Out, damned mouse
I couldn’t help but let out a groan of dismay at Feedback running yet another story perpetuating the myth that it is impossible to control a computer other than by means of that fiddly, slow, hopelessly limited and ill-conceived piece of equipment that is the computer mouse (10 August).
Attached to most computers is a highly sophisticated, information-rich item of technology, which, despite its resemblance to a typewriter, can do far more than just enter text. Indeed, by use of the Tab, Return, Space, Control, Enter and other keys, you can respond to any prompt with far greater speed than by hauling an unaesthetic pointer across the screen to a small, poorly placed button. What’s more, you’ll avoid repetitive strain injury.
IUDs are safe
I read with interest, and perhaps a little dismay, the review of current literature and comments about the attitude of professionals regarding the use and safety of intrauterine devices (3 August, p 9).
However, it did not surprise me. I worked in family planning for 25 years, during which time I inserted approximately 3000 IUDs. What became obvious to me very quickly was that these devices are both very effective and very safe. What problems I became aware of concerned the competence of some of those inserting the devices and the adverse attitude of many in the profession.
I had to spend a lot of time reassuring women in the face of adverse information. Some of this was generated by professionals who had failed to consult the sound scientific information available regarding IUDs. And, I suspect, it was also partly due to the unduly defensive legal statements of the manufacturers.
If the professionals advising women lack understanding and confidence about a method, how can women be expected to feel confident and decide wisely for themselves?
Fateful day
I was interested to see in Feedback that that the European Space Agency is sponsoring Spaceguard (3 August).
I invented this name for the first chapter of Rendezvous with Rama (1973), which is now optioned for filming. I’m still spooked by the fact that the asteroid impact that triggers the story is dated 11 September.
Riddle of the ripples
The article on ridged icicles in your 13 July issue (p 21), reminded me of a similar phenomenon in stalactites, stalagmites and flowstone in caves, which I first noted some 14 years ago (Cave Science, vol 15, p 8). I also noted the phenomenon on soft limonitic deposits in an old coal mine and on the lime deposits found under concrete bridges.
I appealed then for explanations of the origin and periodicity of the ridges, but none was forthcoming. Like the icicles, these structures showed a rippled effect with the ripple crests generally around 10 millimetres apart.
Men really do smell
Your recent article and correspondence about depression in women who use condoms did not mention the influence of the smell of semen (29 June, p 5 and 20 July, p 27).
The chemical 1-pyrroline, which is present in human semen, is thought to act as a human pheromone. It is also found in sweat from the male pubic region. Some liken the odour to marrons glaces (sweet chestnuts) or as the chemical name implies, a faint, burnt oaky aroma. Others find it putrid.
Robin Klassnik and myself found in a study that homosexual men were attracted to the odour. But unlike the pheromone androstrenol, it has not yet been marketed.
Music of the heart
You say that Kiyoko Yokoyama tested the effect of music based on one’s heartbeat by comparing it with silence (27 July, p 13). He found that the heart music had a relaxing effect. But surely he should have compared it with similar music that was not influenced by the heart’s beating? Perhaps music is relaxing by itself, even if it doesn’t give biofeedback.
Elephant sense
Michael Roe wasn’t the first to think of using tomato extract as a bug repellent (June 22, p 21). Those of us who remember the sequential biography of that great statesman, philosopher and scientist Babar the Elephant, already know that if you rub tomato leaves around a door, the tomato scent will deter ants from coming in through the gaps.
Perhaps Babar never patented the invention because the Celesteville patent office had a policy of allowing inventions of the greatest importance to be free to humankind. Or elephantkind.
Down the pan
The Feedback item on the surprising toilets at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport doesn’t mention just how surprising the toilets really are (10 August).
All of the toilets automatically flush, and have a sensor to ensure that the person is nowhere near when it does so. Unfortunately they are set halfway up the wall, so when a small child sits down they flush immediately. We almost lost my sister down one of them.
For the record
鈥� As several readers have pointed out, we used the wrong units in an example in “Juice on the loose” (3 August, p 36). Instead of producing 2 kilowatts of power, calculations by Gary Henderson of Gravitational Systems show that a pedestrian walking over 300 pumps laid into the ground along the length of Macy’s department store in Manhattan could produce 2 kilojoules of energy.
Letter
Since their inception, the social sciences have been bedevilled by a cacophony of competing conceptual frameworks, none of which explains much, but instead describes exactly the same phenomena in competing terms.
As I read Laland and Brown’s account of the “meme”, I heard yet another siren voice joining this discordant chorus. It tells us nothing we don’t already know, but simply dresses up common knowledge in the spurious mantle of a scientific analogy.
