Contagious mood
Michael Bond advises seeking out friendships with people of a desirable disposition while distancing oneself from less salubrious acquaintances (3 January, p 24). If, however, our behaviour and our judgement of others’ behaviour are so reliant on the emotional and intellectual milieu of large friendship networks, is this advice not more obscure than it looks?
The relative importance of certain positive traits may be based on little more than what the group currently holds in vogue. Perhaps a person with some attributes generally seen as negative may be in possession of other, rarer traits that are currently dismissed by our wider social environment but which may yet prove important. I would hazard that judging potential friends based on possible future gain could lead to others being wary of your intentions.
From Graham (full name supplied)
Bond’s advice is bad news for those who suffer from clinical depression. Often they isolate themselves, and people avoid them because of their negative disposition. Depressed people need to talk to others 鈥� and to see happy people 鈥� to effect a mood state change and to alter their negative perceptions of the world.
If everyone followed this advice, the world would quickly polarise into happy, sociable people and lonely, suicidal depressives.
Bracknell, Berkshire, UK
From Rachel Findley
Hug a depressive today! It helps to remember that when one recovers from depression, that recovery spreads to all those who have been faithful and loving friends.
If, on the other hand, we all decided to spend less time with our depressed friends, and also to spend less time with friends who have depressed friends, those suffering from depression would become even more socially isolated, and probably more depressed.
There has got to be a better way to spread cheer in a gloomy time. Practising the body language and the words of cheerfulness is worth a try, too.
Berkeley, California, US
Hydrogen jukebox
It is unfortunate that David Strahan concluded his article on hydrogen as a fuel by returning to the arguments of the 20th century, focusing on comparing the efficiency of batteries with hydrogen. He completely overlooked the stark reality of the 21st-century global climate challenge and economics, not to mention the acute energy and fuel-supply issues for the UK (29 November 2008, p 40).
Matching energy generation to demand is difficult for many of the renewable energy resources now being installed. The key to effective and economic utilisation of the output from such renewable resources has to be through energy storage.
Much of our present use of hydrocarbons is directed to transport applications, and if the stored energy could be provided in the form of an environmentally neutral chemical fuel suitable for reuse in the existing transport sector it would be of great national importance. The best available answer is hydrogen.
From R. Gammon,
As the world moves towards low-carbon energy systems, an increasing proportion of primary energy will need to be generated from highly variable wind, solar and other renewable sources, as well as relatively inflexible generators like nuclear and “clean coal” plants.
To provide a buffer during excess electricity production, the electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen will play an important role. It’s a process that generates a fuel as a by-product of grid balancing, rather than presenting an added burden to the energy system.
However, the low “round-trip efficiency” of converting electricity to hydrogen and back again means it is not the preferred option for the storage of grid electricity, which might be better achieved with flow cells such as the vanadium battery (11 October 2008, p 30). Hydrogen’s main role in a low-carbon energy system is in the transfer of energy from the power generation to the transport sector.
Loughborough, Leicestershire, UK
The death of science
Science is indeed dead if it cannot find a more logical and imaginative apologist than Michael Brooks (20/27 December 2008, p 16). Surely Brooks is aware that most scientific progress is made by means of small incremental steps involving long periods of systematic, undramatic and often tedious investigations, which by their nature cannot be made entertaining.
It is ludicrous to suggest that “the public” should have a greater say in “what science gets funded” because most members are completely unqualified to make a judgement. The public can already influence the resources available to medical science by funding selected charities; but only the stupid or arrogant would claim to be qualified to suggest specific areas of research to which the funds should be directed.
Brooks’s comparison to a jury in court is flawed. The legal procedure is formally established and rigidly adhered to; speculation is discouraged; and the judge clearly specifies the possible range of verdicts. Most of the proceedings concern circumstances and actions that a jury understands and are conducted in plain English, not in the specialised terminology and mathematics that are essential for scientific clarity and rigour.
From Chris Grollman
A fifth of European Union citizens already put scientific research in their top four areas for desired use of the EU’s budget, ahead of defence and security issues 鈥� that is 29 per cent of respondents in Germany and France, though just 7 per cent in the UK 鈥� according the Autumn 2008 Eurobarometer survey of EU public opinion ().
While the tyranny of the majority should inspire caution, science can be combined well with other public priorities such as public health. Ongoing events also suggest that the science of economic growth 鈥� EU citizens’ first spending priority 鈥� could do with an overhaul.
