Trains and tribulation
You are right to point out that radar systems to protect railway level crossings will “need some development” (13 November, p 3). Qinetiq and (more worryingly) Network Rail seem to have misunderstood how automatic half barrier (AHB) crossings work.
AHB crossing barriers are triggered when an approaching train is around 30 seconds from the crossing 鈥� by which time the train may have difficulty stopping. This is a deliberate design feature, to minimise the time that the road is closed to traffic. For radar obstacle detection to be effective, the barriers would need to close far earlier. This would lead to more accidents because drivers would be tempted to zigzag around the barriers if forced to wait a long time for the train to arrive.
All is not lost, however. One proven technology that could reduce deaths on AHB crossings is a high central reservation on the approach, to discourage drivers from weaving around the barriers. Another is to install cameras recording car registration plates, combined with stiff penalties for transgressors.
Trains and tribulation
Your news item on radar at level crossings made me extremely frustrated (13 November, p 4). I suggested similar technology over 30 years ago, when I was employed in the chief mechanical and electrical engineer’s department of the Southern Region of British Rail. At the time, a number of workers employed in track gangs had died after failing to hear new trains approaching at 160 kilometres per hour.
I suggested miniature pulsed microwave transmitters be fitted to all high-speed trains, with portable receivers for people working on the track. This was thought to be unworkable, since most engineers are under the impression that microwaves travel only in straight lines. Those with microwave experience understand that microwaves can be “ducted” and follow the curve of the track.
I also proposed that high-speed trains be fitted with obstruction warning radar. This could alert drivers without them needing to watch a screen. This system was also turned down as impractical.
Trains and tribulation
“Seven die in train crash horror” cried the headlines following the tragic rail accident at Ufton Nervet. No mention of course of the 10 people, on average, who would have died on British roads that day, and the next, and, indeed, every day.
If there is money to be spent on the rail network then surely it should be spent on making it an efficient, reliable and comfortable service, while maintaining its safety record. If doing so attracted only 10 per cent of current traffic away from the roads, that would save hundreds of lives every year.
Play fair with fuels
Time and again we hear that renewable energy has to compete within the market (6 November, p 22). Recently a spokeswoman from the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry stated that, “The government…doesn’t want an [energy] sector underpinned by government support.”
The assumption is always that the market is fair. It isn’t. Fossil energy is heavily subsidised, directly and indirectly.
For example, carbon is the one major commodity whose price does not reflect the risks it generates. Nor does that price embody the damaging impacts of climate change for which it is chiefly responsible.
The insurance industry faces escalating costs due to the increasing intensity and incidence of storms and floods. Health services faced costs arising from the extended heatwave of 2003. They also meet the bill for the rising tide of illness due to low-level pollution. Droughts in Africa and elsewhere are putting extreme pressure on aid agencies.
These are some of the costs that can be considered as indirect subsidies to fossil fuels. As temperatures and sea levels rise, things will get progressively worse and still we will burn fossil fuels with abandon and renewable energy will continue to be penalised by a so-called free market.
Play fair with fuels
Two of the biggest problems confronting most “green” power generating schemes are that the most abundant renewable sources tend to be far from population centres and that there is as yet no practical means of storing the generated power to meet peak demand.
What the world badly needs is another “Manhattan project” 鈥� this time to produce a cheap, room-temperature superconductor. Because there is zero energy loss regardless of length, superconducting power cables would allow solar electricity generated in, say, the Australian deserts to power streetlights in the parts of the globe that are in darkness, and vice versa. Developing countries could earn foreign exchange by turning their deserts into “photovoltaic farms”. The ultimate goal would be the establishment of a worldwide superconducting power grid, a sort of “electricity internet”, where subscribing countries would be debited or credited depending on the amount of power they drew from or fed back into the grid.
The beauty of this approach is that any sort of spare electrical generating capacity 鈥� solar, wind, coal-fired, hydroelectric or nuclear 鈥� could feed into the grid to earn credits. However, since the sun is always shining somewhere in the world, solar power (either photovoltaic or by other means) should tend to become more and more attractive.
