Inherited fears
The interview with Brian Fallon about his work on hypochondria left me puzzled (6 December 2003, p 48).
He suggested that having an overprotective mother can make one hypochondriac. The emerging evidence that our genes determine around half of our personality suggests a different explanation: an innately health-conscious parent is more likely to have health-conscious sons and daughters than one who is not. That would make the problem “biological”, according to Fallon’s classification.
He says that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) result in a significant improvement in 70 to 75 per cent of his patients. Curiously, this is substantially higher than the effectiveness rate quoted for depression. Later in the interview he describes how strong the placebo effect is for this group of people. Perhaps the benefit can be largely attributed to this effect. The distinction is important because SSRIs are associated with serious side effects.
Fallon is unhappy with the information his patients find on the internet. And yet, entering a chat room, one knows what to expect: people’s personal experiences subjectively interpreted. What I find more disturbing is that too often what one is getting from a physician is not much more.
Nanocorrection
Jenny Hogan’s piece on nanotechnology was baffling (20 December 2003, p 21).
She says the Canadian environmental group ETC is calling for a complete ban on nanotech. We have explicitly not called for a ban. Our policy calls for a temporary moratorium on lab research and new products until a national government, in conjunction with its scientific community, can establish a reviewable “best practices” protocol. We have never called for a blanket moratorium on all nanotechnology products or processes.
We wrote to a dozen leading commercial nanoparticle suppliers, asking for their own safety studies and information about others they may be familiar with. Only one supplier replied, and it provided no documentation. Further, we have participated in numerous formal and informal meetings and discussions with the nanotech industry and regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. None of the industry representatives we have met has dismissed our concerns about nanoparticle safety.
Hogan is quite right to say that ETC is primarily concerned about the ownership and control issues surrounding nanotech and its implications for the poor and for democracy. Yes, we have noted the worrisome parallels with the debate about genetically modified food 鈥� primarily because the nanotech community is constantly vowing not to repeat the same clumsy mistakes made with the introduction of biotechnology. But, contrary to their vow, they have been marching resolutely to biotech’s drum.
Doom in the sky?
Perhaps we should be even more concerned about NASA’s attitude to safety than we are already. John Rummel, NASA’s man in charge of our planet’s safety, thinks that there is no danger in the Stardust Mission bringing material from the Wild 2 comet back to Earth because 40,000 tonnes of cometary stuff enters our atmosphere every year (10 January, p 11).
I have always assumed that this material wasn’t carefully packaged in a capsule designed to protect it on its journey through the atmosphere.
Unsalted tarmac, please
The amount of salt on Yorkshire’s motorways over the winter, combined with bright winter sunshine, made car windscreens opaque within minutes. So yes, from drivers’ point of view as well as the environment’s it is time to use a safer alternative to de-ice roads 鈥� such as that in the patent described in “A greener antifreeze” (20 December 2003, p 29).
Good vibrations
In “Mingle bells” you say the fundamental on a stretched string has a wavelength equal to the string’s length (13 December 2003, p 41). In fact, it has a wavelength of twice the string’s length (easy school science question).
Can you tell I am a bored retired further education college lecturer?
Letter
Philip Ball’s article states that for a vibrating string, “鈥� the fundamental is a single standing wave with a wavelength as long as the string”. However, common experience suggests this isn’t the whole story. All the strings on my guitar have different pitches, even though they are all the same length. The frequency also depends on the tension in the string and its mass per unit length.
Spam sham plan
Brian Fattorini has my sympathy over his “Spam tsunami” (13 December 2003, p 35). Surely a complete solution would involve destroying the spammers’ business model?
All you’d need to do is create a law allowing the formation of a company that could legally submit false orders. The company could be run by a consortium of major companies, which would volunteer the personnel to staff it.
These staffers’ job would be to identify true spam and then programmatically create millions of false orders in response to it. Banks could even provide dummy charge account numbers for verification. Since the spammers rely on a response rate of about 0.5 per cent to make sending out reams of junk profitable, increasing the rate to 20 per cent would hide the few real orders among myriad fake ones and make spamming uneconomic.
Sunspotting
Lev Pustilnik and Gregory Yom Din are reported to be looking for more examples of synchronisation between the sunspot cycle and markets (20 December 2003, p 8). They could try looking at Sunspots and their Effects by Harlan True Stetson. Back in 1937 he pointed out the synchronisation of the Dow Jones Index, tree growth, wine vintages, car production, building contracts and more with the sunspot cycle.