London, UK
From Jim Grozier,
There seems to be less public debate nowadays than in the 1960s, when people argued over whether it was justifiable to spend millions on space exploration while there was so much poverty in the world. That debate was flawed 鈥� posing a stark choice between research and people’s lives 鈥� and ignored far less justifiable public spending, such as that on arms. But at least it was a debate.
Nevertheless, I’m not sure I agree that now is the time to “canvass public opinion… then act on the results”. Science has been marginalised and caricatured 鈥� often by the media 鈥� for so long that if there were a referendum tomorrow on the level of research funding, I doubt if any of us would be happy with the result. In any case, surely the idea of giving the public any say in government spending would be viewed as dangerously revolutionary by the current regime; consider, for example, the arms-spending issue again.
Probably the most we can hope for is a greatly enhanced outreach programme to make people feel that they have more of a stake in science. is an effort in that direction.
Brighton, East Sussex, UK
From Stephen Wilson
For no better reason than the peace of mind of the bourgeoisie, Michael Brooks wants science subjugated to the court of public opinion. Tragically, it already is.
In the US, evolutionary biologists self-censor, spooked by the superior PR of creationists. In Australia, it is impossible to garner support for stem cell research without talking up the prospects of a cure for Parkinson’s disease.
Clinical 鈥� and other 鈥� breakthroughs tend to arise from the corpus of scientific knowledge. We do science purely because we need to know all we can about all the world. Biasing research according to populist ambitions will only imperil good science, because even the most obscure endeavours eventually, if unpredictably, yield useful technologies.
Five Dock, New South Wales, Australia
Wikipedians
Wikipedians are disagreeable and closed to new ideas, according to one survey (3 January, p 19).
Could this be because we have to resist continually the agreeableness and new ideas of creationists, revisionists, flat-earthers and other quacks?
Multiverse/other
Amanda Gefter seeks reasonable explanations for the apparent “fine-tuning” of the laws of physics to support life, aside from the multiverse and the intelligent designer (6 December 2008, p 48). Three alternatives come to mind.
The perception of “fine-tuning” is based on the idea that the parameters of physics 鈥� for example the relative strengths of various forces 鈥� can be individually tuned. But if some mathematical “theory of everything” were to provide a unified explanation for all of these forces, we might find that they are necessarily related. Their having values less amenable to life would then be as fanciful as having “more sound, but with less fluctuation of air pressure”.
Secondly, it is argued that if these physical parameters were different, the elementary particles that form matter in our universe would hardly interact and so could not form things like living beings. But it seems possible that there are particles in our universe that we have not noticed because they hardly interact, and that these would interact strongly under a different set of physical laws, and form some sort of matter (and living beings).
Finally, we have been surprised to find life on Earth in places we did not predict it could exist, such as the deep-sea vents. If some sort of life that we cannot presently imagine could arise in many of those hypothetical universes then there is no mystery here at all.
Human ignorance leaves room for simpler and less dramatic explanations than a creator, a multiverse or the power of consciousness… and is something I definitely believe in.
Wrong heretic
Memo to Steve Jones: it was Copernicus who finally convinced the world of the real reason why the sun rises every morning, a century before Galileo (20/27 December 2008, p 71).
For the record
鈥� Chris Anderson said that the Bluefin tuna “lays maybe 3 million eggs and three reach adulthood”, and not, as we reported, that “three hatch” (20/27 December 2008, p 52).
Contagious mood
Michael Bond suggests that we should remember the new adage: we are who we hang out with (7 January, p 24).
Does he mean the existing adage that originated with Earl Nightingale in the 1960s: “It’s difficult to soar with the eagles, when you’re scratching with the turkeys!”
Nightingale, also known as the father of modern-day personal development, wrote his book The Strangest Secret based on his realisation that “We become what we think about most if the time.”
Science and fun
Having two children in the state secondary school system in the UK, I can see exactly why science is less popular than art, music or English (3 January, p 14).
In art, students are encouraged to explore a wide range of hands-on media; they are given the technical skills to produce good quality work; and they can express their own ideas within the curriculum constraints.
Similarly in music, the theory is brought alive by personal performance on a variety of instruments, in a range of musical styles. Again they can develop the personal performance and composition skills.
In English there is a good deal of reading to do, which can be enjoyable in itself, and also a range of compositional styles is explored, allowing self-expression and valuing the children’s own creativity.
In contrast science education seems dire. The work is about learning “facts” towards examinations, with little scope for individualising the approach to match the children’s own interests. There seems very little interesting practical work (which would develop individual manipulative skills, data gathering and interpretation of results) or theoretical development to provide an understandable framework for all those “facts”.
