Correction
Jonas Cleary’s letter on our website (22 September)
stated that “cot deaths do not occur in Hong Kong”. However, reader Janet Dawson points
out that the sudden infant death syndrome rate in Hong Kong is 0.3 per cent.
Heart of art
I would like to make a few comments on Felice Frankel’s lack of regard for
contemporary artists
(22 September, p 42).
Unlike art, most science has not been
influenced by the profound philosophical shifts that have taken place in the
past few decades鈥攆or instance, the notions that Western civilisation is
not the zenith of human achievement and that scientific and artistic “progress”
is not the measure of civilisation.
While scientists are in a sense protected from such ideas because their
search for truths are often based in the physical or mathematical world (rather
than a subjective philosophical or artistic exploration), it is evident that
there are many external factors ranging from economics to politics to religion
that undermine their objectivity and shape the nature of what they do.
I agree that often artists who engage with science do so in a superficial
manner, but at least they are attempting to understand and deal with a subject
that many of us find intimidating. I find it galling to read Frankel’s
accusations of intellectual laziness when she seems so unwilling to engage with
what contemporary art is about.
Contemporary visual art, like science, is often accused of being difficult.
People are often hostile towards that which they do not see the value of or do
not readily understand. And in both fields there are professionals who place
widely differing value on whether the public understands or is interested in
what they do.
Frankel is a scientific photographer, not an artist, but if she wants to
discuss the visual arts it would be nice if she extended to artists the
understanding and interest that she hopes to generate towards science.
Eazi spelings
Philip Seymour has found that children learning to write are hindered by the
difficulties of English spelling
(8 September, p 9).
This adds weight to
accumulating research that compares the development of literacy in different
languages. Yet academics are still reluctant to investigate how English spelling
might be modified to be more user-friendly, even though most other major
languages have improved their writing systems in the past century.
Cognitive-psychological research is badly needed into how our present writing
system might be modified to better represent the spoken language. This requires
more than simply matching sounds.
Tune deaf
I was comforted to read the article on congenital amusia
(22 September, p 21).
Isabelle Peretz of Montreal University may have identified it only 4 years
ago, but it has been known about outside the university environment for far
longer than that. For proof, here’s a limerick that I have known鈥攁nd used
to illustrate my own lack of musical sensitivity鈥攆or many years now.
There once was a man called Green/Whose musical sense was not keen/He said:
“It is odd/I cannot tell God/Save the Weasel from Pop Goes the Queen”.
To the <IT>n</IT>th degree
Ian Stewart says that the simplest way to sort n things takes time
proportional to n2
(15 September, p 36).
Simplest, maybe, but not the
quickest. The quickest takes time proportional to n log(n).
There are several ways to achieve this, the best known being quicksort and
heapsort.
In fact, even this assumes you are using a machine with only one thread of
control. Scientific American (issue unknown, probably late 1970s or
early 1980s) published several unusual algorithms for doing things faster given
unconventional equipment. One of my favourites was a sorting method that worked
in linear time, using spaghetti. Here’s what you do:
a) For each number in your list, cut a piece of spaghetti to that length
b) Grab all your spaghetti
c) Flatten one end of the bundle against a table
d) Pick the highest piece off and measure it
e) Go to d
There was also a method for solving mazes in linear time鈥攂ut I leave
that as an exercise for the reader.
Ageing in captivity
Your article on the search for a cure for ageing described experiments that
showed semi-starved rats and mice live up to 50 per cent longer
(22 September, p 28).
But if these experiments were performed on captive animals denied access to
exercise facilities or sufficient space to get a normal amount of exercise,
there is a simple explanation for the results. They would only apply to humans
if people were similarly incarcerated.
Many years ago Jean Mayer demonstrated, in both rodents and humans, that the
energy consumed when food was freely available was linearly proportional to the
amount of exercise performed by the subjects, if, and only if, the amount of
exercise exceeded a certain minimal amount. Below this amount, the less exercise
the rodents or humans took, the more they ate.
Thus, one would expect incarcerated rodents (or humans) to consume calories
in inverse proportion to their needs, and to suffer the lifespan-limiting
effects of doing so. But if their diets were restricted to fewer calories than
their appetites demanded, such animals would demonstrate increased
longevity.
Letter
Much of your article on ageing was devoted to recounting discoveries made in
mice as if they are miniature humans. Phrases such as: “of course, people are
not big worms” and “a macaque is not a person” do not make the differences
clear.
For example, according to the same article, mutations in the IGF-1
gene in mice boost lifespan by 80 per cent, while in people they lead to
diabetes and a shorter lifespan. It is high time the animal model paradigm was
challenged.
Seal the cockpit to foil the hijackers
Your article on a replacement for the current policy of “security stops at
the aircraft door” is timely and thorough
(22 September, p 10).
However, both
the objections you raise against a fortress-cockpit solution could be removed if
the armoured door could be opened only from the cockpit and the cabin crew could
communicate only one unambiguous pre-recorded message to the cockpit, along the
lines of “emergency, please land at the nearest practical airport”.
People who are deprived of any means of communicating with the captain cannot
take control of an aircraft, however much they threaten the cabin’s occupants.
This would reduce the attraction of attempting a hijack virtually to zero.
Letter
I support the idea mentioned in your article of a duress alarm, effectively a
land-this-plane button. But the downsides you list are not valid: computers
already fly modern aircraft such as the Airbus A320. And flying automatically
into controlled airspace would not be a problem. When aircraft emergencies are
declared today, air traffic is cleared or diverted as quickly as possible to
allow the distressed plane to land.
The only way to minimise hijacking disasters is to make sure that as soon as
the flight crew knows the plane is being hijacked, they have no more control of
it until after it lands.
Letter
It seems one “last resort” system that might help suppress hijackers would be
for the pilots to be able to isolate their cockpit and fill the passenger cabin
with knockout gas. This would stop them from being forced to open the cabin
doors under duress and would allow them to land the plane (relatively)
safely.
The patent record shows that knockout gas has indeed been mooted as a way of
foiling hijackers. The most likely reason this has not been taken up is the risk
that it could be triggered accidentally. This could be dangerous, and a leak
following a crash could knock out people dashing for the escape chutes. Thanks
to all the other readers who also proposed this idea鈥擡d.