Fifty years on
Your editorial about the state of science and technology 50 years ago (7 January, p 3) reminded me of a story my father used to tell. As an apprentice engineer at British Thompson Huston in Rugby, UK, he was given a packet of three-legged components to check out. He was told only that they were “new triode valves from America” and had little else to go on.
His thought processes were logical and understandable. As anyone confronted with a valve/tube would do, he applied “heater voltage” 鈥� at least several tens of volts 鈥� across two of the pins, in preparation for testing for conductance thresholds. Pht! First one goes. Must have been a dud. And so the second and third.
He reported that the components must have come from a faulty batch. So, apparently, ended some of the first transistors to enter the UK.
More gnilleps
One to add to your set of words that indicate their opposites when spelled backwards: in the navy, a sonar echo is a gnip.
For the record
鈥� The Mineseeker Foundation wishes to make it clear that funds for the development of its mine-detecting airship did not and have not “run out”. It is in funds, and development continues 鈥� contrary to the impression given by a letter (14 January, p 22). See for a forthcoming announcement of a new initiative.
鈥� We mislocated the Mercury News in San Francisco. Its full name is the San Jose Mercury News, after the California city where it is published (21 January, p 13).
Satirical chick tracts
Annalee Newitz is right to be concerned about the misuse of copyright law to censor the web (14 January, p 20). But the misusers themselves fail to understand that the way the web works makes their efforts counterproductive. Before I read the article I had not heard of the Cthulhu Chick Tract, which published parodies of Chick online Christian tracts. Leaning on Howard Hallis to remove his satirical version has not helped the publishers of Chick tracts at all 鈥� far from it, it has led to the Cthulhu Chick Tract being widely talked and written about.
Hallis has made a sterling effort at satirising something which is almost beyond satire. If you don’t believe me, check out .
Lessons from California
The article by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was most inspiring and practical (21 January, p 18). Sadly this contrasts strikingly with the proposals of the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for the future of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), its world-class research teams and their work on, for example, biodiversity in environments ranging from English meadows to Antarctica.
At a time when better understanding of climate change and its effects is urgently required, the valuable work of CEH needs to be increased. Instead, the NERC proposes reductions in CEH’s work and the number of scientists it employs, and the closing down of the Monks Wood, Dorset and Banchory research centres.
No amount of reorganisation can compensate for the loss of these productive teams. As climate change progresses, the geographical position of CEH’s centres will become increasingly important.
If NERC implements its proposals, CEH will no longer have bases in the areas where the effects of climate change are likely to be most severe: south and east England and the highlands of Scotland.
The seriousness of the threats posed by NERC’s proposals demands urgent debate in the scientific press.
Beyond Kyoto
You and your readers were absolutely right to criticise Greenpeace and others for declaring the Montreal climate talks a victory (17 December 2005, p 3 and 14 January, p 22). As your editorial pointed out, the US government did gain a stipulation that the Montreal action plan “will not open any negotiations leading to new commitments” for the US, Australia and developing countries.
While the talks were progressing, Greenpeace daringly staged a crane-top protest at a new brown-coal power station in Thailand, from which it won a Thai government promise to review its energy policy. Yet that review will surely conclude that such brown-coal proliferation is well within the spirit of the Montreal deal that Greenpeace has applauded.
The danger now is that environmentalists, having declared victory, get caught up with what tiny advances they might wring from the forthcoming meeting in Nairobi of the parties to the Kyoto protocol. The problem does not rest solely with the leaders of the US, Australia and Russia. We should all recognise that these meetings have largely become a stage for appeasement by hypocritical governments.
Environmentalists and scientists should now be working to educate entire national populations about the stark choices we face, and advocating a change to true leadership in government in all democracies.
Where are the keys?
You report that a seed bank is being built in Spitsbergen, Norway, to “allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet” in a post-nuclear world (14 January, p 12). Assuming that post-nuclear people can make their way across lands laid waste by nuclear devastation to reach Spitsbergen 鈥� which is not easily accessible even now 鈥� and assuming that the key will not be under the doormat, how exactly do they get into this vault with metre-thick walls and high-security blast-proof doors?
Hot water churn
A technique sometimes overlooked in considering microgeneration for domestic use (21 January, p 36) is using a wind turbine linked by mechanical drive to a pump or churning device to heat water by internal friction. This does away with the need for electrical generation equipment and controls.
