Flower power
I love the picture of Van Gogh’s Sunspots (16 November, p 14).
Coral deaths
Your article “‘Wonky holes’ blamed for coral death” proposes that water emanating from wonky holes 鈥� springs on the seabed that emit water draining from the land 鈥� is killing corals on the Great Barrier Reef (16 November, p 5). As scientists working on groundwater discharge from wonky holes, we can state that there is currently no evidence to support this proposition.
The oxygen isotope record in coral core samples that your article refers to shows a freshwater signal, the origin of which is unknown. Groundwater discharge from wonky holes is only one of a number of possible explanations for this signal. Hence any implications made on the environmental effects of groundwater discharge from wonky holes are premature.
Rachel Nowak replies: We were wrong. An editing error overstated the possibility that contaminated discharge from wonky holes might be poisoning the Great Barrier Reef
Poor prison food
Our charity is concerned with the effects of nutrition on the behaviour of offenders. We are grateful to New 杏吧原创 for its positive editorial about our work, and we welcome the discussion in your feature (16 November, p 38).
There are, however, some points to clarify. Natural Justice used only volunteers for its double-blind project at the young offenders institution in Aylesbury. We would never countenance the use of force to improve diet. And the publication of our findings, far from arousing “widespread scepticism”, has so far attracted overwhelmingly positive feedback both from overseas and in Britain.
Our approach to antisocial behaviour has already been adopted by a magistrates’ court and a crown court, and so far appears to be cheap, humane and effective. If our research is replicated, it could have widespread applicability.
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Is the British government really locking up people who are still legally children and failing to give them a diet that meets the recommended daily amounts of basic nutrients? In other words, is it knowingly malnourishing children in its care because the cost of feeding them properly would be excessive?
No wonder the inmates get violent if that is the culture they are kept in. Surely there must be some legal obligation to offer a diet that provides minimum levels of nutrition, regardless of its effects on behaviour?
Just passing through
NASA plans to establish a space station at a Lagrangian point, where the gravitational pulls from Earth and the Moon cancel out. To reassure Phill Chadwick (Letters, 23 November, p 29), dust, rock and pieces of comets will pass unhindered through a Lagrangian point unless delicately placed there with zero speed relative to the Sun and Earth. Were this not the case, the black hole thereat would long since have rendered this point very much un-Lagrangian.
Dirty rockets
I must comment on the plans for space tourism (2 November, p 10). Kerosene fuel instead of hydrogen? Some 9500 flights a year? What kind of pollution is that going to create? It seems pretty messed up to be considering this as a viable way to make money when there are other trivial things to think about, such as global warming killing millions and clouds of static smog hanging over Asia. People who come up with great money-making plans like this need to be slapped down. Now I’m going to go sandbag my basement in preparation for the coming floods.
Opium of the people?
Your feature “Love is the drug” describes the neurological parallels between drug addiction and sex drive (23 November, p 38). I wonder if something similar happens when recovering alcoholics become deeply religious? Such people can often demonstrate a fervour that seems to me similar to the “falling-in-love” experience described in the article.
Virtually useful
The four-dimensional numbers called quaternions do have one not-so-esoteric application (9 November, p 30). The next time you admire some spectacular new piece of computer-generated 3D animation in a film, on TV or in advertising, you could be witnessing the results of quaternions in action. They are used in computer graphics to express rigid-body transformations (translations and rotations) of objects, avoiding the loss of quality that the less clever alternative of re-rendering them for each transformation entails.
Power shower
Feedback is amused by the instructions for a hairdryer stating “Warning 鈥� this appliance must not be taken into a bathroom (not applicable in Australia)” (23 November). Australians have electric sockets in their bathrooms so that they can blow-dry their hair using the mirror over the sink. They also have standard light switches in the bathroom instead of pull-cords, and I have seen a two-bar electric fire switched on in a Melbourne bathroom next to the bath. All most alarming.
