Seeing red
I was interested to read Duncan Graham-Rowe’s article on artificial retinas, but one feature of such devices seems to have been overlooked (23 November, p 34).
The sensitivity of silicon photodetectors extends beyond the visible and into the near infrared. The lens of the eye transmits near-infrared light up to a wavelength of around 1400 nanometres. So a person equipped with such a chip should be able to see over a much wider wavelength range than their purely biological peers. TV remote controls and infrared computer data links would become visible, possibly irritatingly so.
Wrist warm-up
J. Dalmon writes of how to rapidly cool oneself after exertion (23 November, p 29) by running cool water over the inside of the wrists. Now that it is winter, try a rapid warm-up by holding the wrists under a warm tap. Equally effective!
Spuds you like
It was with amazement that I read the article about the patenting of a device to produce crispy roasted potatoes (23 November, p 24). All you have to do is parboil the potatoes, drain the water away, then place a hand securely on the lid of the saucepan and give it a good shake until the potatoes are roughened. This has been known in our family for at least three generations. To make them really good you should use duck or goose fat, never oil.
For the record
鈥� The last paragraph of the letter from Gerry Kendall and Colin Muirhead of the National Radiological Protection Board (7 December, p 30) was erroneously altered in the editing. It should have read: “Your article mentions claims that a significant number of cases of multiple myeloma have been omitted from the third study. A response to these suggestions, setting out the issues involved, can be found on the NRPB website (). We are grateful to Sue Rabbitt Roff for participating in a detailed intercomparison of her cases with those held by the NRPB. The findings of this intercomparison will appear when the third analysis is published.”
Talk about it
Alison Motluk fails to fully appreciate the cost of language determining thought: if it did, we would lose our objective scientific world view (30 November, p 34). For instance, Motluk says a leading researcher, Dan Slobin, believes that almost everything we know about our world comes through language, with different languages having different world views. Accepting the indeterminacy of translation proposed by the logician Willard Quine, this makes it certain that objective science is impossible. Does Slobin’s theory itself reflect his English? What would a speaker of Chinese think?
Consider one aspect of what we know about the world, namely time, which the article claims is influenced by our particular language. What then of relativity? Did the conception of time developed by Einstein stem from the German language?
Letter
I fail to see how anyone can expect speakers of Pacific languages to always know where north is. Perhaps a good test would be to invite the Tongan and English rugby teams out for a drink, blindfold them and let them wander round strange foreign neighbourhoods. Then see if any of them finds their way back home. If someone pays for the beer I’d be happy to perform the experiment the next time the teams tour Australia.
Letter
Regardless of any scientific enquiry into language, my five-year-old grandson returned from his Cardiff school a couple of weeks ago and announced to his mother, “I’m a different person when I speak Welsh”. Do you think he could get a research grant?
Thrown not jabbed
Alas! Poor Neanderthals! They have had a bad press since Virchow first misinterpreted the 40,000-year-old Feldhofer cave bones, found in 1856, as those of someone disfigured by rickets.
Since then, we have discovered that the average Neanderthal had a brain size larger than that of modern Homo sapiens. But now Steven Churchill claims that bone deformities seen in Neanderthals suggest they did not know how to throw spears but jabbed them into prey they had already trapped (23 November, p 22).
How, then, are we to interpret the Sch枚ningen spears? They are around 2 metres in length, the centre of gravity is a third of the way from the tip, and the butt-end tapers like modern javelins. Their construction indicates an advanced order of foresight and cognitive ability, while their configuration clearly indicates they were for throwing.
If it was stabbing rather than some other activity that accounted for Neanderthal arm bone structure, I suggest that having speared their quarry they then also stabbed it to death. But the evidence is strong that Neanderthals had the wit to throw a spear.
Biomass boom
The article on the demise of the Eggborough gasification plant in Yorkshire (30 November, p 8) only tells part of the story regarding biomass utilisation. Gasification of coppice wood and forestry waste has been demonstrated (successfully in Sweden; rather less so at Eggborough) with a power output of between 6 and 8 megawatts. However, in order to make it economic, the output would have to be between 40 and 50 megawatts. And the amount of fuel required is far too large to be practical in Britain.
There are at least three ways of breaking this impasse. Firstly, there is obviously a need for smaller, simpler, cheaper power generation technology more in keeping with the local resource. Secondly, co-firing of biomass in existing solid-fuel power plants to substitute for coal has been shown to be technically feasible. Finally, biomass can be burned in purpose-designed boilers to provide heat to industrial, domestic and institutional premises (such as school’s and hospitals).
