Strict dress code
Your article gave an interesting account of how the bacterium Bartonella
was responsible for the deaths of 16 Swedish elite orienteers over a 13-year period
(21 July, p 20).
However, the article had a misleading illustration of a young woman in a red sports
bikini running through the woods.
In fact, the dress code in this sport is very strict, no matter how hot it is
on a warm summer day in the forest. Arms and legs must be fully covered to
prevent blood from small cuts caused by brushing against twigs spreading disease
to the next runner. Only the head and hands are exposed.
Don't sneeze at the cat
I was more than a little irritated to read Ingrid Newkirk’s rant in her
letter concerning your earlier article about the possible development of
genetically modified cats
(28 July, p 71, and
7 July, p 12).
Many people who are unfortunate enough to suffer severe (read “potentially
life-threatening”) allergies to cats but who love them nonetheless, will be
thrilled at the prospect of owning a GM animal that does not express the
troublesome Fel d 1 protein. As such a sufferer, I am unable to enter a room
that a cat has occupied, yet I have always wanted to own a cat. My wife and
children, also animal lovers, are deprived of this basic pleasure because of my
allergy.
The steps which Newkirk suggests to render a cat less allergenic are
ineffective and often impractical鈥攆or example, not everyone can call on a
third party to brush the cat on a regular basis and not everyone’s allergies
“fade with time” as she contends.
Her flippant remark about getting “a ready-made transgenic cat, also known as
a dog” serves only to reveal her ignorance. Many cat lovers would not wish to
have a dog whose size, temperament, habits and needs are quite different to
those of a cat and which would be unsuitable as a pet in many settings. She also
ignores the fact that a lot of people who are allergic to cats are also allergic
to dogs (and often birds as well).
Walking with robots
Reading your story about the “robot nurse”
(28 July, p 22),
I wondered whether it would be possible to explore the suit’s potential as an aid for
physically challenged people. As a friend of mine is unable to walk due to a
severe back injury and is consequently restricted to a wheelchair, you can
understand my interest.
Has this possible use been considered?
Flight of fancy
“Insects make the most of their energy supply by vibrating at the same
frequency as they flap their wings, which makes them buzz,” or at least New
杏吧原创 would have us believe so
(2 June, p 20).
In your article, your editors took a flight of fancy by adding technically
incorrect details into the account of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts
(NIAC) programme to create an insect-like aerial robot to use as a Mars
Surveyor.
NIAC’s study builds on related research funded by the US Air Force, Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Although the underlying technology is “proprietary” to the Georgia Institute,
pending successful patent applications, none of it has ever been government
“classified” as stated in your article.
The aerial robot uses chemical fuel that can be synthesised on Mars, and is
not at all “like a battery”, to produce anaerobic, ignitionless propulsion of
two pairs of wings that flap 180掳 out of phase. Waste gas from the fuel
modulates the coefficient of lift of each wing on a beat-to-beat basis to modify
flight stability and navigational control. This active flow control of the wings
creates lift far greater than what is theoretically possible for the wing shape,
and provides the performance necessary for slow, manoeuvrable flight in the thin
atmosphere of Mars.
Contrary to your article, the aerial robot’s body has never had “springs
connected to the wings that cause the wings to rotate forwards and backwards as
they flap”.
Play it again
If other readers are troubled by the problem of music constantly repeating
inside your head
(28 July, p 44),
I recommend playing the irritating song again.
If the CD/tape is unavailable, then I resort to singing it out loud several
times (usually in the car), until my brain is fed up with hearing it from the
outside. Either method usually works, though if you feel the need to try the
latter and the song in question is currently in the charts, please don’t sing it
near me.
Curtained off
I have a suggestion for David Schmidt in regard to the physics of shower
curtains and the annoying way they billow inwards and stick to you while you’re
taking a shower
(Feedback, 28 July).
One factor missing from his model is common
sense. He should try weighing down his shower curtain.
Correction
New 杏吧原创 reported that an anti-piracy technology
called Cactus, from Midbar Tech of Tel Aviv, could damage hi-fis and
loudspeakers
(4 August, p 19).
This is incorrect.
Cactus inserts modifications to original CDs in a way that confuses CD-ROM
devices during the copying process. Midbar assures us that it regards any
technology that has the potential to damage any hi-fis and/or loudspeaker
equipment as totally unacceptable, and has asked us to make clear that there is
nothing in its technology on the market, past, current or future, that could, or
would, be potentially damaging to equipment.
Midbar says record labels have released more than one million CDs protected
by its Cactus system into the European market鈥攚ith no complaints.
We are happy to set the record straight and regret any inconvenience our
story may have caused Midbar.
Keep off the grass to avoid BSE
I understand that cattle eating the rendered remains of other infected
cattle contract BSE. Since the test you describe works by detecting the BSE
prion in urine
(21 July, p 10),
cattle must be depositing the prion on pasture
grass. Subsequently, other cattle will eat this grass and presumably contract
BSE. Is this not another vector for the transmission of this disease?
I presume that the researchers who developed the test have made this
connection and can reassure us that, for whatever reason, this does not happen.
Let’s hope so. However, if the prion is present on pasture grass, and retains
its ability to survive normal sterilisation methods, one must assume that there
is a major problem lurking in the fields of this country, and that BSE has the
potential to remain with us for a very long time.
Bees' brains
In his discussion of animal consciousness, Harvard biologist Donald Griffin
looks at the way honeybees communicate
(30 June, p 48).
But his approach to the tiny brain of the bee is too restricted, as he only
considers individual and dancing bees.
There are two kinds of bees involved in dancing鈥攖hose that display
dances and those that “read” dances. If the process in a bee’s brain of making a
choice among the dances on offer is denoted as “thinking”, one has to accept
that bees do think. The communication hidden in the dance about the distance and
the direction to a food source gives the dance the equivalence of a language.
But a honeybee cannot live on its own. A bee is a part of a cluster鈥攐r
the cluster is the expression of the composing bees. A cluster acts as a single
unit, whatever the number of bees it contains. From that one has to accept that
besides the brain of a single bee, a cluster has what amounts to a common
brain鈥攆or instance, when a swarm has to decide where to settle among a
number of danced possible dwellings. A common brain resulting in a common
decision is only possible through the existence of a common interaction
connecting all the bee brains.