Letter
Living within a 10-mile radius of this time bomb quite concerns me. Regrettably the article was short on proposed remedial action. What was made quite clear was how the authorities swept the problem under the carpet in the hope that if the problem didn’t go away, then at least it would be someone else’s problem in the future. I am not reassured.
I would like to know how thick the mud layer below the Richard Montgomery is. Is there any reason why the mud could not be liquidised so that the wreck settles further and is buried under it? The construction of a caisson over the wreck would ensure the containment of any explosion.
Animal models
Recent claims of a shortage of primates available to experimenters have led to suggestions for increased breeding, or the reuse of monkeys (21 August, p 6). We must look at the reasons behind this perceived problem. It seems clear to me that the difficulty lies not in under-breeding, but with an over-reliance on sentient, vulnerable, living beings as research tools.
The use of non-human primates for testing medicines is ineffective and costly, as well as being highly unethical. Non-human primates react to drugs and other substances with varying degrees of dissimilarity to humans. They are an unreliable predictor of safety or efficacy.
Primates are clearly capable of suffering pain and distress, and modern techniques provide non-animal alternatives to using them in experiments. Primate research is outdated and unsustainable, and instead of constantly trying to defend and maintain it, scientists should be searching for a durable and humane solution.
Super-athletes
In your editorial on marathon mice, you propose that sporting authorities should consider allowing athletes to use gene therapy 鈥� once it is proved to be safe and effective 鈥� as a way of levelling the playing field for everyone (28 August, p 3). This argument may be morally sound, as it would even the competition against athletes lucky enough to possess a rare advantageous mutation. But it is on a very slippery slope.
If you allow this, why not allow unconditional access to all performance-enhancing drugs? That would level the field against the few drug cheats who get through the system.
What about genes to produce anabolic steroids or painkillers, or for more insulin, red blood cells or growth hormone? How about a set of genes to give swimmers actual shark skin, gills and webbing? I personally would be in favour: imagine seeing a 100-metre sprint run in 6 seconds, a 400-kilogram snatch in weightlifting or a 300-metre javelin throw. Bring it on!
Now you see it鈥�
I don’t want to be a griping carper, but you have printed a letter accusing me of saying exactly the opposite of what I actually wrote (July 17, p 24, and 7 August, p 24).
Regarding the Higgs boson, I wrote: “Processes have no higher philosophical status than particles: in fact, they have less, since the latter can at least be detected and measured.” But Terence Collins says: “Peter Rowland argues that a process is more fundamental than its particles because we can only observe a process by observing the particles taking part in it.” Clearly, when you compare the two passages, I argued nothing of the sort.
Collins also comes up with the chicken and egg problem as if it were new. But this was fully implicit in my remark that you cannot get knowledge to pull itself up by its bootstraps.
Nuclear's hidden cost
I can understand the importance of New 杏吧原创 taking a neutral stance in the debate about nuclear power, but your correspondents seem to have missed out two crucial points (21 August, p 26).
Nuclear power could not survive in a competitive energy market without huge government subsidies. The massive costs of research and development, waste disposal, reactor decommissioning and accident liability are not included in either cost/benefit or investment appraisal analyses, but are paid for by taxpayers.
Secondly, nuclear power is not carbon-neutral. According to a 1997 study by the Institute for Applied Ecology in Berlin, Germany, a nuclear power station of standard size (1250-megawatt capacity) indirectly emits between 376 billion and 1300 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, taking into account the whole fuel-to-waste cycle. Nuclear power releases four to five times as much CO2 per unit of energy produced as renewable energy sources.
This debate is characterised by misinformation and extreme views. Many people look to New 杏吧原创 to provide comprehensive and unbiased information and analysis. Keep up the good work.
Bhopal toll
You claim that “almost 4000” people were killed in the accident at Bhopal in 1984 (24 July, p 5). However, 10 years later, the official death toll was 6495, while a Canadian team estimated 10,000. In 2002, it was claimed that 5000 died at the time of the accident and that victims continued to die at the rate of between 15 and 20 per month, with a total death toll of about 20,000. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 have been permanently injured and are likely to die prematurely.
Beware tidy minds
You observe that messy homes lead to messy minds (28 August, p 15). For many years I was employed as a research scientist for a multinational company, during which time I had to deal with a variety of high-ups. All the researchers knew what to expect by the state of their offices: those with tidy offices had tidy minds, managed everything, had everything in its place as beloved by administrators, and could not recognise a new idea if it got up and bit them.
