Sleep well
Emma Young tells us (21 February, p 34) that “the assumption that poor sleep was a symptom rather than a cause of mental illness was so strong that nobody questioned it”. The assumption may have been widespread, but it did not go entirely unquestioned.
On page 21 of their book Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy of Schizophrenia, published in 1994, David Kingdon and Douglas Turkington noted that a state of sleep deprivation is common prior to acute psychotic breakdown. Crucially, they went on to suggest that “sleep disturbance may be exacerbating, and perhaps may even have a causative role in producing, the psychotic symptoms”.
I readily concur with James Krueger’s idea, reported in Emma Young’s article, that parts of the brain may be awake while other parts are asleep. On four or five occasions over the past 20-odd years I have woken myself up laughing. In a brief moment of dual consciousness, it appeared that my dreaming self continued to laugh while the more conscious awakening self tried to locate the source of the noise.
If there are people for whom this is a common occurrence, they might make interesting subjects for study.
Bournemouth, Dorset, UK
That sinking feeling
A. C. Grayling highlighted the need for simple explanations of complex modern-day issues to capture public imagination, and motivate people towards change (14 February, p 25). In relation to the “bathtub effect” analogy for carbon emissions and fossil fuels, I have always imagined the Earth’s fossil fuel reserves to be more of a “sink” laid down over millions of years.
The Earth and its climate form a complex adaptive system of huge momentum that was a long time in the making. Now we’ve spewed vast quantities of carbon back into the atmosphere in a few decades. If carbon and climate are linked, then we have yet to see the full impact of our interference.
Our chances of reversing any bathtub effect we may have unwittingly set in motion seem minuscule. I fear we are all “sunk”.
From Grahame Kelly, Queensland University of Technology
Most currently proposed technological solutions to climate change are either too complex or of too little capacity to be effective before the bath of carbon dioxide begins to overflow.
But, perhaps inadvertently, Grayling has touched on the ultimate solution by referring to unemployment and labour. Our lifestyles are embedded in a socioeconomic system that is addicted to everyone having a job, and at least half these jobs are a representation of excessive human activity. Sustained by fossil fuels, these jobs go on to produce unnecessary materials.
Could a global, compulsory 20-hour working week halve carbon dioxide emissions? If so, the slogan to stave off catastrophe might then be: “Stop work to save the planet”.
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Not so special
I don’t understand what’s so ineffably profound about DNA (21 February, p 22).
Hideously complex yes, even unnecessarily so, like most other products of biological evolution. But fundamentally DNA is only the blueprint part of a self-replicating machine. John von Neumann worked out the mathematical theory of those in the 1940s.
Were we right?
I didn’t notice hordes of physicists in a frothing rage when the line “Why Einstein was wrong about relativity” appeared on your cover (1 November, 2008), promoting the feature on page 28 of that issue. Suggest, however, that “Darwin was wrong” about something (24 January, p 34) and cries of “Shame!” and “Irresponsible!” are heard from the Dawkins/Dennett camp (21 February, p 24).
Militant atheists might fume that the creationists are in a feeding frenzy over New 杏吧原创‘s provocative cover, but this is unlikely to change anybody’s mind one way or the other. When paranoia about the creationist crowd becomes an excuse to avoid controversy about the great man’s ideas then it seems suspiciously like surrendering ground to them.
Science should be interesting and controversial. New 杏吧原创 has nothing to be ashamed of in helping to make it so.
Multiplying mice
Sharon Oosthoek says that around 25 million mice a year are used in labs worldwide (24 January, p 54).
Others have estimated the number of mice consumed as being between 100 million each year in US labs and 500 million (reported by the in 2000).
The fact is we just don’t know.
Not at all like us
Lawrence Krauss claims that “Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the science of genetics which followed, demonstrate that humans and the rest of life on Earth share not just a common heritage, but virtually everything else” (21 February, p 23).
No, we don’t. We don’t share culture, technology, manners or beliefs. And the poor man’s sex life must be rather dull.
Given a choice between your front page claim that Darwin was wrong and Krauss’s claims that Darwin explains everything, I will go back to the science 鈥� which you used to do, too.
When time flies
I wonder if the perception of size using the ANS (approximate number sense) has any connection with the perception that time passes more quickly the older one gets (24 January, p 40).
When you are 5, a year covers roughly 20 per cent of your memory. By contrast, a year when you are 50 is only 2 per cent of your life. Maybe we are subconsciously using the logarithmic ANS scale rather than a linear one when we judge time at different junctures. If this sense of the “fraction of life so far” is stored alongside specific memories, it could explain why adults remember childhood summers as endless, but last year’s sunny days as all too brief.
Blood heat
Nick Lane’s discussion of the warm-blooded nature of mammals reminded me of a fact that has fascinated me for many years (7 February, p 42). The specific heat capacity of water is at a minimum at about 35 掳C 鈥� just below the body temperature of mammals. I have always assumed that the mammalian body temperature had evolved to settle down at that level because, if the body temperature dropped below an acceptable level then the energy input required to remedy the situation would be minimal.
