Intelligence genes
It’s interesting to read about how the gene for intelligence is carried on the X chromosome, and so is dominant in men but recessive in women, but passed through the female line (25 May, p 26). But I can’t help suspecting a certain feminist spin on the development of this hypothesis.
The writer argues that the gene was selected for because women preferred to mate with intelligent men, citing a study that purports to show that modern women who are near ovulation prefer intelligent men to rich ones. This is founded on a rather speculative supposition that primitive women would have got to do the selecting in the first place, or would have been able to tell an intelligent man from a dim one. It also assumes that female selection of mates would have been the only, or the major, influence on the propagation of the gene.
Surely any of the following are at least as plausible: that intelligent men were better at providing for and protecting their offspring, and so ensured the survival of more of their line even when they had no more opportunity to breed than their less gifted neighbours; that they were better at eliminating the competition; or that they were better at selecting the women who would make the best mothers.
Ignoring all of the above and insisting that the process had to be driven by female mate selection comes across as an attempt to put women centre stage on principle.
Doomsday postponed
I think the first paragraph in your article on the new supernova was irresponsible (25 May, p 12). It was enough to put people into a panic. Let’s hope they had sense enough to read all the way to the end!
Coral crisis
John Etherington points out that the expected warming and sea level rises due to the increased level of carbon dioxide in the air are likely to be similar to the conditions during past interglacial periods (11 May, p 57).
But in contrast with previous interglacial periods, the present rise in CO2 is man-made and very rapid. For this reason it is not clear that corals and life on Earth in general will be able to cope as well as they have in the past.
Map makers
The Peters projection, far from being neutral, was produced for a political purpose: to increase the apparent importance of countries which appear small on a Mercator projection due to distortion near the poles (18 May, p 54).
Literally hundreds of map projections have been invented, each with its own special properties, and the choice of projection depends on what you want to use your map for, as well as what’s in fashion at the time. It is impossible to flatten out the Earth’s surface onto a plane without introducing distortion. It’s just a matter of what sort of distortion you are prepared to tolerate.
The Mercator projection, which gets a lot of bad press for distorting the areas of countries, is used because it has a special property: lines of constant bearing are straight lines on the map, making the projection invaluable for navigation. For that reason alone, it’s never going to be completely replaced by an equal area projection. The Peters projection is one of many equal-area projections that have been known about for centuries, and cannot claim to give the one true picture of the Earth. A glance at a globe will give you a much better idea of the relative areas and positions of countries, without the large distortion created by the Peters projection.
Letter
I was surprised to see Fred Pearce’s review perpetuate the myth that Arno Peters was the first person to use the equal-area projection. There were several equal-area projections published long before Peters. The first was by Cossin in 1570. The one published by Peters in 1973 was identical to a projection published by the Scottish cartographer James Gall in 1885.
All two-dimensional representations of the globe distort. Some distort area, some distort shape. The Peters projection (n茅 Gall) grossly distorts shape.
Slaughter numbers
Your article on foot and mouth vaccination (11 May, p 12) would have had more impact if you had quoted the figure of 10 million plus animals that the British government now admits were slaughtered, rather than the figure of 4 million you cited.
Shyness isn't funny
I believe I suffer from social phobia, and found Jon Sutton’s remark highly unfunny (25 May, p 58). His was a typical reaction to the condition鈥攁lso known as social anxiety鈥攁nd demonstrates exactly why sufferers would be so unwilling to volunteer for the proposed trials. We fear exposure to “normal” people’s scorn. I’m sure that Roche Australia will find it nigh on impossible to discover any sociophobes while the world finds the condition such a source of fun.
Jokes about social phobia are the same as jokes about any medical problem. They don’t help anybody.
Muddled maths
On the subject of basic maths and percentages (Feedback, 20 April), about 3 years ago I received a discount voucher for 25 per cent off a meal for two at a new restaurant. So did a friend. We went together, with our respective partners, and duly offered our vouchers when it came to bill time.
The person serving us (who worryingly enough was the manageress) insisted that as we each had 25 per cent off, a total of 50 per cent was to be deducted. We tried (honestly, we did) to explain why not, but she was quite firm that 25 per cent of two separate things is the same as 50 per cent. If only we’d found two more friends with vouchers.
