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Letters : Don't give up on Higgs

CERN, Geneva

We read with astonishment that results from the LEP experiments indicated
that the Higgs boson probably does not exist (8 December, p 4). As chairpersons
of the LEP Higgs and Electroweak working groups and spokespersons of the LEP
Collaborations, we would like to inform you that there is no such claim from LEP
experimental groups.

Although the search for the Higgs boson is an important and fascinating
topic, it nonetheless forms only a small part of the research programme at LEP.
After many years of detailed analyses of LEP data, our knowledge of the
fundamental constituents and interactions of nature has improved tremendously.
The standard model is the theory that summarises best our current understanding.
The remarkable conclusion from a wide variety of measurements is that the
standard model essentially describes them all, and there is no compelling need
for introducing new phenomena beyond those foreseen by the standard model.

Based on these precise measurements, the theory makes predictions for the
mass of the Higgs boson. It tells us that the mass is probably lower than 200
gigaelectonvolts.

We conclude from the results of our direct searches for the Higgs boson that
the mass is larger than 114 GeV. This is perfectly compatible with the above
prediction— hence our dismay concerning the report that we have ruled out
the existence of the Higgs boson. In addition, we have hints in the data which
are compatible with the production of a Higgs boson with a mass of about 115
GeV.

All our data are thus consistent and compatible with the existence of the
Higgs boson, which remains one of the key issues for our understanding of
particle physics. This was the conclusion a year ago, and remains after more
refined treatment of the data.

Letters : Who's pro-life?

Woking, Surrey

You have fallen into the trap set by campaigning groups that incorporate
their propaganda in their name, by referring to “pro-life groups”
(1 December, p 3).
The implication is that those not supporting their views are in some way
“against life”.

These titles are intellectually dishonest and should not be
encouraged—although I can see the difficulty of reporting their views
without promoting them. You could perhaps refer to them as anti-cloning groups.
But, for a start, you might put loaded titles in heavy quote marks.

Some of those who support cloning are actually in favour of life and hope to
make it a bit better.

Letters : Knot tied up

Urbana

Keith Devlin describes knots that minimise the length of rope they
require—the quotient of length by thickness
(10 November, p 40).
He says that “no one has ever proved” that each type of knot has such a tight (or
“ideal”) configuration. My paper with Jason Cantarella and Rob Kusner, “On the
Minimum Ropelength of Knots and Links” (www.math.uiuc.edu/~jms/ Papers/)
proves that they do.

For each knot or link type, we show rigorously that there is a ropelength
minimiser, which must have a certain (low) degree of smoothness. We also give
the first families of explicit examples of tight links. These examples
demonstrate that no greater smoothness can be expected in general for tight
links. In some cases, however, we describe not a unique tight configuration, but
instead a whole continuous family of equal minimisers of different shapes.

Letters : Add some iron

Sherborne, Dorset

Long before the biological effect of nitric oxide was discovered
(24 November, p 38),
it was known that its iron coordination compound,
nitroprusside, had the same effect when injected as a soluble salt.

Nitric oxide at higher than physiological concentrations is bad for you
because it binds to haemoglobin even more strongly than carbon monoxide does. In
view of this similarity it might be worthwhile testing some soluble metal
co-ordination compound of carbon monoxide, also by injection, rather than making
patients breathe the gas.

Letters : Phone phraud

Knebworth, Hertfordshire

The “♯90” fraud may be an urban legend as told, but it’s related to a real one
(Feedback, 8 December).
The US phone company AT&T warns its mobile
subscribers at that they may receive an automated
message promising they have won a prize. The message directs them to dial a
two-digit code preceded or followed by the * or ♯ key
(such as *79 or 72♯), and then an “800 number” to claim a prize.

When they dial the number, though, they program their telephone to forward
calls to a long-distance operator. Con artists can then call their number, be
forwarded to the long-distance operator and place calls that are billed to their
telephone number. All mobile users are advised to find out what forwarding code
their network uses, and not dial it.