Driven to drugs
Ronald Siegel’s views in “The intoxication instinct” (13 November, p 32) recalled for me the ominous tenet “A gram is better than a damn” in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian masterpiece Brave New World. Would “new chemicals that allow us to experience all the pleasures, thrills and adventures of intoxication without the downsides” be of any benefit to society? Or might they destroy us?
Altering our state of consciousness as a solution to boredom, stress and other woes, though initially appealing, could well lead to social stagnation as the dull, yet necessary, work is cast off in favour of this quick release. When our “normal” consciousness has got humanity this far, why should we doubt it?
Driven to drugs
Ronald Siegel says intoxication is “the fourth drive, after hunger, thirst and sex”. The three primary drives are sustenance, sex and sleep. The omission of sleep is inexcusable.
Dream deprivation causes sleepiness; hallucinations are similar to dreams. Hallucinogens and stimulants reduce or eliminate the need for sleep while depressants aid sleep.
It seems to me that the various forms of intoxication are parts of the sleep (or dream) drive, rather than a drive in itself. That conclusion may undermine a “scientific” justification for legalising intoxicants. But it does not affect our right to do as we like with our bodies.
Driven to drugs
Plants have evolved many remarkable symbiotic relationships with animals to ensure their survival. Your history of intoxication clearly shows that plants originated all mind-altering substances. Provision of these molecules by enterprising plants has been a successful strategy when one considers their care and nurture worldwide.
Driven to drugs
I was surprised and pleased to see your article on intoxication; it reminded me once again why I subscribe to New 杏吧原创. I commend you on your courage in saying things which so many are afraid to say.
I was intrigued by Susan Blackmore’s discussion of “state specific sciences” done under the influence of various drugs (13 November, p 36). But the observation that “the majority of us are probably under the influence of caffeine most of the time” (indeed, I am even as I type this) shows that we are already pursuing a state-specific caffeinated science.
It is an interesting question whether and how this science we are doing differs from the science we would do without caffeine, and whether this is of importance or not.
Don't blame the trees
Your dubious suggestion that forests pollute the atmosphere is not new, but it is still wrong (16 October, p 18). Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are a natural component of the atmosphere and have always been emitted by forests. To suggest that increased biogenic VOC emissions due to the re-establishment of forest vegetation is “pollution” is absurd.
Without nitrogen oxide pollution, all of which is anthropogenic, VOCs would never react in the atmosphere to produce dangerous ozone levels. In fact, without it VOCs would react in such a way as to reduce ozone levels. The real point of the article you mention is that the increase in plantation forestry has inadvertently increased regional biogenic VOCs emissions because of the choice of species planted. This is compromising efforts to reduce ozone levels. Efforts to curb ozone pollution need to focus on nitrogen oxides, which are not natural components of the atmosphere, rather than on biogenic VOCs, which are.
Leave lots of litter
I was surprised to read that Europe is only now being advised of the ecological importance of forest litter (30 October, p 6). In Australia, litter has long been recognised as a vital component of the complex organic web that makes up forest life. In my home state, for example, where most rural roads have a herbaceous edge of one sort or another, it is illegal to trim or remove roadside vegetation, dead or alive, other than for safety or access reasons.
While the result may look grossly untidy to the anal-retentive, it fulfils a wide variety of useful functions. Dead or broken material remains a useful part of the ecosystem until it has completely decomposed. The resultant food chain ranges from the microscopic to small mammals. Most importantly, the road edges are corridors from one habitat or food source to another, an essential service where agriculture has displaced natural habitats.
Hair today
I don’t agree with any of the theories put forward to explain the obsession with shaving off body hair (30 October, p 44). It made me laugh to read that I could palm myself off as “younger, innocent and virginal”, particularly as I did so while collecting my children at the school gate. And are those males who go for shaved females showing paedophilic leanings, as those females are pretending to be girlishly hairless?
This drive for hairlessness is surely nothing but pure commercialisation: all those cosmetics companies must be laughing all the way to the bank, having convinced millions of the gullible that “body hair is bad”.
For the record
鈥� Jack Dumbacher, the lead researcher in our news item about poison dart frogs (6 November, p 20), is at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, not at the Smithsonian’s Conservation and Research Center as stated in the article.
鈥� In “Vortex drive” (23 October, p 30), Nekton Research of Durham, North Carolina, was misspelled as Neckton.