Airborne bugs
Further to your report on the bacterial content of farts
(Feedback, 30 June),
has anyone ever turned any scientific attention to the plumes of dust that rise
up when changing cat litter trays?
I ask this because I have often suspected a correlation between my cats being
a bit runny and me being a bit runny. Or maybe it’s my farts that are affecting
the cats.
People come first for people
Marcus Clarke’s letter expresses justifiable concern over genetic
engineering’s possible unintentional and unexpected ramifications
(16 June, p 53).
He is afraid that ecosystems may be shattered and wildlife destroyed
because of alterations to cattle intended to expand the range of domestic
herding.
Of course, he is right. Humans have eliminated countless species, from
mastodons to dodos, for their own benefit, and more are added to the list every
year.
But this doesn’t mean there is anything unnatural or inherently cruel about
the drive to make human life longer, easier, or more enjoyable. If anything, it
is “natural” for us to do everything possible to improve living standards for
our species. In one way or another, this inevitably threatens other living
things, from lab animals to wildlife. Not doing everything possible would
threaten the well-being of people. Which is the more ethical path?
Maybe ethics are irrelevent. Protagoras announced 2500 years ago that: “Man
is the measure of all things”. For the present, he seems to be right. In a
Darwinian world, this doesn’t bode well for creatures that are of minimal use to
us.
Disaster watch
As acknowledged in your editorial on disaster prediction
(23 June, p 3), this
is not an issue for Britain alone. It is an international issue which requires
an international approach, and Britain contributes significantly to Earth
observation activities. It does this through the Committee on Earth Observation
Satellites and by working with the European Space Agency and the European
Commission.
ESA’s Earthwatch Strategy, which is expected to be put to an ESA ministerial
meeting in Edinburgh in November, is likely to include an element for global
monitoring of environmental security. Here we will have an important opportunity
to contribute internationally useful work.
Through the British National Space Centre, I have also set up the MOSAIC
programme to develop the use of small satellites, and we are due to co-fund
a small constellation of micro satellites which will monitor natural disasters
and distribute information through a news agency. This will be a significant
contribution by Britain to emerging solutions from the international
community.
We did look a couple of years ago at associating disaster monitoring
functions with telecommunication projects, but there was no international
agreement on what to do or on the appropriate payload.
Scary trips
In response to Dana Mackenzie’s article on LSD hallucinations
(23 June, p 26)
I would like to say that this is a great starting point for modelling the
effects of such drugs on the brain. However, Mackenzie should listen more to the
people who have first-hand knowledge of these drugs.
The hallucinations are not driven solely by visual input but also play off
the emotional state of the user. The hallucinogenic experience is not always
ordered and does not always produce regular patterns. It is common to experience
spontaneous hallucination with no regular shape. Depending on your emotional
state, hallucinations may be frightening and chaotic or more pleasant, ordered
and geometric.
Unfortunately we have yet to see any effect in a neural network that can be
classed as afraid, happy or bored.
Jeans for the boys
It’s not just lab coats that are only designed for the boys
(16 June, p 53).
Jeans, too, if the illustrations accompanying your feature on an intelligent
aeronautical/flying suit are anything to go by
(2 June, p 30).
He gets to wear his jeans; she has to go naked.
Naively, I had thought the days of using naked women to advertise things
(motor cars, features in science magazines) were gone. So very 20th century.
New 杏吧原创 went through a spate of them in the late
1990s鈥攅ven, if memory serves me right, using naked women
to illustrate an article on subatomic particles. Now it seems they’re back.
Even an ill-fitting lab coat would be better than this.
Nuclear green?
I trust that your mailbox is full of protests at Tam Dalyell’s outrageous
claim that “it is widely recognised that nuclear is the greenest form of energy”
(16 June, p 51).
That has evidently escaped those foolish and ignorant Germans,
who plan to build thousands of wind turbines
(16 June, p 17),
having already installed 1.6 gigawatts’ worth last year alone.
Would Dalyell please give us his assessment of the greenness of the fossil
fuel burning required to mine and process uranium, fabricate nuclear fuel, and
reprocess or transport and store waste?
Letter
In trying to explain higher rates of pregnancy among rape victims, Jon and
Tiffany Gottschall inadvertently assume that the blame must lie with women.
Before surmising that rape victims might be sending out subtle signals when
ovulating, surely the researchers should have considered whether tendency to
rape is correlated with higher levels of testosterone and hence higher levels of
fertility in the male?