Stolen to order
The security and privacy issues around radio-frequency identification tags extend rather beyond the possibility of government agencies keeping track of citizens’ every move (28 August, p 22). Any technically savvy thief could scan potential victims and select those who cheerfully broadcast the existence of expensive consumer goods. Dishonest postal workers could scan the mail for interesting objects. A whole new market would open up in steal-to-order theft.
Doomsday wreck
I am a quarry manager and have worked as a blast engineer. I really enjoyed the Doomsday Wreck article, but the prospect of encasing the Richard Montgomery in concrete does not appeal (21 August, p 36). A better option would be to detonate the bombs after burying them in sand. This would contain the effects of the blast and stop the projection of metal. Sand and gravel particles cannot travel very far even if they are accelerated to speeds up to 6000 metres per second by an explosion, due to their high surface-area-to-mass ratio. Chunks of concrete will travel much further 鈥� I have personally witnessed rocks projected up to a kilometre from blasts.
The greatest risk is the non-detonation of parts of the cargo and the dispersal of live explosives. Wet sand between the bombs reduces the prospect of sympathetic detonations and requires munitions to be “tied in” together using special blasting equipment. This is a time-consuming and potentially dangerous task.
Letter
Not only did I yawn at the original article on contagious yawning, but also when reading the letter from Patrick Harvie, who couldn’t stop yawning when reading it (21 August, p 26).
Please don’t print anything more about contagious yawning or I may never finish reading a copy of New 杏吧原创 again. I had trouble writing this letter, too.
Letter
Richard Montgomery, after whom the sunken ship was named, resigned his commission in the British army for want of opportunities for advancement. He emigrated to New York in 1772, and when the colonies rebelled was quickly commissioned a brigadier general. He perished from British fire at the head of his troops during the battle of Quebec on 31 December, 1775.
It took the British authorities 50 years to agree to repatriate his remains, which were given a hero’s memorial upon arrival in New York. It looks like Montgomery, or at least the ship named after him, has finally gotten even with the Crown for this insensitivity.
Where's the water?
What happens to the water that is pumped from tube wells in India and China (28 August, p 6)? Does it not eventually become water vapour and return to earth somewhere? Does it contribute to rising sea level?
Fred Pearce writes:
鈥� Yes, emptying aquifers are measurably adding to sea-level rise.
Greenhouse gluttons
Perhaps as scientists and technologists we should begin by addressing our own contribution to greenhouse-gas emission. Many of us are frequent flyers: air travel burns substantial amounts of fossil fuels. Some of us also use power-hungry equipment such as supercomputers or computer clusters. If we are to influence public opinion we should be seen to be “walking the walk” as well as talking the talk.
The research councils could allow grant holders to “offset” their greenhouse emissions, for example by paying for tree planting. They could actively encourage such payments by funding them on top of the grant itself. We could use more videoconferencing facilities to reduce the need to travel, and this could be a prerequisite for funding multi-site projects.
Can readers suggest other ways that scientists can improve their greenhouse-gas balance sheet?
Bigger than Bermuda?
The article “Monsters of the universe” contained a variety of interesting units to describe the world’s biggest physics experiments, including tennis courts, African elephants, the Colosseum, the Australian Capital Territory and a blue whale (28 August, p 26).
I am puzzled, however, by the Large Hadron Collider: it is 27 kilometres round and “you could squeeze Bermuda, Monaco and four Vatican Cities into the area bounded by the LHC”. How do you squeeze an island over 20 kilometres long into a ring with a diameter of about 8.6 kilometres? Is there some extra dimension to the LHC that will enable it to find the Higgs particle?
Valerie Jamieson writes:
鈥� Apologies to Bermudans, but the main island is narrow and if you squish it (conserving area), it fits.
Letter
Herbivores don’t yawn? My alpacas do, and in a most superior manner, too.
Yawn, yawn, yawn
In his letter on contagious yawning, John Tocher is incorrect (21 August, p 26).
Herbivores most certainly do yawn. Deer and horses yawn a lot, as do sheep. My wife tells me that when she was riding with a friend and one of the ponies yawned, both of them often felt an inclination to follow suit.
Computer cookery
The heat from my computer monitor does not go to waste (4 September, p 34).
I have found it to be the ideal place for my bread dough to rise. After an hour or so the dough is ready for the oven, and the smell in my study has me salivating.