Editor's pick: Solar power gives the grid a break
You report Nick Asselin-Miller saying that electric vehicles could place “a huge strain” on the electricity grid (20 February, p 23). Not necessarily. All we need to do is charge them whenever possible from solar panels, which would only cost a fraction of the price of the vehicle.
This is what I am doing. My employer has kindly allowed me to put solar panels on the roof of a building at work, and at home I have some that charge a battery I then use to charge my vehicle.
I have only needed to top-up from the grid a little in December and January; at other times solar power alone is sufficient, and in summer there is a huge surplus. It would help if the government did not tax solar panels used for this purpose at four times the rate of tax charged on electricity from the grid.
Asselin-Miller's alternative, hydrogen, has to be made somehow – often by electrolysis of water. This would not be a serious problem if the power for electrolysis came from solar and wind.
Given the capacity to store hydrogen, we could take advantage of the surplus solar power in summer to produce hydrogen to use in winter. We could apply this technology not only to vehicles but also to heat buildings.
There's more to language than this
I was disappointed that none of the contributors to your special report on language mentioned the signed languages of deaf communities (6 February, p 26). Studying these led linguists to extend the definition of language to include such visual and gestural languages, alongside the spoken and written kind.
William Stokoe in 2002 wrote . This could render inappropriate your first question, “who spoke the first words?”.
There's more to language than this
My mother had three languages, I speak three and my sister speaks five. We used to switch between the three languages we all spoke, sometimes within the same sentence, when another language more accurately or effectively expressed the idea we were trying to convey.
My mother tongue is German, which permits modifying an idea several times before completing it with a verb. So syntax as well as vocabulary can thinking affect. When I a sentence a paragraph long write, it my English-reared wife to distraction drives.
There's more to language than this
Mark Pagel contends that modern humans, who arose in Africa between 200,000 and 160,000 years ago, had language from the beginning. But he claims that other extinct human species didn't. Like others who support this theory, he turns to the poor old Neanderthals to prove the superiority of our species. The Neanderthals could not have had language because there is “scant evidence for symbolic behaviour”. “A few pieces of pigment and some disputed etchings” is all that can be attributed to them. But isn't this all we have for the first 100,000 years or so of our species' existence? Maybe our early ancestors were talking about doing a bit of art but hadn't found the right cave?
There's more to language than this
Speakers of languages in which a word's grammatical gender may differ from its natural gender can usually keep track of the difference. For example, Germans somehow manage to reproduce in spite of their word for “girl” (Mädchen) being neuter. A worse problem arises when a word and its concept are missing in a language. English has no word that quite catches “Rechthaberei“, a person's tendency to consider themselves right in disputes.
First class post
Such a good alternative. As long as women can still have children, everything is permitted!
Jennifer Bnz by the suggestion of legalising some forms of female genital mutilation (27 February, p 6)
Solar satellite power worries
Beaming down huge amounts of power as microwaves from an orbital infrastructure that would take many large rocket launches to put in place, all at enormous cost (13 February, p 38)? How is that better or safer that any other way of generating power?
Just because it can be called “green” does not make it good.
Solar satellite power worries
Space solar technology may have benefits beyond simply generating power. The beam from a geostationary solar array could provide energy to spacecraft, which could then be made more lightweight, significantly increasing thrust-to-weight ratio and reducing energy consumed.
Solar satellite power worries
There is another serious problem facing space-based solar power. Large installations would be vulnerable to attack. Any country thinking of relying on them would need to find a way to protect themselves from sudden and catastrophic loss caused by malicious attack, or by orbiting space junk.
Baulkham Hills, New South Wales, Australia
The editor writes:
• There is a lot of room in geosynchronous (as distinct from geostationary) orbit, making debris likely to be less of a problem than in near-Earth orbit. It is still unclear whether attacks are feasible: if they are, countries can also shoot down GPS and communications satellites.
It wasn't the war that killed the ibis
Discussing the effect of war on wildlife, Fred Pearce doesn't mention other, more important factors that led to the extinction of the northern bald ibis (20 February, p 11). After eight years of study and field conservation on this bird, I can state that the extinction was caused by the gradual and inexorable degradation of its habitat. This was the result of long-term mismanagement of rangelands by the Syrian government and of uncontrolled hunting at breeding grounds and along the birds' migratory route.
A relict breeding colony was rediscovered in Syria in 2002, numbering three pairs (seven adult individuals). This offered a great chance to save this genetically unique population – which the bird conservation organisations involved missed.
At the onset of the war in Syria in 2011 the status of the colony was already desperate. Only one pair was left and it failed to breed due to colony disruption. Thus the war merely delivered the final blow to a vague, belated and unfunded plan to reinforce the wild “population” through a captive breeding programme. For more detail see my 2015 article at .
Telling apart this bat and that
Your feature on bats' response to disease and what it can teach us about our own response was fascinating (13 February, p 34). However, in describing the characteristics that may help bats resist disease, the feature didn't distinguish between two sub-orders: flying foxes (megabats) and microbats.
Megabats typically roost in large colonies. Only some species of microbats do, sometimes only when rearing young. Megabats do not echolocate, but all microbats echolocate. Similarly, the diseases found in megabats can differ from those in microbats. For example, Ebola and Hendra virus are found in megabats while lyssaviruses such as rabies can be found in both.
Wild-type food won't feed us all
Michael A. Crawford asks whether genetically modified Atlantic salmon will have the same nutrients as the wild type and whether it should still be called salmon (Letters, 9 January).
Potatoes are still potatoes despite the current commercial types' dissimilarities to their Andean ancestor. If consumers want foods with particular nutrients and trace elements then breeding can be targeted to achieve this.
Sadly, however, my experience as a farmer is that customers are more concerned with price. Wild food is an appealing idea, but efficient farming is essential if the current population is to be fed.
Can a fungus clean the sea of garbage?
Mycologist Paul Stamets says “I am convinced that there is not yet a single carbon-based toxin that we could not train mycelial networks to break down” (13 February, p 28). How about plastics? If he could create fungi that feed on plastics in sea water we could clear the oceans of plastic waste. And breaking it down to nutrients for plants or animals that absorb carbon dioxide and then sink to the bottom could help in the fight against climate change.
I'm not sure how to make money out of it though.
We need a better name for CRISPR
Michael le Page describes the potential of CRISPR gene-editing techniques (5 December 2015, p 32). The ease of use and extreme versatility of the CRISPR/Cas9 mechanism promises to make it as world-altering as antibiotics and the jet engine. However, if it is going to percolate through public awareness the way it deserves, science writers badly need a nickname that quickly gives a picture of what it does. Maybe New 杏吧原创 readers can come up with a more descriptive name: the DNA Legokit? Gene Photoshop?
Eradication versus virus suppression
It isn't necessary to eliminate all mosquitoes to get rid of diseases like Zika, malaria and dengue (13 February, p 26). All that is needed is to reduce their numbers to the point that these diseases fail to get passed on at a sustainable rate. And we needn't worry about mosquito extinction. They can always be reintroduced to an area if desired.
For the record
• Bad air: the Royal College of Physicians in fact estimates £20 billion as the annual cost of pollution to UK individuals, businesses and the National Health Service (27 February, p 7).
• The authors of a paper on possible observation of a “super-Earth” 300 Astronomical Units from the sun pending further data (23 January, p 28).