The British government’s renewables policy baulks at all these possibilities. Instead, it seeks to support “advanced technologies” (like Eggborough), withdraws what support there is for co-firing after 2006 and does not recognise non-power biomass use.
Biomass and wind power remain the two main potential suppliers of British renewable energy in the foreseeable future; but given the opposition to biomass, the chance of the government meeting its own renewable energy targets by 2010 appears slim.
Letter
According to the US Department of Energy, the energy produced by burning all the world’s waste would provide about eight times as much energy as is used worldwide each year. Therefore, biomass represents a very large renewable energy resource.
The failure of the Eggborough gasification plant is not surprising. However, the new generation of modern gasifiers, which have novel thermal catalytic converters, along with improved gas and water treatment processes, will deliver excellent emission standards and produce high-quality gas.
Don't forget the algae
Your reader Eric Kvaalen suggests it might be possible to reduce global warming by covering a few million square kilometres of ocean with white floats to reflect sunlight (30 November, p 24). A nice solution, apart from one major flaw. The floats would stop sunlight reaching the ocean, killing off the algae. Without algae generating a large amount of atmospheric oxygen and soaking up a large amount of carbon dioxide, the world would end up a worse place to live.
Not my life, thanks
I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream when I read your article on the Microsoft MyLifeBits project (23 November, p 21). I have been using PCs at work for around 12 years, during which time I have endured seven complete changes of hardware and nine operating system upgrades. My simple word-processed text files have had to be upgraded to new formats six times, and the average size of each has increased a hundredfold. The back-up medium has changed from 5.25-inch discs to 3.5-inch discs to CD. Even the sector formatting of the PC’s hard disc has changed.
During this period many of these documents have had to be retyped or converted back to plain text as a particular application upgrade was not backwardly compatible. Some have been lost entirely due to inexplicable corruptions. The identity of the offending software manufacturer in every case goes without saying.
Does Microsoft truly believe that anyone, absolutely anyone, is going to entrust their entire lifetime of memories to one of their products? Are they committed to supporting the software and file formats for 100 years? Will all the upgrades be backwardly compatible and free? Or, more likely, will we be forced to pay through the nose every two years for an upgrade to avoid losing our most precious memories? Has Bill Gates finally lost the plot completely?
It's a wrap
Tam Dalyell seems to imply that the packaging industry in Britain should not have to pay the estimated figures of up to 拢948 million each year to meet Europe’s stringent recycling requirements (23 November, p 55). The mere fact that such large figures are involved bears sad witness to the double-plastic-wrapped society we have become. The retailers would tell us that this is all in the name of quality because, obviously, unwrapped lettuces explode on contact with air.
Hopefully the packaging industry will be forced towards Europe’s targets, pushing up prices and dispelling the myth that the act of picking up some celery with your bare hands is an unpleasant experience.
Another NASA fiasco?
The expendable launched orbital spaceplane is dead before the ink is dry on the first contract (23 November, p 11). Like the X-33 VentureStar, the DynaSoar X-20, the Hermes/Ariane and others, all past expendable launch projects have failed.
As a member of NASA’s 1993 Access to Space launch systems team, I reviewed hundreds of expendable launch vehicle configurations. We discovered that existing expendable launch vehicles are not compatible with new designs for crew and cargo spacecraft, especially those with winged or lifting-body configurations. For anything except capsules that fit into the payload shroud, the structural problems are horrendous.
The proposed Delta 4 launch vehicle will cost around $130 million per flight and provide the same launch functions as the shuttle’s solid rocket booster, external tank, and main engines, which cost only $125 million per flight. So where are all the savings? Why doesn’t NASA consider automated flight to reduce the operational costs of the spaceplane? How about automating the International Space Station and eliminating the need for seven crew members and the spaceplane? But then automation is the word not spoken by management in NASA’s human space programmes.
Wrong about G
I appreciate your coverage of the measurements of the gravitational constant (12 October, p 20). The article by Bruce Schechter does however have several wrong statements in it. The uncertainties of the Seattle measurement (ours) is 14 parts per million not 100 ppm. The uncertainty of the Paris measurement is 41 ppm and not 100 ppm. The Seattle and the Paris values differ by 4.5 times the experimental error and not 10 times. The new result from Zurich (32 ppm) is less precise than the Seattle result (but agrees well with it).