Letter
The researchers mention that the clumping only occurs in polar solvents like
water. Might it have something to do with hydrogen bonding and the formation of
the lattice that makes water stay liquid at temperatures at which other, heavier
compounds are more volatile? It could just be that the molecules are forced into
clumps by exclusion from the “regular” structure of hydrogen-bonded water.
Saving twins
The article about lost twins
(20 October, p 38)
might provide an answer to a puzzle that has recently emerged, namely the increasing
incidence of twins among pregnant women who take folic acid supplements to prevent
spina bifida.
Could it be that this is not an increase in twin conceptions, but in fact a
slight decrease in the vast numbers of twins that are normally lost? There must
be neural-tube defects capable of killing fetuses at an early stage, so the
prevention of those deaths with folic acid would result in an increase in
numbers of twin births.
Letter
I very much enjoyed this article, though it did seem to concentrate on the
cryptanalysts’ techniques to the exclusion of other avenues of attack. What are
the parchment and inks made from, and can dating methods tell us when they were
made? That information might at least narrow down where and when the document
was written or copied.
Anybody's guess
Thank you for a fair and balanced description of the mysterious Voynich manuscript
(17 November, p 36).
As an active member of the mailing list, I was one of Catherine Zandonella’s numerous
interviewees.
I’d like to add that much of our understanding of the manuscript has come
from the insights of experts from many markedly different fields, both academic
and non-academic鈥攏ot just cryptographers and linguists. For example, the
dating evidence rests largely on the “humanistic” handwriting (palaeography) and
the nymphs’ hairstyles鈥攄iscussed at reconstructionist history fairs.
Current lines of enquiry include: is the alphabet based on an astrological
shorthand? Are the “barrels” archaic maiolica albarelli? What is the function of
the curious “barrel stands” on folio 88 (shown in the right-hand image in the
article)? Was the author a pharmacist?
Many such areas have been only partially explored, and our e-mail group is
always fascinated to see the subject matter tackled from new directions. All are
welcome to join in鈥攖he answer to the mystery could come from anywhere.
E-mail me for more information at voynich@pterodactyl.co.uk
Health in Zimbabwe
I write in response to the interview with Timothy Stamps,
Zimbabwe’s Minister of Health
(20 October, p 50).
In attacking the WHO, Stamps presents himself as some kind of champion
of world medical rights. He should direct his attentions closer to home.
When Zimbabwe gained independence, it had one of Africa’s best-run
community-based family planning services. Under the current government,
family planning has been totally marginalised, with pitiful funding. Since
independence, whole generations have moved through school and into their
reproductive years in the absence of any clear population policy. Millions of
women in Zimbabwe are now condemned to go through a regime of repeated
childbearing, and the country has fertility levels that are probably unrivalled
anywhere in the world.
Stamps claims that one “cannot have a prospering national health service
without political commitment”. But it is precisely his own ministry’s lack of
commitment to family planning that has denied Zimbabwean people their basic
reproductive rights. Whatever the reason for this grossly irresponsible
omission, the fact is that millions now lead lives of greater poverty and
reduced health as a result.
Stamps stressed that Zimbabwe’s AIDS data is notoriously unreliable,
particularly with regard to prevalence. Yet this did not stop him from going on
to make the statement that “Zimbabwe will reach zero population growth by next
year”. How can he make such a precise projection based on imprecise data?
Whether the claim is valid I do not know, but it does lead to the odd view in
some circles that because HIV is depressing growth rates, family planning need
no longer be a concern.
Aside from its impact on population growth, bearing eight children will have
an impact on a woman’s health and quality of life, and on the ability of the
state to deliver basic development needs.
120 per cent silly
Duncan Campbell writes in your letters page that as a public analyst one part
of his job is to perform calculations that lead him to claim that “a piece of
traditionally roasted meat may have a meat content of over 120 per cent”
(27 October, p 59).
He appears to think that the phrase “percentage content” is meaningless until
he defines it to mean the result of whatever arbitrary calculation he is told to
perform. This is not the case, although using perfectly normal English to say
something entirely obscure is of course a favourite trick of civil servants.
He explains that the “percentage” is based on the quantity of raw meat used.
This is comparable to giving a half-empty glass to someone and claiming that it
is full, justifying the remark by saying that it was full earlier, but some has
evaporated.