Not now 鈥� now now
The Scots and the Welsh don’t have a monopoly on time travel (22 November 2003, p 35 and 13 December 2003, p 35). Many a visitor to South Africa must have thought they’d travelled through some sort of time tunnel. If a South African tells you they will do something “now”, they mean “when I can get to it” (often the next day). If they say “just now”, they mean sooner than “now” but not necessarily immediately. Fortunately, they have a term which is used when there is some sort of urgency, the rather amusing “now now”.
Head boys
Feedback mentions the James Watson bobble head and asks which other scientists are so honoured (13 December 2003). Archie McPhee has been making Einstein action figures for a while now. You can find them at . While you are there, check out Jesus, Moses, Freud, Ben Franklin and Shakespeare too.
Letter
Considering that there was a cartoon of ol’ Albert at the top of your column, I was surprised to see that Watson was the first doll you had heard of. Of course, over on this side of the Pond the first (and often the last) scientist anyone has ever heard of is Big Al.
I am an exhibition designer specialising in science museums, and a basic tenet of the profession is that it’s better to show the real thing than a photo or a description. So herewith please find your Albert Einstein bobble-head doll. Enjoy.
Feedback writes:
鈥� Many thanks. Einstein is nodding sagely on the window sill even as this is being written.
For the record
鈥� MiG-29 aircraft have fixed wings, contrary to what we said on 13 December 2003, p 28. We could have referred to the MiG-23 or MiG-27 as examples of variable-geometry planes.
鈥� Letter writer Samuel Thomas would like to clarify that he is still an undergraduate student of chemistry at King’s College London (20 December 2003, p 34). The course is being phased out over the next three years.
The taste test
Writers of detective fiction should update their poisoning scenarios following the introduction of “bitter blocker” powder (10 January, p 36). Instead of the murderer having to slip the poison into a strong cup of coffee and deflect comments about the strange taste, in new novels the murderer will be able to use any food or drink as long as a pinch of the AMP powder is mixed in with the poison.
Many harmful molecules 鈥� cyanide in apricot kernels, the sedative sesquiterpene lactone in wild lettuce and medicinal drugs 鈥� taste bitter not by chance but because evolution has developed this response to them. It prevents us from eating them and protects the plants.
I am horrified that our basic sense of taste is going to be interfered with in the name of greater profits for the food industry. We judge if food is fit to eat by several clues, but the final and vital one is: “does it taste OK?” Coffee tastes bitter so we don’t drink it by the gallon. Medicines don’t taste like food so we treat them warily. If the clues are no longer there, how can we avoid possibly fatal confusion?
Don't copy us
What should we do to plan for an environmental or otherwise self-inflicted disaster that collapses our civilisation, as Peter Inkpen discusses (20 December 2003, p 34)? What if our record of knowledge becomes lost for all time? Would this really be such a bad thing?
If said records were intended to assist a future civilisation to establish itself, then the best lesson that could be gained from such records would be some fairly strong clues about how not to conduct a civilisation. Perhaps along with the suggested Rosetta Stone, this preface should be applied to the recorded knowledge: “This is our knowledge at this time. If you’re reading this after the collapse of our civilisation then it means that at least some of the methods we’ve used and documented here are evidently flawed. We hope that you don’t make the same pathetic greed-driven mistakes that some of us did. Good luck.”
Letter
Following a global disaster, how could we rebuild, especially when so much information is in digital form? Many readers are quite capable of building a workable generator, but what if you were presented with an abandoned copper mine and told to make the wire for the coils?
What I envision as the solution to this is the ultimate in hard copy. A basic grounding in the essential sciences 鈥� from agriculture upwards 鈥� should be engraved onto large, durable plaques. These should be made to withstand millennia of touching by visitors, and repeated in several languages at geologically stable locations around the globe, at least one per continent.
They must not be hidden. Instead, visitors must be encouraged. The plaques could be arranged in a labyrinthine walk with areas large enough for crowds to rest or picnic before particularly important information. Groups of schoolchildren could go on trips to view particular plaques. Visitors could take rubbings of desired sections so that they can peruse them again later.
The problem is, this is such a huge project I can only see it being organised online, with the data spending years on ageing hard drives before anybody raises enough money to make the plaques. By that time, of course, the earliest files will be completely unreadable by the latest version of Microsoft Office XXX鈥