Letters : Corrections:

Brad Dalton
(8 December, p 9)
is a research fellow at NASA Ames Research Center in California.

And Cog
(Feedback, 1 December)
is a project of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory—see video at
www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/cog/video.html

Letters : Mirror, mirror on the floor

Warrenpoint, Co. Down

If a mirror fixed to the ceiling is hung horizontally and a mirror fixed to
the wall is hung vertically, what’s the problem with the Kolja circular mirror
(Feedback, 1 December)?

Letters : Lenses in focus

Beeston, Nottingham

Compared with “normal” glasses wearers I am very short-sighted: my
prescription is −14. Between the ages of 13 and 20 I wore soft contact
lenses six days of the week (seven if I could get away with it). I was forced to
do so as my eyesight was rapidly deteriorating.

A story similar to the one you published on 8 December
(p 6) appeared on a
television programme a number of years ago. I was quite young at the time and
extremely worried by the story, so I consulted my optician. I was told that the
risk was extremely low: I had a greater chance of getting cancer. I think that
for the peace of mind of people who wear lenses not for cosmetic choice, but
because of severe sight problems, some idea of the actual level of risk involved
would have been helpful in your article.

I also found the implication that all contact lens wearers should wear
disposable contact lenses worrying. If this is so, then I suggest that more
money and time is spent on researching how to make disposable lenses available
for prescriptions stronger than −7.

If I had been scared enough to stop wearing my contact lenses when I was
younger, my eyesight might have become even worse than it is now.

Letters : Lettrism

Dyce, Aberdeenshire

Further to the discussion of “alphabetical bias”
(8 December, p 57;
Feedback, 17 November),
I cannot comment on proper names, but the distribution of the
general English vocabulary through the alphabet is well known to lexicographers.
When I edited A Concise Ulster Dictionary (OUP, 1996), I was guided by
Thorndike’s breakdown of the alphabet into 105 blocks, reproduced in Sidney
Landau’s Dictionaries: The art and craft of lexicography.

There are 60 blocks up to the end of M. So about 57 per cent of English words
fall in the first half of the alphabet, compared to the 65 per cent of surnames
(by weight) that Feedback reports from the London telephone book.

Letters : Controlling regulation

Chesterton, Cambridge

In your editorial “Brave new medicine” you state that “we should at least
insist scientists justify their research stringently beforehand to regulators
armed with the will to veto all but the most necessary experiments”
(1 December, p 3).

When an influential and very widely read popular science magazine makes such
a contentious statement so strongly, I believe that you owe it to the scientific
community—the whole scientific community, not just those concerned with
cloning—to justify it, in detail.

There is, indeed, a legitimate debate about how the direction and pace of
scientific research can remain in line with society’s needs, aspirations, fears
and prejudices. I suggest that the need would be better served by making New
ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ a forum for the debate, rather than uncritically accepting the
need for draconian regulation.

Letters : Take with a clump of salt

London

I read the paper that gave rise to your story suggesting a mechanism by
which diluting homeopathic remedies might make them more potent
(10 November, p 4).
My initial guess is that the clumping of dissolved molecules it reports
arises from adsorption onto the vessel walls. This is a familiar hazard in
physical chemistry when playing with dilute solutions. It can mean that what is
measured is predominantly the material in the adsorbed (two-dimensional solid)
state on the walls, rather than in the solution. The shapes of the curves given
in the paper would accord with this, as would the fact that the dilution history
of the solutions affected the results.

But homeopaths, eat your hearts out. Much more fundamentally, the results
themselves deny that brine can exist at all. The smallest particles of
aggregated “NaCl” they report seeing in any of the solutions they handled
contained about 10¹⁰ NaCl pairs—equivalent to grains of about
10^-12 grams of salt. If this occurred in reality, there would be no NaCl
brines in nature, including the oceans—only suspensions of small solid
sodium chloride particles. When did this happen? It sure would come in handy
when one was needing a pinch of salt.