Rabbiting robots
I think the thing that most worries me about artificial intelligence
(Letters, 20 February, p 52)
is the prospect of being surrounded by creations
such as those envisaged by Douglas Adams鈥攃ondescending, chatty machines
everywhere, designed to drive us crazy.
Goodness knows, it’s bad enough without AI. Already, when I log in to the
computer system at work, it responds with, “I’m so glad you’re logging in,
(username)”. As Adams’s paranoid android Marvin would say, “Hateful, isn’t
it?”
All about scum
Following your article on toxins produced by blue-green algae
(This Week, 13 February, p 23),
you might like to know that the Environment Agency of England
and Wales has produced a consultation paper Aquatic Eutrophication in
England and Wales鈥攁 proposed management strategy. This takes the
holistic approach by dealing with the sources of eutrophication (nutrient
enrichment), and not just its symptoms, which include blooms and scums of
blue-green algae. The paper is on the Environment Agency’s website,
www.environment-agency.gov.uk.
Not for burning
Following your discussion of the pros and cons of redundancy
(Letters, 20 February, p 53),
as the mother of a toddler I have to point out that the most
redundant label of all is that in most children’s clothing, which says: “Keep
away from fire.”
Whether this is to stop you throwing new garments bought at horrendous
expense onto the fire, or whether it is to stop you disposing of your child in
this fashion, I have yet to work out.
Ducking out
Your report on research from Indiana State University on the sleeping habits of ducks
(This Week, 6 February, p 8) immediately reminded of an article you
published almost exactly 16 years ago, entitled “A safer life for the peeking
duck” (New 杏吧原创, 24 February 1983, p 514).
I used that article frequently over the years as a “real” example of research
design, simple statistical analysis and clear presentation of results in the
field of behavioural research. Students quickly grasped the ideas of hypothesis
framing and testing鈥攊t was a very well-written article.
I wonder if the American researchers were aware of this earlier study?
On the balls
Feedback reports on howlers by biology students
(30 January). I teach in a
large comprehensive school and among other gems that pupils have put my way is
the fact that “an octopus is a fish with eight testicles” and “the whole of
northern Russia is covered in carnivorous forest” (also known as the Siberian
Taiga, I presume).
Correction
The “In Brief” article about water containing antimatter
(This Week, 12 December 1998, p 29)
failed to mention the contribution of Nan
Jiang of Marquette University in Milwaukee, who was lead author on the paper in
Physical Review Letters (vol 81, p 5113).
Fossil renegades
Nell Boyce writes about the HERV-K “fossil” virus being switched on by HIV
(This Week, 19 December 1998, p 21).
There are further possibilities. This
virus, along with other fossil associates called human endogenous retroviruses
(HERVs), have been implicated in certain autoimmune states, in particular
rheumatic diseases.
In this situation, their role is thought to involve molecular mimicry. A
“switched-on” HERV may produce a peptide which induces an immune response to
both virus and body components. This arises because the particular HERV and the
human host share similar amino acid sequences as antibody targets.
An additional mechanism involves “superantigen motifs” which directly
activate certain immune cells. What switches on these viruses is unclear, though
environmental triggers (including other viruses) could be important.
From the scenario above, the activated HERV is the renegade, performing
illicit deeds in the human host, whereas in Boyce’s article, the virus is the
unwitting victim of HIV hijacking. Whatever their putative roles, these
unconventional fossil viruses are worthy of future study. Perhaps even more so
if viral family members are expressed in mammals such as the pig: a potential
resource for replacing organs (and introducing viruses:
see This Week, 18 October 1997, p 4) in humans.
Bogeyman gas
Richard Denison argues that landfills cannot be regarded as carbon sinks for
paper and wood, because methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide
(Letters, 13 February, p 54, and
27 February, p 54).
However, he assumes that all the methane generated escapes to the atmosphere.
There is no denying that some old landfills do leak methane. In the past,
landfills were designed (if that is the word) without provision for collecting
the biogas. Most were small, increasing the relative size of the aerobic zones
and reducing the economic incentive for gas utilisation. Some even predate the
discovery that methanogenesis commonly occurred in solid wastes.
In contrast, any modern landfill would be designed to use the methane for
electricity generation, with any residue being burnt off. Any remaining traces
would be consumed by bacteria in the soil. Termite mounds
(see This Week, 6 February, p 17)
are not the only environments in which bacteria ensure that
gaseous substrates are used as efficiently as any other food source. Thus
analysis of the air above modern landfills rarely shows significant levels of
methane.
Recycling or incineration may be preferable for well-separated wood and paper
but it is far from clear that the bogeyman of methane is enough reason to
exclude them from landfills. It may turn out to be no more than a
will-o’-the-wisp.
