Science back to school
Having recently left secondary school, I feel that Michael Reiss is right about the state of science in schools (1 December 2007, p 23) 鈥� but also that everyone who has commented so far has missed something: that the main problem in getting teens interested in science is health and safety.
We are not allowed to do experiments that go bang, to feel electric shocks even within safe limits or to do any of the sorts of things that made my parents find science lessons bearable. My sister, who is just starting year 10 (age 14 to 15), is doing a science course that involves even less practical work than mine did, instead they talk about things like global warming.
Michael Reiss wonders why teenagers are shunning science. Heaven knows, we try hard enough to sugar the pill of science for our young pupils. And we do it, as we are told we ought, in the context of our modern world and all our preoccupying issues.
But I’ve been wondering how children today would react to what hooked me into chemistry when I was about 13. I can’t imagine; I can hardly envisage being a science teacher today. But if I were still teaching, I’d certainly like to give my pupils the opening chapter of Chemistry for Beginners by Eric Holmyard, and then perform in front of them those of his demonstrations that would still be allowed by the Health and Safety Executive. Let me quote from some of the descriptions:
“…a wisp of fume arises from the mixture, and immediately afterwards thick clouds of purple and brown smoke rush out of the neck of the flask; in the flask itself you will see flashes of light”.
“…On applying a flame to one of them it at once “hatches out” into an awe-inspiring Pharaoh’s serpent…”
“…If we now gently heat the top of the ammonium dichromate, the volcano becomes active. Soon flames shoot up from the crater and clouds of green ash fall…”
May I suggest that we’re too concerned today with relevance. To an 11-year-old, relevance is irrelevant, what counts is excitement.
When I was engaged in industrial research I helped to develop and patent a new process for the manufacture of tantalum capacitors 鈥� my contribution to which sprang directly from the chemistry involved in those thick clouds of green ash.
Lee waves
How do giant hailstones form (22 December 2007, p 48)? Thunderstorm clouds 鈥� cumulonimbus 鈥� are not the only thing which might cause updraughts strong enough to support hailstones.
Glider pilots will be familiar with lee waves, usually found downwind of hills, but which can be widespread if the right combination of stable and unstable atmospheric layers and wind shears exists. These are often marked by smooth cigar-shaped clouds, but can exist in blue conditions.
Under strong wave conditions, coherent turbulent structures known as rotors can form under the peak of a wave, and it is quite possible that rain droplets and hailstones may be kept aloft for some time in the upwind part of such a rotating air mass. Local updraught velocity similar to the high altitude wind speed would be possible.
In the UK, I have witnessed a brief rain shower coming out of a completely blue sky on a very good “blue wave” flying day.
Digital archiving
It was good to see a discussion of the problems of digital archiving and preservation (8 December 2007, p 28). I work in the field of digital preservation, and these issues affect everyone, not only scientists accessing scientific data but also ordinary people accessing cultural repositories.
Software presents immense difficulties for digital preservation, therefore emulation strategies are being pursued alongside storage and data format migration.
However, the assertion that “open source software” presents particular difficulties is simply not true. If anything, open source software is easier (a relative term) to archive, as the full source code has been available. Proprietary, closed source solutions cannot be rebuilt at will on the hardware of the day, and so only an emulation strategy can help with those 鈥� assuming the closed software will run in 100 years without a licence, of course.
You repeat the standard solutions on offer but, like them, ignore the fundamental problem. A storage facility can be costed and specified with any hardware; copying from old to newer technologies is also not a problem. What will scupper most attempts to reuse data in the long term will be failure to document meaning and assumptions. This can apply to small data sets, possibly more than to the massive machine-generated data you discuss. Data will be technically accessible, but without the Rosetta stone needed to share the original meaning.
There are standards for writing metadata but these, such as XML, focus only on structure. There is even a standard, called XSL, for describing how to convert one XML schema to another. Software can force users to complete fields in a schema; it cannot ensure that what is provided is consistent and accurate. XML requires data to have a title; it does not check that the title isn’t “title is secret”.
