Time to get up
The clock that wakes you at the optimum moment (16 April, p 24) already exists in watch form and is being sold at . Just by chance, I came across your article on Reuters today after having bookmarked the site of the watch.
No dark stuff
The last sentence of the article on missing dark matter says it all: “Even if MACHOs exist, astronomers will still have to look for other as yet undetected particles to explain all of dark matter” (16 April, p 10).
The problem with all dark matter theories is that they require all kinds of as yet undiscovered and exotic particles, and exclude the possibility that dark matter is not required.
For example, in a paper from 1998 (“Is the missing mass really missing?”, Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions, vol 16, p 3), a theory is proposed to explain the rotation curves of galaxies based on minor deviations of the vacuum energy density, with no need for dark matter at all. It could well be that the whole search for missing matter is in vain.
Sighting the soliton
As a Scotsman I have to correct a statement in the item about the cosmic “smoke ring” 鈥� a form of wave known as a soliton (9 April, p 15).
The Scottish engineer John Scott Russell saw his soliton from the Forth and Clyde Canal, not the Union Canal, as you state. The Forth and Clyde Canal runs from Bowling on the river Clyde, past Glasgow to Grangemouth on the Firth of Forth. The Union Canal runs westward from Edinburgh and links with the Forth and Clyde Canal at the famous Falkirk Wheel.
For the record
鈥� Our feature on cloud seeding (16 April, p 40) should have started with the words “Cannons blazed”. No clergy were set on fire in China’s rainmaking experiment.
Healthy as muck
“Filthy friends” indeed! Why do children on farms suffer less from allergies? Because they’re playing in muck all the time (16 April, p 34).
Let the children play in the soil, let them chop up worms and see what soil tastes like, just like the good old days. Let them eat that piece of bread they dropped on the floor, and maybe not wash their hands quite so often. The thought of less-than-pristine children may be anathema to many of today’s parents, but it also might just prevent deadly anaphylactic shock.
From Martin Thomas
A birth in the old days was a messy business. Compared with modern hospital births, there was little doubt that the baby would have been exposed to its mother’s gut flora. But is it possible that, by sanitising the birth process, we have removed a parallel evolution mechanism?
In the wild, you might expect individuals who inherit a healthy mix of bacteria to be more likely to survive to reproductive age. So strains that promote health in their hosts would flourish, and those that didn’t would perish: a natural selection process, in fact.
Farnham, Surrey, UK
Claire Ainsworth writes:
鈥� The environment does have an important role in determining what species of bacteria colonise a newborn baby’s gut (see 24 April 2004, p 42). Research indicates that gut bacterium species in babies born via vaginal delivery tend to differ from those in babies born via Caesarean section and in premature babies that have been in intensive care. Gut flora composition also differs between breastfed and bottle-fed babies.
It seems that the gut flora has an important role to play in helping a baby’s immune system develop, and research is under way to find out if Caesarean delivery is a risk factor for allergy, and whether babies would benefit from prebiotics and probiotics.
Cycles of ice
Like Ivor Williams (16 April, p 29), I was surprised to read William Connolley’s claim (19 March, p 29) that no one had predicted an ice age some 30 years ago. But what has not been pointed out so far is that this prediction is compatible with the prediction of global warming. One model is cyclical, the other a trend, and trends and cycles are completely different animals. Both can be true. What happens in reality depends on the relative contributions of each to world temperature.
The prediction of an imminent ice age was based on the observation that the world has been through a series of them. We are now in a warm patch, but the good times are almost over. This is a cycle, represented on a graph by a wiggly line. The global warming model is based on there having been an exogenous shock to the climate 鈥� that is, industrialisation. Industry has increased global temperatures, at first only marginally but increasingly over time. This is a trend, and is represented on a graph as a straight line.
To find out which prediction will win out 鈥� the trend or the cycle 鈥� put both lines on the same graph and compare them with actual observations.
Protect your daughters
Debora MacKenzie’s article on the cervical cancer (HPV) vaccine for young girls (16 April, p 8) underlines how cultural taboos may affect the programme’s success. But there is an obvious way to market the vaccine to people who think their daughters are chaste and don’t need a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease.