If public analysts really feel that the result of such apparently arbitrary
arithmetic is of any use at all, that’s fine. But to call it “percentage
content” is plain wrong.
Failed states?
Desmond Campbell cites “Israel’s terrorism of the Palestinians” as a counter
example to the conflict-index principle that “the only sponsors of international
terrorism are failed states”
(10 November, p 54).
He is quite wrong in this. The Palestinians, who have pursued terrorism throughout,
have failed to create a state, whereas Israel, defending itself against Palestinian
terrorism, exists.
Send a cow
The experience of Send a Cow, a charity which provides livestock and training
to poor farmers in East Africa, supports the idea that “livestock can be an ally
of better farming” and B. B. Singh’s conclusion that “there is no reason why
Africa cannot feed itself”
(27 October, p 44).
Send a Cow began by sending cows to Ugandan farmers left destitute by the
country’s civil war. The idea was that the cows’ milk would combat malnutrition,
particularly among children. We very soon realised, however, that the farmers
were also using the cows to re-establish the sustainable farming systems that
had been destroyed along with their cattle during the years of violence. For
them the cows’ manure was at least as important as their milk.
Since then we have seen many farmers restore severely degraded soil, using
simple sustainable, or “organic”, farming techniques based on the use of animal
manure. Nowadays, the training we run for all future livestock recipients
includes sustainable farming methods, as well as animal husbandry.
Many farmers speak of crop yields increasing three or fourfold as a result.
Families鈥攐ften some 10 or 12 people鈥攏ow find they can support
themselves on plots of less than three acres. Interestingly, when a colleague
spoke earlier this year to a group of Rwandan women about the
sustainable-farming training they had just received, they told her: “We are
relearning things our parents used to know.”
Letter
One question only: how do homeopathic labs wash and rinse their dishes? If
their claims are true, there will be more soap after rinsing than before, and
they are selling very potent soap pills.
Letter
This effect could also cause pollutants to aggregate. This might mean that
water which has been judged safe to drink, because the level of pollutant is
below a certain safety standard, is actually harmful.
Letter
That the secret lies in the water and not in the chemical additive was shown
by an experiment reported in Nature in about 1950. It was found that
sharks can detect blood in seawater at concentrations where they were unlikely
to encounter any blood molecules at all.
The article missed the point that at such concentrations the sharks could not
possibly work out the direction in which the contamination lay. But animals that
live in the vastness of the ocean need such skills if they are to find food.
The most likely explanation is that the addition of blood to seawater causes
some kind of rearrangement of the seawater, which spreads outward in the manner
of a radio wave from an aerial. As such a wavefront propagates through the
water, a fish would be able to assess the direction of the source by using its lateral
line in the manner in which a direction-finder radio uses its directional aerial.
Letter
What are we to make of the statement “[neutron stars] pack roughly one-and-a-half
times the mass of our Sun into a space about the diameter of a city”
(27 October, p 12).
City? Which city? The Vatican, Los Angeles, London? What next鈥攖he
anaconda is as long as a piece of rope, but the adder never gets any longer than
a piece of string?
No support for homeopathy's claims
You report that molecules dissolved in water clump together,
and you state that this may prove that “homeopathy isn’t hokum”
(10 November, p 4).
But the experiment is actually evidence against homeopathy, where there aren’t
any molecules to do this and which has as its principle tenet that the fewer
molecules there are, the stronger the effect.
By dint of the fact that some dissolved molecules are clumping in the volume,
the remainder of the volume contains fewer dissolved molecules. How can
homeopaths ensure that only the parts of the mixture with clumped molecules end
up in their remedies?
If diluting a remedy increases the size of the particles to the point when
they become biologically active, this should be observable. And if water holds a
memory or “imprint” of active ingredients鈥攕omething that has never been
observed鈥攈ow can we be sure that the water used to make a homeopathic
remedy does not contain the imprint of an active ingredient that is harmful?
The assumption of the article is that homeopathic effects exist, yet repeated
meta-analyses of properly controlled experiments have failed to support this.
Homeopathic effects are by definition placebo effects.
How big is Somalia?
So, a UN spokesman alleges that an area equivalent to Somalia has been lost
to desert in the last 50 years
(27 October, p 44).
The problem with this statement is that nobody has a clue what it means. Not only
does the size of Somalia spring to mind about as readily as the size of the Sea of
Tranquility, but if you do dig out a map, you’ll find Somalia’s shape particularly unhelpful
for visualising area.