It also seems unwise to me to suggest that higher pregnancy rates imply an
evolutionary advantage, without considering the disadvantages of higher rates of
termination, emotional trauma in childhood and behaviourally deficient genes.
The test of evolutionary advantage is surely whether or not a behaviour produces
successful adult offspring, not just pregnancies.
Understanding rape
I have never felt quite as uncomfortable as when I read your article on rape
(23 June, p 10).
The caption to your picture states “Harmless fun: but what has driven men
down the centuries to rape?” and your article implies that the answer is, in
fact, women themselves. This is not a lot different from comments occasionally
made by judges with one foot in the cave.
Suggesting that women feel more sexy when ovulating and so are more likely to
attract macho rapists is a wildly skewed “theory” that only comes from
prioritising so-called “science” over culture, history, sociology and lived
experience. Rape is an aggressive, violent act, far more connected with power
than sexuality.
Your article, like the “statistic” it quotes from (that more women get
pregnant via rape than via consensual sex), goes towards a resexualisation of
rape in our culture. I think your magazine has a responsibility to represent
careful and considered thought about such a serious matter as rape, because of
the expectation in our culture that science provides the last objective word on
such issues.
This article was a reminder of how inextricable science is from culture, and
how anything purporting to be a “research statistic” should be questioned at all
times, and not only by those who call themselves scientists.
Where are the games?
I wholeheartedly agree with the observations about a “playless society” in
the last paragraph of your very interesting article on play
(9 June, p 29).
Peter Bruegel’s 17th-century genre painting Children’s Games depicts
several dozen children’s games, almost all of which, three centuries later, were
still widely played in and around New York City in the 1930s鈥攗ndoubtedly a
heritage from the Dutch and English colonisation of the area.
More recently, tight parental controls, Little League sports, television,
special classes, the drive for academic grades and training for potentially
lucrative adult professional sports have killed off youngster-dominated
games.
Since the Second World War, I have not seen any of the games depicted by
Bruegel that my generation played as children. A sad, sad loss.
Body talk
Surely the researchers who think that ovulation makes women feel sexier have
got hold of the wrong end of the stick
(23 June, p 12).
The week before your period you may put on half a stone and get spots,
migraines and PMS in varying degrees. The week of your period you are in pain,
tired and feeling lousy. That leaves two weeks per month during which you may
feel attractive, sexy, etc, and that is the time which also happens to includes
ovulation.
It’s possibly not so much presence of positive desire as absence of negative
symptoms that causes women to feel more attractive at times of ovulation.
Letter
It seems to me that the solution to this problem could be to bypass
government altogether. Why give an interesting proposal to a “bumbling
bureaucrat”, when you could find a highly motivated partner in the private
sector?
Letter
I found the “male only” interpretation of the results a bit much. Perhaps
females feel better and more sexually active because they need this push if they
are to interact on an intimate level with that other human species鈥攖he
male.
On more rational days, who would risk all the complications and long-term
problems without an overriding innate hormonal shove?
Chewing it over
I was interested to read of the patent application by Wrigley for chewing gum
used to administer painkillers or antibiotics
(23 June, p 23). I well remember
being treated for a childhood attack of tonsillitis with penicillin chewing gum
over 40 years ago. The gum had little flavour, and each piece had to be chewed
for four hours, after which it was time to start a new one.
Letter
Under J. B. S. Haldane, Helen Spurway and John Maynard Smith in Peter
Medawar’s University College London Zoology Department in the 1950s we were
taught a version that was kinder to the camels. The effectiveness of the
mnemonic is enhanced by its humour, by each phrase denoting an era and by
alliteration between the wording of several and the word to be recalled, such as
“Ordinarily” for Ordovician: “Camels Ordinarily Sit Down Carefully; Perhaps
Their Joints Creak; Earnest Oiling May Procure Permanent Relief”. I do not
recall any named period between Cretaceous and Eocene in those days.
Letter
This mnemonic is considerably older than Corfield’s book. It was taught to me
at school around 40 years ago, and I still use it from time to time, together
with a similar offering for the cranial nerves of the dogfish: Only Old Officers
Pathetically Tremble At Facing A Glory Vague And Hypothetical.
Easy peasy
The last part of Richard Corfield’s mnemonic for the divisions of Phanerozioc
time (Feedback, 23 June) should read: “Possibly Early Oiling May Provide
Permanent Relief”.