Selfish self-interest
In her review of Lee Dugatkin’s Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees
(Review, 13 February, p 46)
Lynn Hunt inadvertently helps to perpetuate a frequent misunderstanding of selfish gene theory.
Richard Dawkins does not say that we “are purely selfish vehicles of genes”.
It is the genes that are “selfish”. And, as he has said many times, the sense in
which genes are selfish is metaphorical because, unlike us, they do not have
motives, are not conscious, and cannot be selfish in the way that we are
(sometimes) selfish.
In ordinary English, to be selfish (as opposed to merely sometimes or often
acting out of self-interest) is to be chiefly or wholly concerned with one’s own
interests. “Selfish” frequently functions as a term of moral criticism鈥攁
matter of improperly putting one’s own interests before those of others.
However, we are often not selfish in the ordinary motivational sense and we
often do not act out of self-interested motives.
It is important to stress these linguistic niceties because it simply does
not follow from the claim that our genes are selfish in Dawkins’s metaphorical
sense that we are selfish in the ordinary sense.
Crystal clear
I have some comments to make on Michael Grady’s views of cosmology
(“Cosmic crystal”, 13 February, p 42).
First, this model fits very neatly with the model
derived from cellular automata described last year
(“Rules of engagement”, 29 August 1998, p 36)
as it also explains observed particles in terms of “defects”
in some higher order of reality which we cannot observe directly.
Secondly, I would like to know how the observed distortions of space-time
(or, in this model, four-dimensional space) by masses can be fitted into the
model.
Another question arising is that if particle physicists succeed in their
search for evidence of the fifth dimension
(“Five and counting . . .”, 24 October 1998, p 28),
will this be the time dimension of Grady’s “protospace”
liquid?
Finally, is this yet another case of a scientist finding a speculative
passage in a book and spinning a theory from it? I refer to the story by John
Wyndham, “Opposite Number” from the collection The Seeds of Time, in
which a character refers to time advancing like the leading edge of an ice
sheet, with solid, past time behind it and the fluid, unpredictable water of the
future ahead. One advantage of this is to remove the possibility of time
travel.
Children and chimps
Your coverage of the New Zealand proposal to extend a limited selection of
human rights to other members of our immediate biological family (that is, the
Great Apes) asked us to choose between a chimpanzee and a Kosovo child, and
concluded that, since most would pick the child, chimps should not have legal
rights
(Editorial, 13 February, p 3, and
Letters, 27 February, p 54).
But what if we replace the chimp with a politician, a prostitute or a
game-show host? Would our choice of the Kosovo child cost them their rights too?
Legal rights exist to prevent our prejudices becoming tyranny. They don’t remove
the hard choices, but they give everyone a fair chance. And that’s exactly why
chimpanzees need them.
Further, to contend that New Zealand’s hominid rights proposal would make a
chimp culpable for the murder of another chimp is like saying that human rights
make a 3-year-old culpable for killing another 3-year-old.
We are fortunate that a good many of us live in societies where you don’t
have to be morally competent to have legal rights. Rights are there to protect
the powerless and the innocent, irrespective of their moral competence. All you
need is to be a person, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that
the self-aware great apes are not persons.
This is not a slippery slope destined to provide rights to all
animals鈥攁nd I would not be involved were it so鈥攂ut as a science
writer and as a mother I find it ethically imperative to support this move.
The point here, which sadly there was no space for in the editorial, is that
with a human population there is a smooth continuum of mental and emotional
aptitudes, from babies and people in comas through to fully self-aware and
sentient beings (including politicians, prostitutes and game-show hosts). It
would be impossible and impractical to draw a line anywhere in this continuum,
so we (rightly) do not bother to try. However, I would submit there is a clear
discontinuity between chimps and humans which can and should be used to set the
boundaries of human rights鈥擡d
No chimps here
Your article described the moral dilemma of using chimpanzees in HIV research
(This Week, 20 February, p 6).
As you note, research conducted at the Yerkes
Primate Center first demonstrated that HIV-1 causes an AIDS-like illness in
chimpanzees. One of our scientists is, in fact, funded by the National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to pursue this work further, as described in
the article.
However, beginning in 1997, Yerkes terminated all biomedical research
projects using chimpanzees. Studies to infect additional chimpanzees with HIV
will be not be conducted at Yerkes. We will continue to study this strain of HIV
in culture and are committed to developing an AIDS vaccine, without the use of
chimps, for clinical trials. One of our greatest challenges is to find a
suitable home for the chimpanzees that will no longer be used in biomedical
research.