Forced sex doesn’t require your daughter’s consent. In the UK, according to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, girls aged 10 to 15 were the victims in 22 per cent of recorded offences of rape. Here’s your advertising slogan: “Protect your daughter from being killed by a rapist. She’ll be around to thank you when she’s older.”
Dangerously sexy
So women prefer cautious men, not risk-takers (16 April, p 16)?
This conclusion was reached by surveying young women, not by observing their actual behaviour. What people say they want is not the same as what they actually choose, as any nice guy can testify who has helplessly watched his female friends serially date jerk after jerk while saying they just want to meet a “nice guy”.
Which is not to say nice guys always finish last. But it is foolish to survey people about their sexual preferences and claim to have learned anything besides how people answer such surveys.
People vs parks
The forced expulsion of indigenous peoples from national parks is not only immoral (16 April, p 21). It also contravenes Ethiopia’s obligations under international human rights and environmental law. As a signatory of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Ethiopia should be “protecting and encouraging customary use of biological resources…” (Article 10c).
At the latest meeting of the CBD’s conference of parties, it was decided that the “establishment, management and planning of protected areas should take place with the full and effective participation of, and full respect for the rights of, indigenous and local communities consistent with national law and applicable international obligations”.
The same meeting recommended that no resettlement of indigenous and local communities should take place without their prior and informed consent. The World Conservation Union likewise holds that forced resettlement is not acceptable practice in establishing parks.
Unfortunately, too many conservation agencies choose not to adhere to these norms. If conservationists can’t respect conservation laws and standards, why should anyone else? What is lacking is any mechanism for holding these maverick organisations to account.
From Paul van Vlissingen, Stichting African Parks Foundation
Resettlement of people is a matter of sovereignty of a democratic country 鈥� not of foreigners, whether we like it or not. The African Parks Foundation, by contract, states that it does not want to be part of these resettlement policies. This should not be assumed to be otherwise.
We work very well in Liuwa, Zambia, with thousands of people living traditionally in the park. We will do that elsewhere in Ethiopia and other countries. We believe local people should always benefit from our work and in the Nechisar case we presently provide humanitarian help, such as medicine, tools, repairs and other support. We will develop the park for the benefit of the local people and its flora and fauna.
Doorn, The Netherlands
Hello, tangsten
There has already been a major breakthrough in the work with superatoms (16 April, p 30). This is the creation of a new element: tangsten (see illustration, p 31).
Ill winds
David Suzuki implies that the opposition to wind farms is largely down to their impact on landscape (16 April, p 20). He has missed the point: much of the outcry stems from two matters of greater concern.
First, wind power will never contribute significantly to controlling concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Secondly, attempts to force energy generated by wind power onto the grid will impose serious unreliability or will negate much of the promised saving of CO2 emissions by requiring “shadow” back-up generation.
The 2004 Consultation on the Review of the Climate Change Programme of the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recognises that by 2010, renewable electricity generation will save 2.5 megatonnes of carbon emissions per year at most. This is much less than a thousandth of the global emission, and an infinitesimal fraction of the quantity that needs to be removed from oceans and atmosphere to meet the guidelines set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to reduce the atmospheric concentration of CO2 by a third.
It is a good idea to stop burning fossil fuel and to avoid further unnecessary carbon emission, but I am afraid wind power isn’t a viable alternative. Suzuki will have sacrificed his view for less than nothing, and most of us like such views as they are.
From Paul Cairns
The fact is that we live in a society with an insatiable demand for energy. When quizzed, most people are unequivocally against compromising any aspect of their lifestyle to cut their demand on our resources. So it has to be asked: why compromise our crowded islands’ wild landscapes to find a futile fix for pampered lifestyles?
Like an overweight compulsive eater who hopes that the odd piece of crispbread thrown down the hatch alongside plates of chips will somehow make them slim, we are kidding ourselves with low-yield energy technologies. We must move away from our obsession with generation and start bearing down on demand. Lean technologies only make sense alongside lean consumption.
Halifax, Yorkshire, UK