Correction
Due to an error in production the penultimate paragraph of Sally Manders’s letter (25 May, p 57) contained an inaccuracy. It should have read: “Female suffrage is enshrined in the US Constitution but equal rights for the sexes are not. Women vote in elections because the federal government and individual states have legalised universal suffrage. However, this does not amount to equal status under the constitution. The Equal Rights Amendment of 1923, proposing equality in law and supported by the National Women’s Party has, 79 years later, still not been ratified.”
Letter
Your article raises the possibility of cosmological constants changing over time. I recall reading a book by E. A. Milne that was a popular version of his cosmological research during the period from 1928 to 1950. The book was entitled Modern Cosmology and the Christian Idea of God (1952). Milne propounded a theory of relativity derived from considering time as the basis for relativistic calculations, and I think he concluded that one had to recognise two kinds of time measurement. In one time (t-time) constants appeared to be constant, but in a more cosmologically true time (tau-time) they predictably changed. I wonder if any of your readers can recall this work and could comment on whether it has been discredited or just forgotten.
A fuller version of Thomas Dent’s letter (above) can be seen on our website鈥擡d.
Still moving
Your article talks of the damage high-intensity magnetic fields might cause to living bodies (18 May, p 12). The implication is that no effect should appear on animals that aren’t moving.
But has no one considered that inside motionless animals there are moving liquids, blood in particular, so that a potential difference will be established in the veins?
Quality control
Feedback is puzzled by “superfluous precision” in product use-by dates (25 May).
Dates on packs serve two functions. The obvious one is to tell the consumer when the product should be used by. The second use of the date is to tell the manufacturer when the item was packed. He knows how far forward the stamped date is from the packing date, so it is easy to count back. If a consumer returns a faulty item, checks can be made about what was going on at the time of packing, and “retrospective preventative action” taken to ensure there is no recurrence. The time shown is the actual time of packing, to give even more precise traceability.
Letter
How’s this for long shelf lives? I was in the supermarket today, and found Barraclough’s Peppermint Cordial, marked “Best before Apr 03 2099”, and Barraclough’s Elderflower Cordial, marked “Best before Apr 03 2112”.
It would be nice to know if they do last that long, but I don’t think I’ll be around to find out.
Smaller farms to feed the world
Surely the obvious but unstated conclusion of your report on food production is that the most effective means of increasing yields is to replace large farms with small ones (18 May, p 31)?
You cite Miguel Altieri’s work showing the advantages of mixed cropping, which being easier on smaller units ensures that “small farms all over the world tend to produce better yields than larger ones”. The box on urban farming (p 41) noted that: “The highest productivity was on the smallest plots, even though most farmers didn’t use yield-boosting chemicals.”
There is plenty of other evidence showing that farm size is the key determinant of output per hectare. Shouldn’t the priority of all those who wish to feed the world be to call for a redistribution of tenure, otherwise known as land reform?
Letter
Your article was one of the best pieces on the current and future global food dilemma that I’ve read in many years. Society must move beyond either/or arguments and look at the whole picture, taking the best from all approaches to farming.
Clearly we need more research into sustaining and sustainable agriculture, not only to adequately feed and clothe humanity, but also to prevent the further degradation and destruction of the world’s remaining wildlife habitats. Unfortunately, the public doesn’t seem to understand the magnitude of the challenge鈥攆eeding a 50 per cent larger global population a better diet without taking more land from nature. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, farms already occupy more than a third of total global land area.
To gain the public’s attention to these critical issues, an extraordinary coalition has signed a declaration in support of saving nature with high-yield farming and forestry (). The signatories include Nobel peace prizewinners Norman Borlaug and Oscar Arias, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, James Lovelock, George McGovern and Per Pinstrup-Andersen, winner of the 2001 World Food Prize.
More than 400 concerned scientists and conservationists from 50 countries have joined them. We invite all concerned individuals to consider adding their names to the declaration so that we can muster the necessary resources in time.
Letter
Chris Leaver claims that spraying conventional crops with insecticides helps nearby organic crops by removing pests (18 May, p 14). But in the same issue, your feature on smart farming contends that nature, if left to its own devices, can render insecticide spraying unnecessary because “beneficial” insects build up to counter the pests (p 39).