The standard imperial unit of devastation, deforestation or desertification
is, as everybody knows, the Wales, and the standard European unit is the
Belgium. These units are widely accepted because they give you a ready mental
picture of area. How much better if the UN spokesman had said that 0.6 Wales per
year have been lost to desert over the last 50 years.
Don't cut the cable
Paul Grant’s fascinating article showed just what can be achieved by
superconducting electricity transmission cables
(13 October, p 36).
This a vital technology, not least for large-scale renewable-energy projects, in
which the site of power generation is often a long way from towns and cities.
However, Grant fails to mention the one big problem: if the refrigeration
pump fails, or the cable breaks, you lose superconductivity. Dropping several
hundred kilovolts across what would then be a substantial resistance would have
explosive results.
Deaf to reason
Acoustic weapons would be useless on hijackers who wore hearing protection
(17 November, p 24).
Earplugs, simple volume-limiting microphone/speaker systems,
or sophisticated PARAT systems
(17 February, p 21)
would all protect both the eardrums and the inner ear.
Brainwave loop
I read your article on safe driving with considerable interest
(3 November, p 44).
It reminded me of when I was involved in a medical electronics project
aimed at solving precisely this problem.
American truckers frequently fall asleep at the wheel on long, straight
roads, especially on overnight runs. We constructed several prototype devices
for trials aimed at preventing this, using a single-channel EEG reading to
measure theta-wave activity. Theta waves are a typical precursor of sleep, so
the idea was that any increase in such activity would trigger an alert to the
driver by administering a mild electrical shock through electrodes embedded in
the seat.
Apparently this wake-up call did not go down too well with some of the sleepy
truckers. And unfortunately, subjects also produce theta waves when they are
annoyed or angry.
This regrettable instance of positive feedback conjures up visions of wild
scenes in the cab, none of them conducive to safe driving, but at least it woke
the drivers up.
Correction
Inside Science 145, “Seeing with seismics”, incorrectly describes the Moho as
the boundary between the Earth’s core and mantle
(New 杏吧原创, 10 November).
The Moho is in fact the boundary between the Earth’s crust and mantle, some
2800 kilometres above the core/mantle boundary.
Also: In our article “Sound defence”
(17 November, p 24)
we stated that a non-lethal acoustic weapon was being developed by American
Technologies. The company name is in fact American Technology Corporation.
The answer is . . .
Having just finished listening to the Douglas Adams memorial programme on
BBC Radio 4, I sit down to eat while reading New 杏吧原创.
A feature on newly discovered quantum aspects of knot theory
(10 November, p 40)
keeps me from my risotto, and asks what’s so special about the number 4/7.
As I get to that question, for some reason I glance down at the page number.
It’s page 42. I make a dash to the bathroom for a particularly large towel and
await the Vogon Constructor Fleet.
Unlucky 13
The latest frequency tables for the British lottery numbers reveal visible
statistical evidence of naturally occurring triskaidekaphobia. The number 13
appears at the bottom of the list, having been drawn only 65 times since the
start of the lottery. A pronounced and startlingly low figure compared to an
expected average of 88.
An interesting situation, considering that the frequency tables contain a
reasonably large sample. This is way down the lower end of a Gaussian
distribution, and surely can’t just be coincidence?
Letter
James Randerson begins his article about the effect of visual stimuli on the
use of olfactory similes by remarking that it ought to be child’s play to tell a
Chardonnay from a Burgundy. This suggests that he doesn’t know much about
Burgundy.
White Burgundy wines are famed the world over as the example of what can be
achieved with Chardonnay. In fact, before it became the international star it is
today, the Chardonnay grape was considered a speciality of the Burgundy region,
and there is a strong historical link between the region and the grape鈥攕o
much so that there is a small village there which is simply called Chardonnay.
Sniff, sniff
I do not believe Gil Morrot’s research on the accuracy of wine-tasting proves
much of anything, because it used untrained undergraduates as subjects
(3 November, p 17).
It is well known in the food and beverage industry that meaningful
organoleptic assessment requires training, even for the most basic
and obvious things.
For example, I continue to be amazed by the difficulty intelligent but
untrained people have in describing and distinguishing the taste and odour of
hydrogen sulphide (“rotten eggs”) from geosmin (“musty, earthy, mouldy”) in
drinking water. Thus the findings using naive tasters are trivial and
uninteresting.