The missing information may be assumed to be common knowledge, at least among the group currently working with the data. It starts with how the data are collected and recorded. Taxonomists have long recognised the need for terminology to apply to the same, identifiable, concept. Any archived dataset needs similar documentation for what each field means, how it was recorded, what codes were used when values were not available, out of range, etc, what precision was achieved (noting that 1 inch does not mean the same as 2.54 cm), and a reference for the method. How many datasets must exist with a field for “sex” (how determined?) containing values 1 and 2 with no key; coding biological sex must anyway allow for more than two possibilities.
Locally, colleagues and I have promoted a scheme that data should be archived as tables, each table accompanied by a codebook that describes the data fields, and a metadata table providing the overall description (for example an XML schema). It is incredible that IT standards do not address this level of description.
Data tables should not be archived in a software-specific format, but as lowest-common denominator text files; even that leads to the problem of representing characters outside the predominant ASCII character set.
Data archiving is worthwhile and will be cost-effective. Indeed it is vital for scientific progress in the future. It will not be achieved by blind reliance on IT “solutions”.
Reason or religion
I have news for your readers Peter Scott and John Osborn (22 December, p 34). They are dead wrong.
Scott assures us that belief is dangerous because once we accept an absurd idea, it then becomes that much easier to accept another and another. There is simply no scientific basis whatsoever for such an assertion. Moreover, he does not reveal the meaning of “absurd” and, most critically, also fails to disclose who will decide which idea is absurd or not.
Osborn, ecstatic in his mental laziness, is all for the notion that once he believes, he does not have to think again. I cannot speak for my fellow couch potatoes, but as an armchair scientist 鈥� now of long standing 鈥� I am not exactly impressed with his dynamically motivational compliment.
It is astonishing, in the 21st century, to see otherwise sensible people still ignoring the heuristic and logical contradictions involved in talking of reason “or” religion, as if they actually cancelled each other out. So long as the fundamentalist either/or paradigm remains dominant in these apparently conflict-obsessed minds, so long will it remain impossible to talk meaningfully of the beneficial interaction of, and useful dialogue between, reason and faith, science and religion. To choose one at the total expense of the other is to place unnecessary and detrimentally artificial barriers on all.
The real world works differently, of course. As anthropology, history and epistemology demonstrate, reason and religion are mutually enriching in all known societies. Early man developed myths and fables in order to explain all the phenomena he observed around him, a combined religious and scientific initiation indeed. It is this process of cumulative reasoning which leads directly, however tortuously at times, to our modern integrated ideas and disciplines which we know as science, philosophy and theology.
The claim that reason and rationality belong exclusively to science flies in the face of all that is rigorous in human thought. It is mere fiction. And it is an irrational belief.
What free trade?
You are misled by the political rhetoric about free trade and protectionism when you discuss pressure on Africa to “open its markets” (15 December 2007, p 3). Developed countries have always had protective tariffs and internal subsidies, and still do. In the EU and US the farm lobbies perpetuate enormous subsidies.
It’s the usual cry: do as we say and not as we do! At last some countries 鈥� Malawi and Argentina are good examples 鈥� are looking behind the curtain, finding that the magician has no scruples, and acting to protect their own industries.
Stove concern
The last thing anyone concerned about health or the environment should do is install a domestic wood stove (17 November 2007, p 34). Woodsmoke contains many similar chemicals to tobacco smoke and is associated with similar health problems 鈥� heart and lung diseases, mouth, throat and lung cancer, middle ear infections, cot deaths, genetic damage in babies and exacerbation of asthma.
Current levels of fine particle, or PM2.5, air pollution cause an estimated 32,000 premature deaths per year in the UK. Traffic is a major source 鈥� the average passenger car emits about 150 grams of PM2.5s a year. But a typical “low emission” wood stove produces more than 100 cars do (see ).
John Stolarski’s concern about harmful emissions from wood-burning stoves (8 December 2007, p 24) illustrates a fundamental difficulty with the promotion of renewable-wood-fired combustors in the UK. The technology is often seen as dirty 鈥� a perception which seems to derive at least partly from the garden bonfire.