As an agricultural journalist, I’ve repeatedly seen the latter view hold true. I recall the frustration of a cotton farmer who had cut out the massive insecticide sprays that this crop receives in Australia, but had frequently watched his “beneficials” move away because of spray drift from nearby properties. In the years this didn’t happen, the gross margins on his unsprayed crops were outstanding, despite some insect damage, because he hadn’t needed an enormous investment in chemicals.
To its credit, the Australian cotton industry is now implementing the integrated pest management principles outlined in your feature.
Consumer clout
Garrett Simpson seems to have missed the point of the recent discussion of globalisation (18 May, p 58). In stating that New 杏吧原创 is not the right forum for debate, because it is business people who decide and politicians who set the environment for business people, he is assuming that neither business people nor politicians read the magazine. Does Simpson perhaps have some insider information about New 杏吧原创’s readership that the rest of us lack?
Simpson also wrongly assumes that those of us who are consumers have no power to influence the march of globalisation. Consumer power has had an impact on business decisions in the past, and it can do so again.
This is where the New 杏吧原创 debate has so far fallen a little short. While it has been a fascinating and educational read, there has been little information that consumers can apply to their everyday life in order to help bring about positive change.
People aren't bacteria
While Colin Tudge’s comparison of humans to bacteria may be a useful one for a war propagandist wishing to demonise the enemy, it hardly provides a rationale for scientific debate about “the makings of a suicide bomber” (11 May, p 36).
Tudge gives the impression that there is very little difference between animals and humans, and ignores the fact that we have the ability to make rational choices in our lives, unlike animals, who are totally subservient to their instincts.
Black hole factory
When you make statements such as “The CERN Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is expected to generate one mini-black hole per second” (25 May, p 11), could you please remember to add “if speculation about ‘Large Extra Dimensions’ turns out to be correct” first?
I’ve already had someone say, “I didn’t know you were building a black hole factory”, and it’s not even 10 am.
Necessary mouse
Claude Reiss is correct in asserting that the cystic fibrosis mouse has a phenotype that differs from the human variety (11 May, p 56). It does not follow, however, that the CF mouse is a failure, as many important insights have been gained from studies with these animals.
For example, the CF mouse lives for only a few weeks, yet complementation with a yeast artificial chromosome carrying the CF gene gave mice a normal lifespan. And fully restored functionality was present in those organs examined.
While CF mice show little lung pathology, the airways remain deficient in mechanisms dependent upon the CF gene. Many studies have shown that these mechanisms can be restored by complementation. Indeed, using protocols identical to those used in mice, temporary restoration of function was detected in the nasal cavities of CF patients. While it is true that no such procedure is yet sufficiently robust to produce clinical improvement in patients, studies with CF mice continue to inform research in CF, whether the approach is by gene transfer or drug development.
In his last paragraph, Reiss condemns animal research as useless to people needing real cures. For those who share this view I suggest a simple test. Get hold of a pharmacopoeia or formulary that gives details of all modern approved drugs in clinical use. Compare these with drugs found in the equivalent veterinary tomes and you will learn two things. First, a high proportion of drugs are common to human and animal medicine. And secondly, their therapeutic uses are for similar conditions.
Death of physics?
Regarding the feature on the implications for particle physics of time variations in the fine structure constant (11 May, p 28), I would like to point out that reports of the death of physics as we know it are greatly exaggerated, and also draw attention to some other relevant work on the subject.
The paper by Thomas Banks, Michael Dine and Michael Douglas, which claims that changing alpha is inconsistent with current thinking, assumes that the effect of changing alpha on the vacuum energy (or “cosmological constant”) can be estimated within traditional quantum field theory (QFT). This can’t tell us much about “M-theory”, which is a recent and still speculative outgrowth of string theory, and might give an entirely different answer for the vacuum energy. In fact, there is as yet no good way to calculate the vacuum energy, either in QFT or in M-theory, let alone to estimate the dependence on alpha: all attempts to do it from first principles get it wrong by several orders of magnitude (as John Barrow reminded us). The only conclusion is that we don’t understand the vacuum energy.
No one, not even Banks, Dine and Douglas, knows what M-theory really is, so to conclude that it is inconsistent with some observation鈥攅ven one as radical as changing alpha鈥攊s highly premature.