The first part of the mnemonic is especially helpful as many of the words
give clues to more than the first letter鈥擟am Ord Si Car Per Cre. But
Triassic and Jurassic are a long stretch from Their Joints. The second part of
the mnemonic is much weaker, and useless at separating the Palaeocene, Pliocene
and Pleistocene.
My father, George Webb, claims to have invented a mnemonic for the planets
(in order outwards from the Sun) that gives the first two letters (at least) of
each planet. It goes: Men Very Easily Master Judo, Satisfying Urgent Needs
Pleasantly.
We need a similarly information-rich mnemonic for the history of the
Earth.
Charitable vendors
Inventor Terence Parkin is more than four years late with his patented system
of vending machine change going to charity instead of being returned
(23 June, p 23).
That fund-raising concept has been operational since 1997 in Norway and other
countries, in reverse vending machines that refund the deposit on returnable
bottles and beverage cans. The fund-raising reverse vending machines are fitted
with two acceptance buttons to press after you have inserted your last empty
container, one green and one yellow. If you press the green button, the machine
issues a refund voucher that your can redeem at the checkout. If you press the
yellow button, the total due is donated to the charity specified on the front of
the machine.
The machine keeps an account of the money donated and then can send totals to
a central accounting and management system that can generate reports on how much
each machine has collected. The machines are made by the Norwegian company Tomra
(www.tomra.no).
Heavy lift
Your article on plans to revive the Russian Energia/Buran launch system
(30 June, p 16)
contains some errors.
Originally, the complete Soviet-era space shuttle system was called Buran.
Later the name Energia was used for the launch vehicle, and Buran was reserved
strictly for the shuttle orbiter.
If Barry Fox is correct in quoting Leonid Gurushin in talking about 100-tonne
and 200-tonne payloads for “Buran”, then Gurushin must have been referring to
the basic launch vehicle鈥攏ot the shuttle orbiter.
Energia, with four strap-on boosters, can place about 100 tonnes into an
ascent orbit, but when the Buran shuttle orbiter is carried then the orbiter is
credited with a payload of about 30 tonnes, not the 100 tonnes shown in your
graphic.
As for the 200-tonne payload, this requires a much modified version of
Energia itself. This variant, named Vulkan, would require eight strap-on
boosters, and the central core would have been modified to carry an upper stage
and the payload at the top rather than the side.
Personally, I believe that the Energia/Buran system will remain grounded. The
number of 100-tonne or 200-tonne payloads lying around waiting to be launched is
rather limited.
Letter
You completely neglected to mention the one thing that the airline industry
could do that would improve safety considerably, while saving fuel and increasing
load capacity at the same time鈥攍icense and use Burnelli lifting body designs.
See the Burnelli website at www.aircrash.org/burnelli/chrono1.htm.
The primary reason why lifting bodies are safer is that they allow for lower
take-off and landing speeds, which in turn result in far less severe
crashes.
Safer planes
I was surprised that the Product Liability Directive was not mentioned in
your article about making safer aeroplanes
(16 June, p 38).
Every manufacturer
of products sold in the European Union must comply with the 1985 Product
Liability Directive (85/374/EEC), under which manufacturers are effectively
considered to be guilty until they can prove that their product was not, on the
balance of probabilities, likely to have caused the death, injury or damage in
question. Manufacturers can be liable to pay unlimited amounts of compensation
without anybody having proved that their product was the cause of the death,
injury or damage.
Products are required to be “as safe as people have the right to expect” and
there are only two defences that are any practical use. One is the
“sub-component manufacturers defence”, basically that the fault was in a
purchased part; the other is the “development risks defence”, which is also
known as the “state of the art” defence.
Under the development risks defence the manufacturer has to show that his
product was designed to be as safe as people had the right to expect according
to the state of the art at the time, and also that it was not possible to
discover, using any of the methods whatsoever available at that time, that there
were any relevant defects in the product.
Since a number of companies have been successfully prosecuted while using the
development risks defence, I assume that if modern safety knowledge is not being
applied to the design or refurbishment of airliners it is most likely because
aircraft manufacturers feel that few people can afford to get into a legal
battle with them.
Letter
I personally think that if a woman is in tune with her body, or at least
takes a bit of notice of herself, she doesn’t need to be told that women feel
more attractive when they are ovulating.
I myself have known it for many years, but I have never spoken about it to
anybody. I agree with Craig Roberts of Newcastle University, though. Men do not
detect any sign of ovulation whatsoever.