The situation changes a bit for the better in years 12 and 13, when UK students specialise, but by then it’s too late: most of the children have gravitated to the more rewarding subjects.
The problem for the UK at least is to define an approach to secondary school science education that brings back the zing while not losing the rigour. If other subjects can do it, why not science?
Livestock emissions
Bijal Trivedi gave much valuable information on research into potential ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ruminants (20/27 December 2008, p 48). Where he erred, however, was in treating animal emissions as equivalent to those from fossil fuel sources.
True, a molecule of methane belched by a cow has the same warming effect as a molecule of the same gas released by, say, an escape from a natural gas pipeline. But that effect is not the same after the two molecules have oxidised to carbon dioxide and water.
The CO2 from the cow’s methane had been taken in from the air by the grass the cow ate some days or weeks previously. It is simply returned to the air as part of the natural carbon cycle 鈥� whereas CO2 from natural gas is an addition to the carbon cycle.
Because CO2 from natural gas adds to the total quantity in the air, it will continue to have a heating effect until global CO2 emissions fall below the level at which the natural sinks are able to absorb them, and net carbon removal from the atmosphere begins.
From Carol Watson
As a farmer in Australia, I read Bijal Trivedi’s “Kangaroos to the rescue” with great interest. Like so many other critics of the ruminant ecosystem, Trivedi spends a lot of time detailing the extent and means by which ruminants on various diets produce greenhouse gases. But this approach fails to take account of the whole picture.
Ruminants eat grass, and grass uses carbon dioxide to grow via photosynthesis. So it is important to understand the net emissions of the system, rather than be horrified by the gross emissions.
The beauty of ruminants is that they produce clean healthy food and fibre from low-quality and cheap fodder. Our landscape is unsuitable for growing crops for human consumption.
Ruminants are also manageable with low capital input. Farming kangaroos may sound like a great idea to the armchair environmentalist because of their alternative digestive chemistry. But they are notoriously difficult to manage without enormous capital outlay for fencing and handling facilities.
Even if that is done, does anyone know whether they are more or less energy-efficient than ruminants? How easily do they convert kilos of dry-matter into kilos of protein?
Another difficulty, and one which I deal with daily, is whose roos are they anyway? My neighbour breeds them, and at night they feast on my sheep pasture!
Walcha, New South Wales, Australia
Overselling science
I found myself agreeing, with some reluctance, with Manfred Velden’s pessimism over understanding brain function and the overselling of what is achievable in understanding how our brains work (13 December 2008, p 22).
So with heightened sensitivity I turned to the interesting article entitled “From big bang to big bounce” (p 32). Two lines caught my attention.
Anil Ananthaswamy says: “If loop quantum cosmology turns out to be right, our universe emerged from a pre-existing universe…” and quotes Carlo Rovelli as saying ‘I hope before dying to know whether loop quantum gravity is correct or not.’
I think I understand what the intent of these two statements is. But, could my discomfort be partly due our having oversold science to ourselves?
Science cannot prove a theory, or hypothesis, right or correct; we can show that evidence is consistent with the theory 鈥� or, if it is not, go back to the drawing board. This does not stop some of our unproven “theories” from being astoundingly accurate. Nevertheless, this is an insidious overselling of science.
Why menopause?
The evolutionarily perplexing phenomenon of menopause (13 December 2008, p 41) might actually be explained within the context of preventing the genetic disaster of children being born out of incest. In particular, females could freely have offspring by any male in the new clan to which they were sent at puberty with limited risk of incest, at the same time that menopause ensured that males could also have sexual relations with anyone in their own clan with limited risk of children being born of mating relatives.
Multiverse/other
That some people appeal to a divine creator to understand why the universe appears fine-tuned for our existence is perhaps no surprise, given the standard of argument presented by some scientists. But this does not “explain” anything. It creates more problems than it solves: who created the divine creator? It rapidly degenerates into linguistic nonsense.
The argument from physicists has not been much better. To assume that we endow the universe with certain features by the mere act of observation is to assume that consciousness is fundamentally different from the matter it “observes”. This mind/body dualism is not compatible with what modern neuroscience has taught us about how the brain works. It allocates a privileged role to humans in “creating” the universe by “acts” of observation.
This egocentricicity does not make sense, given that many animals share rudimentary forms of human mental qualities. If animals do possess rudimentary consciousness, is there a pecking order? Do dogs create more of the universe than cats?
And if other life may reside in other universes with vastly different laws to our own, maybe it is asking why its universe is apparently fine-tuned for its existence.