In other words, for a given energy input, the return to the correct body temperature would be more rapid than it would be at any other body temperature.
That is what I used to tell my students when I taught physics. I wonder if it is significant.
iSmoke
Helen Thomson’s evaluation of the e-cigarette (14 February, p 33) quotes public health researcher Murray Laugesen as saying that “all pointers so far show the device is safe”. Yet the article appears only to consider the risks due to the carcinogens in cigarette smoke, while apparently ignoring the fact that not only cancer but also heart disease kill large numbers of smokers. Nicotine is reported as the main chemical affecting the heart. So while smoke-free e-cigarettes may well protect against cancers, if they deliver enough nicotine to satisfy the smoker they may do little or nothing to ameliorate the damage that smoking does to the heart and circulation.
Helen Thomson writes:
鈥� Nicotine can cause damage to the heart over time but the increase in heart attacks caused by smoking is primarily due to the other constituents of cigarette smoke.
The levels currently used in nicotine replacement therapy are below the threshold at which nicotine begins to cause damage. Research into blood nicotine levels after “smoking” the e-cigarette is continuing, as the method by which it delivers nicotine differs slightly from other inhalers on the market.
Alien paradigms
Martin Rees’s statement that any aliens we may contact “could trace their origins back to the big bang 13.7 million years ago” (14 February, p 36) is rather like an 18th-century scientist proposing that aliens would know all about phlogiston. The big bang may be the dominant cosmological paradigm of today, but we do not know for certain it is correct.
More advanced beings might come up with different 鈥� and possibly more satisfactory 鈥� interpretations of the data.
Carbon heaven
Reading the article (7 February, p 30) about the human predisposition to believe in God, I was reminded of Kryten the robot in the TV series Red Dwarf, who was hard-wired to believe that when robots died they went to “silicon heaven”. Everyone else knew they just got dismantled.
It goes to show that humans have only just set foot on the path to full sentience and still have a long way to go.
Planet X – 1
I wonder if the search for a “Planet X” (31 January, p 32) should now revert to being one for a Planet IX, since Pluto has been demoted?
For the record
鈥� Our review of two books on Islamic science wrongly described Copernicus’s solar system as geocentric, rather than heliocentric (21 February, p 46) 鈥� a confusion that might have saved Galileo a great deal of trouble.
鈥� Rather than China’s water consumption being capped by 2020 (21 February, p6), a 60 per cent drop in water used to create $1 of GDP, combined with economic growth of 60 per cent, will result in an overall 36 per cent decline in water consumption.
鈥� We wrongly stated in an editorial that the cost of antiretroviral therapy in the poorest countries would be cut to “25 per cent less than the typical price in rich countries” (21 February, p 5). As our news story on page 6 of the same issue made clear, this should have been “no more than 25 per cent of the price in wealthy nations”.
Sleep well
Talk of sleep and behaviour/mood relationships are not new (21 February, p 34). Sleep and breathing are also not new associations. However, focusing on one causing the other seems to me an oversimplification when there may be a parallel driver for both. It is possible that a genetic predisposition is being triggered or exacerbated by environmental factors.
Of concern is the talk of surgery on children to prevent sleep apnoea as a concurrent treatment of “behaviour”. As a medical professional, I wonder whether we are reaching for the scalpel or laser too quickly.
Before using such methods to stop children snoring, it would be advisable to investigate the possibility of more general health factors that may have unidentified consequences later in life.
As an extreme model, those involved should look at the issue of nasal congestion in children with aromatic amino acid decarboxylase disorder.
Science not playtime
Averil Macdonald’s observation that accountants do not need to attract schoolchildren to their profession is insightful, but several of her premises contrast with my own experience (14 February, p 27).
I have noticed that those who leave the sciences for accountancy generally do so because they became disillusioned with their subject. They feel that they might as well have a highly paid job as a poorly paid job if they will not find either enjoyable. In the minority are the accountants who enter that profession out of interest rather than out of monetary considerations, an interest discovered long after they have ceased to be teenagers.
Most teenagers go to university assuming that all degrees lead to good employment prospects, so they choose either what seems interesting or what seems easiest.
While making a living is important, there are other factors at play when choosing between employment options. There are a number of reasons to study science: a wish to demonstrate ability; a wish for security (research work in industry is far more secure than working in financial sector); a wish to make a difference to the world; inspiration and interest.
Perhaps it’s true that higher salaries would keep people in the sciences, but while the retention issue is serious, I really haven’t seen any sign that this issue is a problem at the application level.
Perhaps, however, the point that “keeping kids ‘bouncing along and excited’ is not enough” is entirely true. It’s keeping the undergraduates bouncing along and excited, and not looking to change direction, that is the real issue.
Scrubbers
Martin Gregorie mentions a better method for carbon dioxide capture: convert it to calcium carbonate (14 February, p 26). Alas, to do so by reacting calcium oxide or quicklime with CO2 will indeed produce calcium carbonate, but the calcium oxide itself is produced by heating limestone (calcium carbonate), decomposing it and releasing CO2 鈥� so there is no net gain. In fact it is most inefficient, as the energy needed to decompose the limestone must generate even more CO2.