We gotta horse
Please pass our thanks on to Chris Proudman of the University of Liverpool (27 March, p 9). Following his three tips for the Grand National, we calculated that if you placed equal, each-way bets on all three horses and achieved just one place, you would cover all stakes.
We put this into practice by wagering 拢90, split equally over the three horses on each-way bets. The result was, in fact, a win and a place, returning a profit of 拢285.
Any tips for the Derby, Chris?
Letter
Having made 拢140 clear in the Grand National from your tips, I have decided to use your publication in preference to the Racing Post for future betting advice. I have yet to decide whether to make the Post my source of information on the world of science.
For the record
鈥� The story on the use of pig whipworms to treat inflammatory bowel disease (10 April, p 8) said that a German company called BioCure might launch a worm-egg drink as soon as May. In fact, the company is still trying to create a product that can be stored. Until this problem is solved, doctors would have to prepare fresh batches of eggs for patients.
鈥� In Last week’s Cutting Edge, page 24, we said that phycoerthrins are naturally red in visible light and glow luminous pink in UV, while phycocyanins are blue in visible light, and glow yellow in UV. This is wrong. In UV light phycoerythrins glow yellow and phycocyanins glow red.
British boreholes
Fred Pearce states that the Alsace project is the first time that cold water injected from the surface has been used in a geothermal project (3 April, p 23). I think he will find that the Geothermal Energy Project project in the UK in the 1980s used this method, with two boreholes, one for cold water down and the other for hot water up. I can find no references to it on the web, but remember it being fully covered in New 杏吧原创 at the time (18 August 1983, p 467).
I was involved in some mapping connected with the project. The boreholes were into the granite from an old quarry. The shattering of the rock between the boreholes was to be done by explosives, rather than high pressure water. I remember discussing with the cheerful gang on site the relative importance of the conduction of heat from the core of the Earth and the generation of heat within the mass of granite from the radioactive decay in the feldspar. I suppose that must be a factor in the French project as well. Even 30 years ago, the Hotrock folk said that they avoided mentioning radioactivity as it tended to cause panic in the press.
Naturally, being a British project, Hotrock was eventually cancelled, but I think that the efforts of all those involved should be remembered.
Mars robots鈥nd God
In your interview with astrophysicist Neil Tyson, he suggests that “the return on the dollar is vastly greater if we send robots [into space] instead of people” (10 April, p 46). This appears to be a common view, but I would suggest it is simplistic.
It is true that for many purposes robots are not only more cost-effective, but are even the only option. It is clearly absurd to think of sending people to the outer solar system, or of a manned landing on Venus.
But in the case of Mars, I have been struck by how little the two latest NASA rovers have accomplished. It seems to be that boring a half-inch hole in a rock is regarded as a great achievement. Moving a few metres a day is success worthy of celebration. And we hear that the Spirit rover has finally achieved its mission by covering 600 metres in 90 days 鈥� a distance that a single human astronaut could well do in one.
I don’t wish to belittle NASA’s achievements, but it has to be said that the discoveries it has made are newsworthy only because we knew so little before. Mars is a planet with a land area comparable to the Earth’s. Serious exploration using rovers is not only going to take forever, it will also need an awful lot of rovers.
The current missions cost less than $1 billion each. A manned mission could cost $60 billion. But on current performance a manned mission could easily accomplish so much more that it would be the truly economic approach.
Letter
“Astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson鈥ell in love with the universe at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. Now he runs it.” It’s good to know who’s really in charge.
Slow down, Bob
Bob Ladd’s letter (20 March) quotes the frequency of rotation of the Earth as 69.5 microhertz.
As the sidereal day is around 23 hours 56 minutes 鈥� or 86,160 seconds 鈥� the Earth’s rotational frequency is the reciprocal of that, a shade over 11.6 microhertz, or 1/6 of the figure he quoted.
Sickening scent
A shot of strong scent directly into the nostrils, especially food smells, has one obvious drawback, as any number of newly pregnant women will tell you (3 April, p 22). Will these scents be specially formulated to include an anti-emetic?
Copy and be banned?