Letter
Your feature claimed that “in Australia and California, much of the feed eaten by livestock comes from irrigated fields”. Wool, in particular, is singled out in the “water use in agriculture” table. In fact, fine wool of suit quality comes from “dryland” agriculture in Australia. Irrigation is a recipe for fly strike, foot rot, fluke and fleece rot.
The best Tasmanian superfine is produced on rugged non-arable “bush runs”. Yes, the lambs are reared on lowland pastures for their first year, but the only sheep with the luxury of irrigated feed are destined for the meat trade, not wool. Water is just too valuable, even in this comparatively fortunate state.
Finally, why compare 1 kilogram of maize with 1.4 kilograms of wool? A Tasmanian fine wool suit will last 20 years, much longer than any of the other items on the list (except the wine, but only if you don’t drink it).
Letter
There is enough food to feed us all and there will be for a very long time. The reality is that meat consumption is the sole cause of the global food problems outlined. Some 90 per cent of US grain production, and 40 per cent globally, goes to feed livestock.
When the consumption of animal protein is a thing read about with disgust in history books, there will be enough to feed us all. The chemical fertilisers that currently take massive amounts of fossil fuel to synthesise will be redundant, as there will be no need to produce all that extra food for animals. Land now wasted on meat production will be available for fuelwood, fruit and wilderness.
Your readers could begin working for a future of sustainability and equal rights for all by becoming vegan and buying vegan organic food.
Creating universes
Finally, we know how the big bang happened. It is explained in the piece about a way to widen wormholes (25 May, p 11). Apparently, you have to add negative energy, but there’s a catch: “Add too much negative energy 鈥� and the wormhole will briefly explode into a new universe that expands at the speed of light, much as鈥� ours did immediately after the big bang.”
So apparently a scientist in another universe was experimenting with wormholes, added a touch too much negative energy, and kaboom! Our Universe came into existence. This also solves the decades-old argument about whether or not something existed before the big bang.
Letter
Charles Choi writes that the Large Hadron Collider at CERN could shortly be producing one mini black hole per second.
If this is so, how on earth are they planning to prevent them becoming midi black holes with the same mass as, say, Geneva, or maxi black holes with the mass of the Earth?
Letter
The LHC will only make black holes if certain theories involving large extra dimensions are true. But even if it does create them, all black holes evaporate as they lose energy called Hawking radiation, and the smaller the black hole is, the faster this happens. These extremely tiny black holes would evaporate in something like billionths of a second, long before they’d have a chance to suck anything in鈥擡d.
Farming on track
Your feature on feeding the world overlooked a fundamental component of sustainable agriculture鈥攆arm mechanisation (18 May, p 32).
Mechanisation has one enormous downside: soil degradation caused by the weight of machinery. The damage is primarily done by wheels, so the answer is to confine the machinery to permanent tracks.
This gives much better traction and lower fuel consumption. It allows crops to grow in uncompacted soils鈥攁nd this is much better for all soil processes.
Recently this has been developed into a farming system that also involves developing field layouts to manage run-off and prevent waterlogging, and modifying machinery so that tractors, harvesters and sprayers can run on the same tracks. We call this Controlled Traffic Farming, and since 1996 CTF has been adopted on 500,000 hectares across Australia.
Letter
The official UN forecast remains at 9 billion but we expect that it will shift to 7.5 billion next year, as the lower of previous estimates becomes the norm. As we reported on 16 March (p 9), earlier views that falling fertility rates will stabilise at 2 children per couple now seem to be wrong. Women in less-developed nations, from Brazil to Vietnam, and in urban Africa too, are having fewer children than expected, especially if they have access to education. It is now likely that the average fertility rate will reach 1.85 and that world population will decline rapidly after 2050. If so, the world’s future will look very different from past predictions.
We will explore this issue further in a few weeks’time鈥擡d.
Not so many mouths to feed
In your report on agriculture there are several references to the world population increasing to 9 billion by 2050 (25 May, p 32).
On 17 March in The Sunday Times Fred Pearce reported: “The director of the UN population division Joseph Chamie said by 2050 the world’s population will be falling for the first time since the Black Death.” The figure for 2050 is now set to be 7.5 billion, half the increase previously predicted.