In fact, wood is significantly cleaner-burning than most coal and oil, and usually contains negligible quantities of sulphur and chlorine. It emits no sulphur dioxide. It burns much more slowly than gas or vaporised oil, making combustion more controllable and complete. Any dioxins, for example, are destroyed when exposed to temperatures of 920 掳C for 2 seconds.
In the UK, the University of Sussex and the nearby have set up a small woodchip-fired boiler which produces less nitrogen oxides during normal running than the adjacent gas boiler, and negligible emissions of particulates and polyaromatic hydrocarbons.
Buxted, East Sussex, UK
Chalk River shuffle
You reported the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s order that the Chalk River nuclear reactor be closed for maintenance (15 December 2007, p 5), but forgot to mention that the prime minister Stephen Harper ignored it, insisting that the radioisotopes were more important than the safety of the nuclear plant.
On top of ignoring the regulatory body’s order, the government removed the CNSC’s legal counsel so they would be unable to dispute the reopening.
鈥� There were several developments after we went to press. On 11 December 2007, the Canadian House of Commons passed emergency legislation authorising the restarting of the reactor for 120 days: it was restarted on 16 December. On 14 December the prime minister announced that he had accepted the resignation of Atomic Energy Canada chairman Michael Burns.
Watching over you…
I wonder whether it is a coincidence that two consecutive articles on 15 December 2007 could hold the key to solving many more crimes in the UK.
Indoor satnav (p 24) surely has the potential to make the UK government’s identity card scheme redundant. Merely replace the chip proposed for identity cards with the Indoor Positioning System (IPS).
With the appropriate investment in transceivers on public buildings and roadsides the police could track every individual in the country.
The sheer volume of data produced by such a system would at one time have been a problem: but you report staggering leaps in computer technology that make handling 10 terabytes straightforward (p 26).
This will mean that tracking of individuals in real time becomes feasible 鈥� as does tracking where they were in the past.
The benefits of being able to determine exactly who was present at any crime scene are clearly enormous. It will be easy to enforce carrying the new IPS, since detectors will immediately spot any person who is not transmitting. Failure to wear the IPS on three successive occasions could result in a ban on leaving the house for a period.
Recently, I was banging on a ticket machine to try to recover my money and a voice over a loudspeaker announced: “This is the police 鈥� you in the leather coat, we are watching you.”
In future they would be able to admonish me by name.
Having what for lunch?
I like the idea of using your cameraphone to translate menus in foreign countries (15 December 2007, p 21). After all, once you know that you are being offered ladies’ thighs, or ants climbing trees, or toad-in-the-hole, or lion’s head hotpot, or cats’ tongues, of course you know exactly what you will be eating!
For the record
鈥� Though Pennsylvania has a history of iron mines, the iron that might be used to power fuel cells comes from coal mines’ effluent (8 December 2007, p 27).
鈥� Increases in school enrolment and attendance worldwide reduced the number of primary-school-age children out of school by around 20 per cent between 2002 and 2006; we said wrongly that the number in school increased that much (15 December 2007, p 5).
Solar incentives
While it could be argued that the 2004 law introduced in Germany proved to be the tipping point for solar photovoltaic generation there (8 December 2007, p 34), the development of feed-in tariff style policies has a deeper and much more nuanced history, stretching back at least to the .
Germany’s policy is now referred to as an Advanced Renewable Tariff (ART), because the tariffs offered are differentiated in a more sophisticated manner according to the nature of the technology, the scale of the project, the site, and more importantly, to the actual development cost of the technology in question.
Biofuel in question
You propose that the should now rule on whether biofuels are good or bad for the planet (15 December 2007, p 3 and p 6).
However commendable the IPCC’s work has been in many other areas, we do not feel that its present structure ensures a sufficient breadth of relevant expertise and perspectives among those sharing writing authority so as to pronounce fairly and roundedly on this many-sided issue. We consider that notes in both the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports on biofuel crops for transport were markedly biased in their favour.