The method is not only very simple, but also allows easy storage of energy as hot water, the form in which a large proportion of household energy is used. It can readily be supplemented when necessary, and any excess energy can easily be dumped, literally down the drain.
From Jean M. O. Fischer
It is interesting to read that microgeneration might finally take off. In 1978 my late uncle, Jean Fischer, designed and built a “plus-energy” house in Denmark. It was well insulated, allowing solar panels and a small windmill to produce not only all the energy for the house but also enough to run an electric car doing 10,000 kilometres per year, and a surplus, which he sold to the power grid.
He calculated that if the government removed value added tax on such houses and if the equipment such as solar panels were mass-produced, they would be as cheap to build as ordinary houses. But this was not the first or last time a government failed to take advantage of available technologies to tackle the energy crisis.
London, UK
Trial by species
You highlight the fact that nine out of 10 drugs fail in humans despite success in animal models (21 January, p 6). This suggests that animal tests may not be the best way to ensure the safety of new medicines.
Clearly, if people can be used without risk 鈥� as with microdosing, for example 鈥� they would make far more appropriate models. Why not compare animal tests against a battery of human-based tests, including microdosing, to determine how best to protect the public from another Vioxx? Europeans for Medical Progress is calling for precisely such an evaluation: see for details.
Nitrogen reaction
Your focus on problems with nitrogen derivatives in the atmosphere was welcome (21 January, p 40). It makes a change from hearing about carbon dioxide and global warming. It would now be really useful to get information on the relationship between the carbon cycle and the nitrogen cascade.
As you report, 70 per cent of reactive nitrogen cascading through the atmosphere comes from human activities, and most of that must stem from the Haber process and the use of its products in agriculture. Application of nitrogenous fertilisers in agriculture is designed to increase productivity. This in turn alters carbon fixation rates and increases the speed of ecosystem turnover. Further down the cascade, decomposition rates will increase.
More rapid turnover always has the potential to lead to increased leakage of nutrients from ecosystems, in this case as gases into the atmosphere. Thus the carbon and nitrogen cycles cannot be seen as independent and the links between them must be recognised. Can someone go into this in more detail for those, like me, who are not experts on the subject of global warming?
Show GM benefits
You quote Peter Riley of GM Freeze as saying of genetic modification of crops that “most people remain sceptical because the industry has failed to convince them that there are benefits and it’s safe” (21 January, p 10). A well-fed and largely unscientific European public makes a ready target for doomsday portrayals of GM research as a greedy conspiracy to engulf the countryside in a tide of “contamination” with the sole purpose of increasing corporate profits. Evidence-based debate gets no headlines in an emotional and largely uninformed conflict between songbirds and GM rapeseed.
Some demonstration of potential clear-cut environmental benefit seems to be the only means of restarting reasoned public debate. Could crossing nitrogen-fixing legumes with wheat or other crops fill that need? Just publicising some research into this might go a long way towards disarming emotive jibes about “Frankenstein food”.
Precedented mutation
The short article on the mutation of the H5N1 virus found in Turkey (January 21, p 6) makes no mention of the fact that this mutation has been seen twice before 鈥� in Vietnam and Hong Kong 鈥� without significant effect on the transmissibility to and between humans.
The editor writes:
This information was omitted from the article because of space limitations. It is however in the online version: www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn8590.
Warp speed pulsar
Theoretically impossible fast pulsars appear to exist (21 January, p 17). Wouldn’t a super-fast pulsar conform to the conditions specified for a test of the Heim theory of quantum gravity (7 January, p 24)? The theory predicts that if an electromagnetic ring spins fast enough, a decrease in inertial mass will occur. This in turn would require a recalculation of the maximum frequency.
Hunter trophies
I like the idea of trophy hunting to protect lions (7 January, p 12), but propose a different emphasis. How much would a licence cost to shoot a hunter? That would be a trophy. They are born free, range free, are dangerous, and are therefore legitimate targets. Furthermore they are not yet endangered. Unlike lions, the lion hunters would know that they were being hunted, adding a frisson to their exploits.
Small-score sports
You list the most exciting games, defined as those that most often have unexpected outcomes, as soccer followed by baseball, hockey, basketball and American football (7 January, p 13). With the exception of the final two, these are the sports with the lowest scores at the end of the game.
Could it simply be that in lower-scoring games there is a greater chance of a statistical outlier (or, in sport-speak, an underdog), coming out ahead? When the typical expected score is 2-3 it takes only one point to get a tie. In a high-scoring game there is more opportunity for the score to correct itself.