Editor's pick: Hope for those with anosmia
Jessica Wapner discussed the potential benefits for those with an impaired sense of taste of creating new smells and flavours (6 February, p 39). I was surprised at the scant mention of the implications for those of us with olfactory disorders.
Since an accident in my youth, I have experienced hyposmia – a decreased ability to smell. Recently I discovered that I have anosmia: a complete loss of sense of smell. Doctors ruled out obstruction and, thankfully, a brain tumour as causes, concluding that it is due to a damaged olfactory nerve, for which they can offer no treatment. My inability to smell fresh fruit, wine or cheeses is a disadvantage. Compared with our sense of smell, our taste buds play only a small part in the way we perceive flavour.
Anosmia and hyposmia affect 4 million people in the US alone. I hope the research will provide some relief for us too.
Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK
Mick O'Hare writes:
• As New 杏吧原创's resident anosmic I am well aware that olfactory disorders are often considered trivial compared to loss of other senses. But they affect a quarter of adults over 60. I described my experience as “The unbearable absence of smelling” (24 September 2005, p 42).
Geology, politics and nuclear waste
On his trip to Germany, Fred Pearce was given the dogma on nuclear waste (6 February, p 10). I have worked for 25 years at the Gorleben exploration mine, which is looking into storing such waste, and I chair the workers' committee there.
The picture of “20 swimming pools” of plutonium-bearing waste at Asse salt mine is emotive. The complete radioactive inventory there is 1/200th of that in a single flask of spent fuel from a nuclear power station, and less than that in the potash originally mined at the site.
There is no race to retrieve the nuclear waste from Asse before it is “flushed to the surface”. The most dramatic estimates predict a minimal release in 40,000 years.
In a 2011 study comparing the safety of retrieving the waste, leaving it where it is or putting it somewhere else in the mine, leaving the waste in the mine won on 4 of the 5 criteria considered. Practically all my colleagues agree that retrieving the waste from Asse is stupid, impractical and a waste of resources. But backfilling and closure is unacceptable to environmentalists, who will not accept a finished nuclear waste repository in Germany.
Geology, politics and nuclear waste
Fred Pierce gives a timely reminder that no government has solved the two issues facing nuclear waste disposal. First, none has worked out the geological and technical criteria for safely storing waste for many millennia. There is also the political problem of persuading a local population that a nuclear waste repository will bring benefits to an area and be guaranteed not to leak.
The UK government has recently decided to build the first nuclear power station for a generation, still with no answer to the ultimate questions of how the dangerous waste will be isolated from the biosphere.
First class post
What if you don't have the choice of taking an exam in the early morning?
Jaquelyn Flores (20 February, p 18) on the suggestion “take exams early in the morning to get a higher score” (20 February, p 18)
Driverless cars that move like trains
Anna Nowogrodzki reports that autonomous cars will only ease traffic when paired with smart traffic lights (23 January, p 21). There is the possibility that traffic lights may become redundant when all cars are autonomous. Traffic could flow continuously if the cars compared signals with each other, GPS and stationary traffic monitors.
Also, Stephen Shladover's claim that autonomous cars will not reduce the time it takes a vehicle stopped at a traffic light to start moving seems implausible. If all vehicles are autonomous, all in a queue will be able to start moving immediately the “go” signal is received, without the delays caused by drivers' reaction time or daydreaming. The cars will start moving at the same instant, like train carriages.
Brain takes time to exit habit mode
Teal Burrell gives a fascinating insight into the way the brain copes with forming habits (16 January, p 30). Observing my own and other drivers' behaviour on UK roads, I note that many appear to be on autopilot when driving at steady speed.
But if the routine is disrupted, for instance by a child running into the road, how long does it take to engage a different area of the brain and react?
A race to the Finnish
James Witts describes how brain training could smash sporting world records (30 January, p 38) and Megan Scudellari how your language shapes your brain (6 February, p 26). I remember a Nordic friend telling me years ago about an ability that Finnish people had that enabled them to carry on when they were beyond what they could endure. It had a one-word name: “sisu“.
This has no straightforward English translation but it describes an internal force that encompasses strength of will, determination, courage and perseverance. The friend attributed the success of Finnish distance athletes such as Parvo Nurmi in part to this ability.
The gravity chirp danger zone
LIGO detected the gravitational waves from a black-hole merger (13 February, p 6). The energy released in gravitational radiation was equivalent to three solar masses. That's a lot of energy in a short chirp; a greater power output than all the stars in the universe. I was wondering how close your spaceship would have to be to the black holes for you to feel the chirp. Also, how close for the chirp to kill you.
Where is this 'global' browning?
The cover of your 9 January issue promises to tell us “what's muddying the world's waters”. But, as the article (p 34) in fact reports, this “global browning” effect has been demonstrated only for North America and northern Europe – as we reported in the journal Water in May 2014 (). In most of the rest of the world there simply isn't enough data.
Hold states to account for slavery
I agree with Kevin Bales that slavery is evil and destructive to the environment (6 February, p 24). But I am frustrated by the lack of details in his piece. He takes in the as an example. Is he referring to sites in Bangladesh or in India, where I understand slavery is even worse?
What kind of slavery is it? How many are there? Why aren't states held responsible for allowing it?
Concerned about menopause delay
Clare Wilson describes procedures that could delay the onset of menopause (2 January, p 8). She mentions that it may “be possible to do this without continuing to have periods – endometrial ablation can be used to remove the lining of the womb”.
I was advised in May 2015 to have endometrial ablation at the same time as a minor operation to remove a polyp and fibroid. My periods stopped in September 2015. But since June I have had sharp pains in my lower abdomen, increasing in frequency and intensity. Now I have periods, accompanied by these pains.
Is lytigo-bodig a recent disease?
If lytigo-bodig is caused by the toxin BMAA in a staple food of the Chamorro people in Guam, why is it relatively recently identified (23 January, p 14)? Is it possible that another food, now no longer eaten, was very high in serine, that seems to offer some protection from the disease?
This does seem possible on a remote island that has been taken over by an outside power.
London, UK
The editor writes:
• Lytigo-bodig peaked in the 1950s. It has been suggested that around this time islanders gained increased access to firearms via US military bases, and used them to shoot BMAA-laden flying foxes for food. Also, the cycad seeds themselves began to be dried into chips or ground into flour and used in domestic dishes.
Many-eyed beasts of the deep
You described mineral eye lenses in the shells of some molluscs (28 November 2015, p 19). I raised my eyebrows at the assertion that, because there were only a hundred or so light receptors behind the lenses, the creatures must see “pretty much just a blob”. Might their nervous systems (whatever form these take) combine information from all the eyes into one image?
Remembering long-gone glaciers
Your article on tropical glaciers (30 January, p 10) took me back to my time surveying the snout of the San Pablin Glacier in Colombia in 1959. In recent years I have attempted to locate the glacier in photographs of the area and on Google Earth. The article explains why I have been unable to do so.
It should be noted that even 57 years ago there were some indications that the glacier was in retreat – the amount of pristine moraine and sand exposed below the glacier's snout – although climate change as we now understand it was unknown to us.
For the record
• We contained an added E-number. Carboxymethylcellulose, an emulsifier, is E466 in (13 February, p 12).
• The cartoon “science fighter” character whose special power is a “black hole blast” would, in most universes, be Stephen Hawking (Letters page, 13 February).