Gun lore
You state that Hiram Maxim invented the machine gun
(17 February, p 50). Not
so. That honour goes to his countryman Richard Jordan Gatling (1818-1903), who
invented and, in 1862, patented the multi-barrel, crank-operated machine gun
that first saw service in the American Civil War. Thereafter, armies throughout
the world adopted the gun and many improvements were made to it. Electric and
gas-operated models of the 1890s could fire 300 rounds a minute. The last
Gatling guns were manufactured in 1911.
The Maxim gun of the 1880s was an improved design, as it had a single barrel
and was fully automatic. Manufactured by Vickers, it also was known as the
Vickers-Maxim gun, or sometimes just the Vickers gun.
Oxygen of publicity
I was interested in your item on The Times’s claim that oxygen made
up 38 per cent of the atmosphere in the 1800s
(Feedback, 17 February).
I’ve seen this figure quoted in marketing literature on the other side of the
world. Here in New Zealand a health publication called NZ Green claimed
that many of our allergies and modern ills are being caused by the decreasing
amount of oxygen in the atmosphere鈥攆rom 38 per cent to 19 per cent
today.
Sad to say, the Kiwi “health” people went one step further than The
Times. They went on to recommend that we all consume what they called
“oxygen water” to boost our flagging immune systems, oxygen water being defined
as “simply water with an extra oxygen atom attached”.
It doesn’t take much chemistry to realise that H2O plus O equals
H2O2, or hydrogen peroxide. While hydrogen peroxide makes a
great hair bleach and efficient rocket fuel, its production of free radicals
within the body doesn’t really recommend it as a tonic. Which sadly doesn’t stop
people buying “oxygen water” or having “oxygen enemas”.
Conversing in Klingon
In reference to your story about the sugar packets
(Feedback, 24 February),
the Klingon word Quapla’ actually translates as “Success!” and is used
more as a Goodbye than a Hello.
Klingon in fact has no word for Hello, the closest equivalent being
nuqneq which translates as “What do you want?”鈥攖he social niceties
being considered a little wishy-washy by Klingons.
Klingon is rapidly growing as a language. It is claimed that there are more
fluent Klingon speakers than fluent Esperanto speakers. There is also a growing
library of Klingon texts. Already translated are large parts of The Bible,
Hamlet, Jabberwocky, and many other works. A full Klingon opera
has been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Letter
Nip over to www.kli.org where you will be able to find out, and hear, all you
ever wanted to about Klingon.
As a bonus, you will also be reassured that there are others in the world
much, much sadder than yourself.
Correction
In the piece “Jump to it”
(New 杏吧原创, 17 February, p 25)
we stated that the research by Ahmed Aldo Faisal and Tom Matheson was
published in The Journal of Experimental Zoology. It was in
fact The Journal of Experimental Biology. The righting time of the
locusts should also have been expressed in milliseconds, not microseconds.
Make cattle resistant to foot and mouth
Britain’s current situation with foot and mouth disease shows how
vulnerable our food chain can be. With increased travel and modern farming
methods, the transmission of bugs and other nasties is only going to
increase.
It seems to me that the bulk incineration of herds of animals is
fundamentally at odds with how nature builds resistance to disease. Surely it
would be possible to expose animals to this disease in a controlled environment
and isolate those that show only slight or no symptoms. By subsequently
introducing these animals into breeding stock, we would eventually obtain herds
with some resistance to the disease.
Ageing apes
It would be premature to conclude from our work on the Great Ape Aging
Project that great apes never get the brain damage associated with dementia
(27 January, p 18).
Of the more than 70 great ape brains that we have saved, only a fraction have
so far been examined in detail. None of those has shown tangles, nor has any
exhibited age-related decline in nerve cells, even where significant amyloid
deposition is apparent.
Nonetheless, our failure to find full-blown Alzheimer-like neuropathology in
a modest sample of older great apes does not warrant the conclusion that great
apes never experience dementia. It may simply be that we have not yet looked at
the cognition and neuropathology of enough really old apes.
To reach a more definitive conclusion, our Foundation for Comparative and
Conservation Biology (FCCB) (www.agingapes.org) is proposing to care for and
monitor elderly primates and learn from them鈥攆or their benefit, as well as
our own.
I should also point out that at the International Primatological Society
meeting from where you reported, Patrick Hof described the discovery of two
types of neuron in the anterior cingulate cortex that were previously believed
to be unique to humans. Not only is this brain region implicated in pain
perception, it is actually involved in mirror-image self-recognition鈥攁
cognitive characteristic that is also unique to humans and great apes. How
interesting that this area has been identified by John Eccles, Francis Crick and
others as a candidate for the “seat of consciousness”, visual awareness or even
“free will”.
Autistic academics
In regard to the discussion about autism
(17 February 2001, p 17), dare I
court controversy and suggest an interesting line of inquiry might be the
evolutionary advantages of a mild autistic spectrum disorder?
It is known that many people with this condition go undiagnosed right through
life and are often academically very successful. If someone is content to follow
their own interests, unaffected by peer groups and others around them, do they
not have a clear advantage over the rest of us who want it all?
I would be prepared to bet that the great names in science of the future are,
at present, lining up bricks, completing complex jigsaw puzzles and ignoring all
the “out of control brats” in their peer group.
Motorola madness?
It strikes me that Motorola, or any other manufacturer aiming to use technology
that disables devices operating in the “wrong” country, has lost the plot
(24 February, p 18).
In this increasingly mobile world, many people like myself move between
regions and continents as part of our careers. Are we supposed to re-equip the
whole household every time we are posted to a different location? Come off
it!
Growing great grass
I was glad to see sustainable agriculture feature in your article
(3 February, p 16).
However, I must take issue with your editorial comment on p 3
that sustainable agriculture is the preserve of environmentalists and a few aid
charities with no involvement from major agriculture research centres.
In fact, Britain’s Institute of Arable Crops Research has been collaborating
with the maize protection project for around five years. IACR’s role has been to
explain the science behind the crop systems.
For example, molasses grass, one of the most effective intercrops, releases
compounds such as nonatriene, which repels pests like the stem borer and
attracts their natural enemies. As the intercropping project expanded, we
obtained molasses grass seed from another site. However, the new stock didn’t
attract the stem borer’s natural enemies, and wasn’t as good at controlling the
pests. A change of seed source solved the problem.
Scientific input from IACR helps to preserve the robustness and reliability
of the intercrop method.