all of which were classed correctly. Also classed as junk were many
e-mails from Microsoft. Hence the smile.
By golly
Concerning the relative therapeutic efficacy of heroin and stout
(Letters, 19 December 1998, p 103),
there is no doubt in my mind. When I lived in London,
from 1963 to 1966, there was a dear old fellow who, in a West Country burr,
exhorted all who watched commercial television to partake of Mackeson stout
because: “It looks good, it tastes good and, by golly, it does you good.”
Missing mass
I read with interest your article on dark matter
(“Space Oddity”, 16 January, p 24).
Not long ago, I published a paper in Astronomical and Astrophysical
Transactions (vol 16, p 37), entitled “Is the missing mass really
missing?”. This paper proposes a very elegant solution to the missing mass
problem. I argue that slight distortions in the vacuum energy density can appear
as dark matter while in reality it is all in the vacuum.
I find it frustrating to see that people working on the missing mass problem
either do not know about this theory, or do not want to know.
Hard-up ETs
So gamma-ray bursters might have wiped out alien civilisations, explaining
why they have not visited us
(This Week, 23 January, p 16).
This can be added to a growing list of reasons why we have not yet been visited by aliens, which
include the idea that interstellar travel is impossible, that other
civilisations don’t exist, have annihilated themselves before developing
long-distance space travel, are there but are avoiding us because we are too
violent, and so on.
However, assuming that any such civilisation is at least a bit like
us鈥攃arbon based, living on an Earth-like planet, using technology and with
the urge to explore space鈥� a simpler explanation suggests itself.
If aliens are like us, it is not entirely unlikely that they will have
developed some sort of financial system as well. If so, like us, spiralling
costs and budget cuts would probably have crippled their space programmes before
they even got out of their gravity well.
Whalemeat again
The Japanese research vessels have not “missed half the whaling season
following a fire on the fleet’s main ship” on 19 November, as your report contends
(This Week, 16 January, p 5).
At most, they missed about a third.
Two of the research vessels headed back to the Antarctic on 22 December,
followed by the other two on 2 and 5 January. Rather than “abandon the official
plan to sample from each population subgroup”, Japan’s Institute of Cetacean
Research (ICR) decided to extend the research period by half a month to ensure
that an adequate sample size is taken.
Seiji Ohsumi, head of the ICR, stated: “We will do our best to collect as
many samples as possible without reduction of the quality of the research. We
will engage in the research in all the sub-areas the same as in previous
research, and will collect whale samples from all the sub-areas. Although the
sample size may be smaller than that of the original plan, the shortage of
sample size will be covered by the large effort of whale sightings.”
Incidentally, it is becoming extremely tiresome to have a reference to the
sale and consumption of whalemeat with every mention of Japan’s whale research
programme. The International Whaling Commission requires all parts of any whales
taken to be utilised fully and not wasted. All proceeds from the sale of
whalemeat and parts not retained for research go to the Japanese government and
are used to help pay the cost of the research. Finally, the subject of whale
meat sales is irrelevant to the need for, credibility or value of the research.
Why the cigarette?
Surely you could have illustrated your item on how fidgeting reduces fat more sensibly
(This Week, 16 January, p 6).
Naturally, you wanted to show a thin girl. But did you have to choose one who
is smoking? Or was this picture a product placement by Marlboro? Or was the idea
that we should try to guess who would contract heart disease first鈥攖he
smoking waif or the larger ladies in the lower picture?
Conservative seats
Lila Guterman’s injunction, “whatever you do, don’t sit down”, is a bit extreme
(“The only good chair”, 19 December 1998, p 76
and Letters, 16 January, p 52).
But her report of Galen Cranz’s argument that ergonomists should have
dealt with the problem but haven’t puts me on the defensive.
Not only is there a very good ergonomist just down the coast from Cranz in
Los Angeles who has been pushing the point for years about the type of seat
Cranz advises (Rani Lueder, e-mail Humanics@aol.com), but our own research
has caused us to recommend the idea for the last fifteen years at least. Our
patented seats have been tried in factories and in offices, from check-in desks
to check-out counters and various areas in between. The almost universal
response has been: “Where can we buy them?”鈥攂ut as yet, no manufacturer
has put them on the market.
Perhaps the moan about ergonomists should be redirected against
manufacturers, whose lack of initiative does not seem to reflect the current
hype about “the enterprise society”.
Don't blame the heat
“Human disease is emerging as one of the most . . . distressing indicators of
climate change,” claims a box in your article on the weather in 1998
(“Can’t stand the heat”, 19 December 1998, p 33).
I am concerned with the inaccuracy of this box. You write: “As temperatures
rise, mosquito-borne yellow fever has invaded Ethiopia.” Not so. The disease
is endemic in the region, and the world’s most devastating non-urban epidemic
occurred there in 1960-61, killing 15 000 people.
“Dengue fever is spreading through the Americas . . . and has reached Texas,”
you continue. True, but there is no reason to blame climate change. The
principal vector, Aedes aegypti, was eliminated from 22 countries of
the Americas during an eradication campaign in the 1950s. The mosquito
and the dengue virus are simply reclaiming their old territory.
In the past two centuries, Texas weathered eight major dengue epidemics. In
1922, there were an estimated 500 000 cases. By contrast, there were only 46
confirmed cases between 1980 and 1996, although in the same period, 50 333 were
reported in three Mexican states that lie along its border.
We attribute the rarity of dengue north of the Rio Grande to better living conditions and
lifestyle (piped water, mosquito screens, air conditioning, TV dinners), not the weather.
Lastly: “Flood waters . . . caused Rift Valley fever, a cattle disease, to
jump the species barrier and kill hundreds of people.” Again, nothing new.
Numerous outbreaks, typically during excessively rainy periods, have been
documented throughout Africa. Human cases have usually been evident, sometimes
with significant mortality.
A continued increase in global temperatures may well affect the transmission
of insect-borne diseases, but to date there is no evidence to support the
claims you quote.