Food and forest
The point of the work of Norman Borlaug, the pioneer of the green revolution, was to feed hungry people. Fred Pearce misses points about this while accusing others of doing the same (5 February, p 26).
Borlaug observed that intensification of farming had the spin-off benefit of saving more forest than did cultivating additional land to feed the same number of people.
He certainly recognised that as the number of people needing to be fed increases, both intensification and expansion of farming may be necessary. And, as Pearce indicates, economic growth can lead to, as well as result from, the exploitation of natural resources, including forests.
But would a climate-protection scheme that had the spin-off benefit of feeding many hungry people really “be handing out money for nothing”?
At the Rockefeller Foundation we think not, and we are supporting work aimed at synergistically combining climate protection, forest conservation and increased food production through intensification of farming.
Admittedly, we still need to monitor what is happening on the ground as a result of these interventions, and we and our grantees intend to do just that.
From John Bingham
Borlaug said in his : “The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades.
“But,” he went on, “the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.”
Today, Borlaug would see the goal of producing food while preserving wildlife as still within reach, but highly precarious.
We may expect that in the next 10 to 20 years genetic research will discover more genes for pest and disease resistance, so reducing the need for chemical sprays. A critical stepwise increase needed in grain yield will similarly be possible only through genetic manipulation to increase photosynthetic rate and incorporate nitrogen fixation.
Meanwhile, others will have the responsibility of setting the balance of population growth, food, wildlife, grain storage and distribution for drought years.
Mattishall, Norfolk, UK
Golden oldies
You describe a smartphone application that could improve sound quality at music festivals (19 February, p 23).
But it could also provide a possible solution to a major problem experienced by the elderly: difficulty in hearing the high-frequency sounds of voices.
As people age, their ability to hear higher frequencies deteriorates: the elderly struggle to hear vocals in songs and find it difficult to pick out voices from low-frequency background noise. Compensating for this often requires that the radio or television volume be turned up to a level unpleasant for younger ears.
Speaking for myself (at the age of 82) and my contemporaries 鈥� and for the young who will be old some day 鈥� I do hope somebody will think about how this could be developed to help the elderly.
Pitching in
I am fascinated by the idea that perfect pitch could be an ability we are all born with, as described by Ed Douglas (26 February, p 46). I believe that I developed perfect pitch as a very young child 鈥� many years before I began formal instrumental training.
I remember, for example, identifying a low G on the piano as identical to the drone from the generator room of a large department store.
Language can be thought of as a fairly random sequence of musical pitches, far more complex than the notes of a musical scale.
In infant development, there is an optimal window for learning a first language. Could this occur at the same time as the potential to develop perfect pitch? And could the nature of the musical training affect whether or not perfect pitch is acquired, bearing in mind that many trained musicians instead acquire a good sense of relative pitch? Is perfect pitch more prevalent in musicians who spent their formative years in free experimental improvisation before being introduced to musical notation?
And has research determined which areas of the brain are involved in perfect and relative pitch discrimination, and in first and second language acquisition?
Watford, Hertfordshire, UK
From Nick King
I am lucky to be blessed with perfect pitch. I suspect, however, that it is more common than realised. I have heard many renditions of Happy Birthday, and if a piano is nearby I will accompany in the usual G major. However, if sung unaccompanied, the resultant pitch is usually within a semitone.
Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, UK
From Derek Wileman
There can be no such thing as “absolute pitch” as a natural, inbuilt, psycho-physiological concept. The standard that the note A above middle C is 440 hertz has been accepted internationally only since 1939. It is estimated, for example, that in 16th-century German organs this A note varied in pitch from 377 Hz to 567 Hz. This suggests that anyone with so-called “perfect pitch” has simply accurately remembered the pitches they heard in their childhood.
Further, we now use a “tempered” scale, not the “natural” scale calculated by frequency ratio. The tempered scale was developed to “squash” some of the intervals, so that whatever key a scale is played in it has the same interval ratios.
Hucknall, Nottingham, UK
Noise abatement
As a scientist-turned-engineer, I was delighted by Jon Cartwright’s “The great sound escape” (26 February, p 42) but found myself taking the wider view that most people cannot afford to install acoustic countermeasures in their private premises. Surely it is sometimes more sociable and economic to attenuate irritating sound at or near its source; and there is a need for psychologists to be consulted as to what is most irritating.
As one example, my employer operated a cold-rolling steel strip mill, working three shifts around the clock, adjacent to a housing estate. The hum of powerful electrical machinery and the low-frequency “crump” of suddenly stressed steel, although quite loud, were acceptable during the day, when drowned by normal ambient noise, and very few were disturbed by these noises at night.
However, when the night-shift operative cut the binding on a roll of steel strip, causing it to convert its elastic energy into sudden loud noise, and then threw the long-handled metal shears on to the concrete floor 鈥� every 5 minutes 鈥� many and vociferous were the complaints.
The provision of a buffer of oil-soaked reclaimed carpet and a soft rubber mat made the night a little more peaceful. The adage “prevention is better than cure” comes to mind.
Sherborne, Dorset, UK
From Cedric Mims
Cartwright’s excellent article on noise and sleep is full of interesting devices to block sounds from inconsiderate neighbours, but nearly all are expensive or only partly effective. And new building regulations are a solution only in the long term.
How about sound detectors fitted near offending sources, complete with timers and volume and pitch recorders? They could be installed once repeated complaints to the noise-maker have been ignored, and the problem has been found to be more than mere animosity between neighbours. Noise-law infringements could automatically be measured and the offenders fined.
Canberra, ACT, Australia
Lonely hearts
I was pondering why the Neanderthals might have died out. Close inspection of New 杏吧原创‘s illustrations past and present suggests the cause was a singular lack of females.
Spot the psychos
Having read the recent article on how to tell when numbers lie (12 February, p 40), I was ready for the statistics in “Portrait of the psychopathic brain” (19 February, p 32). This reported that between 15 and 35 per cent of US prisoners are psychopathic and 1 per cent of the country’s total population is psychopathic. According to Wikipedia, the is a shade over 300 million and its prison population is about 2.3 million. This means that there are between 2.2 and 2.6 million US psychopaths not in jail.
So, where are they all? According to the criteria, psychopaths lack empathy, guilt and remorse, and are callous, impulsive, hotheaded liars. I am sure everyone would have their own favourite group of people to point the finger at, but perhaps now there is an explanation for the recent financial and political crises that we have experienced.
Best bee-haviour
Who on earth would want to incur the expense and effort of installing accelerometers in beehives to predict swarming (19 February, p 17)?
Swarming occurs when the queen bee runs out of clean comb cells in which to lay eggs.
All that is necessary to prevent swarming is to ensure that the worker bees have plenty of foundation on which to build new comb cells.
Radio Ga Ga
Michael Forbes wonders whether the Queen song that his car’s Sync software insists on calling Radio Gallium Gallium should be attributed to Freddie Hg (Feedback, 15 January). I am compelled to tell you, as many diehard Queen fans would, that the song was in fact written by Roger Taylor.
National pi day?
Some people have just marked 14 March as “pi day”, since the date is written 3.14 in the US. British readers who missed it might like to celebrate on approximately 22 July 鈥� 22/7 in UK notation.
For the record
鈥� The battery to activate a radio after 100 years in a sealed nuclear dump involves firing a magnet along a rod through a coil, charging capacitors in the process. It does not pass through the coil once, as we stated, but is repelled by magnets at each end of the rod, sending it back and forth through the coil repeatedly before coming to rest (26 February, p 24).