I read your article about recordable DVDs with a mixture of delight and dismay (3 April, p 24). Delight because technological advances mean ever-higher data storage capacities that are useful for backing up the ever-larger-capacity hard drives in modern computers 鈥� but dismay on reading “Hollywood’s burning issue” as, yet again, Hollywood interferes with technological advance.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) states that it does not oppose new technology. Is this the same MPAA that fought to the highest courts in the US to ban the Betamax VCR? It failed, and the video rental industry was born, which now makes more money than box office receipts.
Digital copying technology makes business models such as pay-per-copy (DVD sales figures not withstanding) obsolete. Either the entertainment companies join the new wave of technology and find ways to profit from it, or we should let them die, as new companies will replace them. Protectionism ultimately does no one any good.
Incidentally, Hollywood was founded in California to escape the enforcement of east coast-based Thomas Edison’s all-encompassing patents on early film and camera technology 鈥� another fine example of the old guard’s hypocrisy.
Asthma suspect
Phyllida Brown acknowledged “junk food, pesticides, and even chlorine in pools” as “other suspects” in the soaring asthma rates of the last 25 years in western societies (27 March, p 36).
All seem very likely to me, especially junk food. But I believe the emphasis should not be on the “junk” content of our diet but on the chemical additives in so many seemingly healthy foods that are now common in western diet. So many regular pre-prepared items of family fare are laced with chemical cocktails of flavour enhancers and artificial flavours of which a great many consumers are unaware. These chemicals are also common in many munchies, bar foods and takeaway foods.
I believe these artificial additives can adversely affect the brain’s functioning, our health, behaviour and immune systems in a variety of ways, and I believe that they are the main cause of the serious rise in the incidence of asthma and attention deficit disorder. I wish scientists would give top priority to research in this area. Unfortunately, big business would not be interested in funding such research, so the funds would need to come from governments.
Letter
The photo reminds me very much of salt scalds in Tasmania. Here the groundwater comes up through cracks in some rocks in very dry areas and produces perfectly symmetrical rings of luxuriant growth on the perimeter of circles. The fact that the Namib desert fairy rings occur in sandy soil along the coastal fringes could mean they are caused by sea water bubbling up from ancient palaeochannels.
The water in the Tasmanian rings evaporates in the centre, concentrating the salt and leaving it bare. The rings are about the same size as the ones you describe.
Letter
This resembles a common phenomenon in western Canada. It is caused by a fungal growth in the soil of Lycoperdon, Psalliota and Clitocybe species, Marasmius oreades and others. It even has the same colloquial name of fairy ring.
Ring-a-round a fungus
Has anyone investigated whether these “fairy circles” on the western fringes of the Namib desert are the same as the fairy rings caused by fungi that appear on lawns in the UK during the spring and summer (3 April, p 12)?
The feature that seems most similar to the Namibian phenomenon is that the first visible evidence of a new fairy ring is a circle of stimulated grass that develops on the nitrogen released after the fungus breaks down organic matter in the soil. Fairy rings are caused by several soil-inhabiting fungi that feed on organic matter in the soil. These dark green or brown circular rings, a few centimetres to 15 metres in diameter, are caused when a fungus grows outward from a central point. If it meets another ring it stops growing, resulting in a scalloped ring.
A ring of brown or dead grass may also develop due to a dense growth of white mycelium that does not allow water to penetrate. Mushrooms can develop in a circle outside the dark green or brown ring after autumn rain 鈥� assuming, of course, that the little folk danced sufficiently well the night before.
Parasites rule
“Save the rhino maggot!” does not have much appeal as a conservation slogan, as Matt Kaplan points out (27 March, p 40). However, “equal rights for parasites!” certainly does.
I first published this catchy slogan in Nature (vol 348, p 104) and later wrote a guest editorial in Conservation Biology, a full article in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (1997) and a letter in BioScience, all three titled with that battle cry.
I shout “equal rights for parasites!” whenever I get a chance, for the reasons Kaplan articulated and many more. Most biologists, even those with advanced degrees, have avoided taking a course in parasitology. Those who have were limited to medical/veterinary biases.
From an ecological aspect, parasites rule ecosystems. Parasites, by definition, harm their hosts as individuals. But, they are beneficial for their hosts at the species level. As just one example, when a free-living species becomes too numerous, a disease breaks out and culls the population. Parasites regulate ecosystems and thereby enable their host species to survive. Without parasites, ecosystems would spin out of control and our biosphere would collapse.