The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) made tentative predictions of major emissions savings from biofuel expansion by 2030, but failed to warn that such “savings” could be negated by emissions from converting more land to monocultures. Additional environmental effects of such biofuel expansion plans, such as negative impacts on the resilience of an ecosystem, biodiversity or vital ecosystem services, were also not properly taken into account.
We suggest that a rigorous and fair scientific evaluation of the socioeconomic and ecological effects of biofuels should be undertaken before further biofuel incentives and large-scale investments are implemented without a proper scientific or indeed democratic basis. While we believe that IPCC procedures could, in principle, be appropriate to ensure a fair evaluation, the expertise that was available in drafting the AR4 mitigation report and the Summary for Policymakers was obviously not sufficient for that.
From Jeremy Tomkinson,
We welcome vigorous debate on the sustainability of biofuels globally, but to argue that they are “good” is overly simplistic and “bad” is equally unhelpful.
Biofuels should not be thought of as one technology. With the right feedstock and processing they do reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide income for growers and processors. As well as improving vehicle fuel efficiency, they are the only available near to medium-term options for reducing vehicle exhaust emissions: these are technologies which provide greenhouse gas savings within the existing infrastructure right now.
Crucially, current technologies are reported to typically produce between 30 and 60 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions compared with diesel and petrol. Emerging technologies that use waste or lignocellulosic feedstocks significantly reduce the dependence on nitrogen-hungry food crops. These advanced biofuels can produce over 90 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions than diesel or petrol.
Like the conversion of coal or any other solid fuel to a liquid, making liquid fuel from biomass is energy-intensive. The quantities of liquid fuels produced and the carbon dioxide released per tonne of biomass depend on the energy source used in the biomass processing plant.
The US could produce about 1.3 billion tonnes of renewable biomass per year. Burning this would release about as much energy as burning 10 million barrels of diesel fuel per day. If converted to ethanol, the energy value is equal to about 5 million barrels of diesel fuel per day. The remainder of the energy is used in the liquid-conversion process.
If a nuclear reactor or other energy source provided that energy, the equivalent of over 12 million barrels of diesel fuel per day could be produced. The potential for biomass liquids depends upon coupling biomass to nuclear or other greenhouse-free energy sources.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, US
It would seem that a sensible line of research would be to try to extract useful fuel from seaweed.
Genius was taught
Although it is true that Srinivasa Ramanujan was largely self-taught and worked for a while as a poor clerk (15 December 2007, p 46), this may give quite the wrong picture 鈥� of a 19th-century-style genius unrecognised by hostile society. Ramanujan had quite a good schooling and it was largely his own fault that he didn’t make it to university, since he couldn’t be bothered with any subject except mathematics.
His lower-middle-class parents allowed their weird son to do nothing except pursue mathematics on his own for five years, but he was in contact with the best mathematicians in India. When he got a job his immediate superior, Narayana Iyer, was an excellent mathematician.
A European educational system would probably have done for Ramanujan who, like Leonhard Euler and Gottfried Leibnitz, was essentially an explorer of mathematics, not the kind of architect or builder current teaching demands.
Chimps' feats
Rowan Hooper reports that young chimps beat humans at a memory game involving remembering the location of numerals on a screen (8 December 2007, p 10). Kate Douglas describes an experiment in which people are shown images with a subliminal message, and how subconscious processes filter what reaches awareness (1 December 2007, p 42).
Could the chimps be acting on a subconscious level, whereas the human subjects were constrained by their consciousness? Some children also seem to have a “photographic memory” that disappears with age. Could this be due to their developing consciousness?
People’s memories may be short compared to those of chimpanzees, but scientists’ memories of earlier research are clearly short too. The first researcher to demonstrate picture memory in chimpanzees was Donald Farrer, who in 1967 published the results of a clever experiment in which he showed that chimpanzees prefer to remember the details of a long series of picture symbols 鈥� an impossibly difficult task for people 鈥� rather than learn the simple rule that connects them 鈥� an easy task for people.
I discussed this research and its implication that humans might have had to lose picture memory before they could acquire concepts and language in my 2002 paper “The deformed transformed” ().