If social scientists have indeed dismissed this neologistic nonsense, then this is reason for hope. We may be witnessing the dawning of discernment.
Still in cages
Unfortunately not all battery cages for laying hens are to be prohibited in the European Union as was reported (3 August, p 18). Under the 1999 Directive on the Welfare of Laying Hens, all conventional battery cages will indeed be banned on welfare grounds by 2012. However, the new legislation allows for these cages to be replaced by so-called “enriched” battery cages. Advocates for Animals does not believe that “enriched” battery cages offer any significant welfare advantage over the conventional barren battery cages.
The German government has already announced that it is to ban enriched battery cages and Elliot Morley, Britain’s Minister for Animal Welfare, is to hold a public consultation on the issue. Sadly, the Scottish Executive is so far refusing even to consider prohibiting them.
The EU’s Scientific Veterinary Committee noted that the battery cage has inherent severe disadvantages for the welfare of hens. As your article points out, there are also potential welfare problems with alternative systems. However, the important difference is that these systems would provide better welfare overall.
Famine and subsidies
The famine in southern Africa is a tragedy. But the fact that maize production is subsidised in the US has little or no effect on food shortages in these African countries (3 August, p 3). The so-called commercial farmers in Zimbabwe were never adversely hindered by the farming subsidies of the US and Europe. African countries south of the Sahara do not import cheap subsidised maize at the expense of their own farmers. The imports are necessary because the techniques used by local farmers do not produce enough maize even for internal markets.
When land is returned to the (rightful) pre-colonial owners, the production methods will return in that direction as well. Traditional African subsistence farming was not designed to satisfy the needs of the new urban communities.
My argument has nothing to do with the rights of Africans to regain possession of their lands. The argument has everything to do with good management, honesty and sound government.
Saving at source
Your article proposes that we should scavenge some of the wasted energy from our environment to power devices like microprocessors and mobile phones (3 August, p 36).
I’m all for that, but surely it would be more energy efficient and profitable, not to mention environmentally friendly, to avoid creating excess energy in the first place? Improvements to appliance design could reduce the amount of sound and stray electromagnetic radiation produced.
If that didn’t prove economical, then perhaps the energy harvesters could be built directly into the devices (car engines, industrial machinery, air-conditioning vents and kitchen appliances, to name but a few). Sound energy decreases with the square of the distance, as does electromagnetic radiation, so it makes sense to locate the harvester as close as possible to the source.
Middle-Eastern memes
Kevin Laland and Gillian Brown ask why students of culture like myself rarely take memetics seriously (3 August, p 40).
Surely, part of the reason is that advocates of the theory make overambitious claims for memetic explanations of phenomena they do not begin to investigate seriously. A case in point is the hypothesis that the characteristics of Judaism and Islam become “more extreme in places such as Jerusalem” due to natural selection in the competition to “recruit followers at a particular locality” leading to “character displacement”.
But if the point of character displacement were to lessen competition between populations, why would it lead to violent extremism? If violent extremism becomes a trait found within both populations, is this not convergence rather than divergence? In what sense are Jews and Muslims competing for followers (rather than territory) in Jerusalem? How is it at all possible to treat Jerusalem as an isolated locality, without considering “meme flows”?
Zionism originated in Europe, many extremist settlers are of American origin, and some of the relevant Islamic radical ideas may be traced to Egypt 鈥� locations far less noted for Jewish-Muslim competition. And how do we account for counter examples, such as the relatively peaceful coexistence and common civilisation of Muslims and Jews in, for example, pre-Reconquista Spain or the Ottoman Balkans 鈥� or, for that matter, in Jerusalem before the crusades?
Letter
If it is true that 80 per cent of genetic material doesn’t code for anything and is just taking up space, then perhaps 80 per cent of memetic material also doesn’t code for anything and is just taking up space. Suddenly the world begins to make some sense. Human psychology, psychiatry, politics, soap operas, they really are just junk memes.
Are genes inventions?
Sandy Thomas’s article on genetic patents is a step in the right direction but with too short a stride (3 August, p 25).
She correctly defines the key questions for patentability in terms of properties of “inventions” 鈥� but the objection to genetic patents is that the gene has not been invented but described. The process that led to that description may well be patentable, but not the description itself.
Consider aerial mapping by side-scan radar. The process is certainly patented. The geographic structure revealed cannot be patented, nor should it be, although a printout of the results would be copyright.
In the case of the extraction of a medically useful, naturally occurring product from plants, bacteria, yeast and so on, the product should not be patentable as it was not invented. The extraction process should be if it is novel, but if someone else develops a different method they should be free to use it.