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Here in Australia it is assumed that anyone big enough to operate an electrical appliance unsupervised won’t throw it in the bathtub and electrocute themselves. We have standard power sockets in our bathrooms 鈥� it makes life a lot easier!
Nuclear veterans
You mention epidemiological studies undertaken by the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) into the health of those who took part in Britain’s atmospheric nuclear weapons tests (23 November, p 14). New 杏吧原创 has not seen the results of the latest study and the suggestions in your article about what it will conclude are speculation. A response to the claims made in the article is at
In 1998, Sue Rabbit Roff of the University of Dundee found more cases of multiple myeloma among veterans. We are grateful to her for helping to make a detailed intercomparison of her cases with those held by NRPB.
Iraq in the dock
According to Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, the inspectors cannot prove that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction because “we can’t prove a negative” (16 November, p 10). But any proposition, including a negative one, can be proved true by producing evidence that its positive logical opposite is false.
Thus one can be sure that Smith did not rob the bank if he was elsewhere during the robbery. But this logical relationship is not reversible: one cannot be sure that Smith robbed the bank merely because he lacks a verifiable alibi. That is why the onus of proving guilt affirmatively and positively lies with the prosecution.
It is not clear whether the weapons inspectors are the prosecution or the defence in Iraq. As the prosecution they would be trying to prove that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The inability to prove that it has none would not be enough to substantiate the charge. On the other hand the absence of evidence that Iraq is arming would not prove that it is not.
Nobody knows what would be acceptable as evidence of disarmament, nor whether evidence considered acceptable on a given date would still be acceptable a month later. Thus Iraq can be accused, whatever it does, of not complying with the UN resolution.
Monkey business
It is not just animal rights campaigners who question the scientific rationale behind animal experimentation (23 November, p 5 and p 16). So do scientists, researchers and experts in neurological diseases.
Defenders of the proposed international neuroscience centre in Cambridge, which would experiment on primates, often cite stroke research. There have been animal models of ischaemic stroke for at least 160 years. But the only two treatments of proven efficacy in acute stroke, aspirin and admission to a stroke unit, were not the result of animal models. If animal models have not led to treatments for stroke during the past 160 years, how much longer should the public reasonably be expected to wait for a return on their investment in this sort of research?
You rightly mention that the government puts hardly any money into “alternatives” to animal research. But calling them “alternatives” implies that animal research is the gold standard. It is not. In fact there is currently no evidence either to support or to refute the practice of using animals as models of human diseases.
Foresight on floods
I always read New 杏吧原创 with interest. Tam Dalyell’s item on the very important issue of flood and coastal defence in Britain was particularly interesting (16 November, p 56). In addition to the comprehensive flood protection measures described by Elliot Morley, junior minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Office of Science and Technology is working closely with DEFRA and other organisations to take a long-term look at this very important issue.
This work is being conducted as part of a new project in the government’s Foresight programme () and is due to report in the summer of 2003. It is bringing together leading scientists and experts to look 100 years into the future, considering how factors such as climate change and demographic shifts might affect flood risk across Britain in a range of future scenarios. It will then consider the options for responding to those challenges, and in particular the role that new science and technology might play. By so doing, the project aims to inform long-term policy in this crucial area.
The other arsenic risk
Your story on testing for arsenic in water from wells in Bangladesh was timely and interesting (16 November, p 4). But the implied solutions 鈥� laboratory testing and use of deeper groundwater 鈥� are also fraught with danger and must be carefully evaluated.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has evaluated the accuracy and precision of arsenic analyses provided by a number of laboratories in Bangladesh. The results show that quality assurance is a serious problem.
The study that you cite from Robert Poreda was in fact conducted as a part of an IAEA project. While we co-authored the paper published in Water Resources Research, we do not agree with the statement you have quoted that digging deeper to get at arsenic-free water is the solution to the current problem.
The deep aquifer contains old water that is not being recharged. Drilling wells indiscriminately could cause arsenic to migrate into the aquifer through the wells themselves. In addition, large-scale use of the deep aquifer is ultimately unsustainable and must be carefully evaluated and managed.