Editor's pick: How I became a cancer drug fan
I had the possibly unique experience of reading your article about drugs that allow the body's immune system to tackle cancer (5 March, p 34) while a cannula fed one of these, nivolumab, into my body. This was about 12 months after being told that I had perhaps a year to live – but there was a drug trial I could qualify for.
There were (from memory) three pages of possible side effects, the risk of which I had to agree to, from mild to death. I didn't hesitate. I had looked up my condition – kidney cancer metastased to adrenal gland and lungs – and had found nothing to suggest that recovery was even possible.
When I first went to see my oncologist after the treatment started he didn't mess about with any introductory remarks or dramatic voice, he just told me: “all your tumours have shrunk”. I won't forget that day in a long time, and I seem to have a long time, since fewer than a third of my tumours remain.
When I was a teenager I would pore over Melody Maker and the New Musical Express looking for mention of any of the strange new “underground” bands I loved. Now I have the same odd satisfaction in seeing ipilimumab and nivolumab in print.
Health data safety in Scotland
You report a recent Wellcome Trust study that identifies public concern about the use of anonymised patient data by the National Health Service in England (12 March, p 6).
NHS Scotland is completely separate from the NHS in England and is accountable to the Scottish Parliament. Scotland has long been a pioneer in the use of linked health service data for research, and we have been working on an approach that addresses the serious issues of safety, security and transparency of data.
Following extensive public consultation, we have developed an approach for data linkage that removes personal identifiers such as names and dates of birth from data used for health research. The Scottish Informatics and Linkage Collaboration, of which I am co-chair, is leading innovation. Every aspect of its work is underpinned by . We fully agree with the Wellcome Trust's view that communication around the use of health data needs to be improved.
We continue to engage with the public to ensure accountability and raise awareness of the role of data in lasting benefits for the population's health.
First class post
We'll look back and laugh at the pseudoscience we believed about appetite and obesity
Jane Masters to our report that hunger hormones are similar at lunchtime even if you skip breakfast (26 March, p 39)
Not so elementary, my dear Watson
I see a possible connection between two articles in the same issue of New 杏吧原创.
One reported an investigation by Gabriele Doblhammer that found the rate of dementia to be 7 per cent lower among people born in Germany between December and February (17 October 2015, p 21). In the other, education researcher Stephen Gorard gave views on helping kids born in summer keep up at school (p 28). He mentioned that around 6 per cent more children born in England and Wales in the autumn gain five or more “good” exam grades at age 16, compared with those who are born in summer and go to school when younger.
It seems to me there could be a link between the two. Isn't it time to set a computer such as IBM's Watson the task of searching all knowledge to find such hidden links? I suspect this is now beyond the ability of a human polymath.
Sharp-eyed squid in a cloud of ink
More than 20 years ago I read somewhere that a squid's visual acuity is eight times that of humans. Ever since then I've wondered why.
Now I read that an inky cloud helps squid hunt (5 March, p 17). Have ink and sharp-sightedness evolved hand-in-hand to provide optimum turbidity to hide and the keenest eyesight to see through it?
Plastic-eating bugs: the horror!
Barry Cash suggests developing a plastic-degrading fungus to clear the oceans of waste (Letters, 12 March) and then you report work on bacteria that eat PET plastics (19 March, p 17). This should fill us with terror.
If that work were generalised, every plastic-sheathed electricity cable, plastic water pipe, plastic component of medical devices, kitchen appliance, plastic food or drink container, vehicle, fabric, laptop, phone, TV, DVD, vinyl record collection and child's toy would be at risk. Our world may have a lot of plastic waste, but once such organisms get going they won't be able to tell the difference between rubbish and vital equipment.
Plastic-eating bugs: the horror!
Has Barry Cash not seen the 1971 film , nor the 1970 of the UK TV series Doomwatch with plastic-eating bugs? I wouldn't be too happy if a fungus ate the hull of my glass-reinforced plastic boat.
Better ways to spend £100bn
Richard Ellam suggests the UK invests in electric cars instead of buying sea-launched nuclear weapons (Letters, 6 February). With £100 billion to spend, we could perhaps do even better.
Based on the cost of the Gemasolar 24/7 solar power station prototype near Madrid (11 December 2010, p 21) and assuming fourfold reduction in price per installed watt when building multiple, larger installations, the UK could produce its entire peak electricity demand using solar power stations in, say, the Sahara desert, plus a wind power component. That would include installing superconducting cabling across the Mediterranean Sea.
Electric cars would come down in price if sold in the same quantities as today's vehicles. A subsidy of just £1 billion to encourage their use would reduce the cost of a fleet of 100,000 cars costing £20,000 each by 50 per cent, after which the price would start to come down.
So with our £100 billion, we could have electric cars run off solar power, along with all our other electrical appliances at home and in factories – our entire electricity supply decarbonised.
Solar power from space at night
Martin Greenwood rightly points out that the collecting station needed to catch microwave power from solar panels in space would take much more room than solar panels on Earth (Letters, 25 March). The only reason to put panels in space is to ensure a constant supply of power night and day, in fair weather and foul.
An impossible criterion for theory
I was flabbergasted to read Jim Baggott and Daniel Cossins suggesting that one criterion for replacing the scientific method of experimental verification of predictions could be TINA: that “there is no alternative” to the theory (27 February, p 38). How can you ever be sure there is no alternative? This criterion is logically impossible to meet.
John Dee on Her Majesty's Service
Philip Ball's article on John Dee, mathematician and magician to Queen Elizabeth I, in the wake of an exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians in London (27 February, p 48) reminded me that the exhibition curator, Katie Birkwood, was trying to find documentation of John Dee's cryptic “007” signature.
The 007 is thought to be either a sacred numeral code, or a pair of eyes with the number 7 written around them – the seven supposedly representing his two eyes, his four other senses, and a seventh occult sense.
The obvious question is: is there a link between Dee and James Bond? There is that when Ian Fleming visited Manchester Cathedral, where Dee had once been warden, he learned about the signature and adopted it for his character James Bond. Others say Dee – who may have gathered useful intelligence for the queen – was an inspiration for Bond.
Cyber-snow to Arctic peoples
Your report of malicious software holding medical records to ransom was interesting (27 February, p 26). While ransomware is becoming a real nuisance, the proliferation of “threat intelligence” consultants is more of a danger to gullible organisations' bank balances.
I have had the dubious pleasure of attending cybersecurity seminars presented by former UK police officers who, after having attended a few courses while on the public purse, go on to take private sector roles dishing out blindingly obvious, or sometimes laughably misinformed, advice to naive management types, at eye-watering hourly rates.
Shedding light on early data sending
Richard Ely reports using light to transmit data in 1968 (Letters, 13 February). While working at the General Electric Research Labs in 1958, another lad and I scraped the paint from Mullard transistors and used them, with the help of headlamp reflectors from my Morris 8 car, to communicate over the 30 metres between our labs. Why? Chatting on the internal phone was frowned upon.
Shedding light on early data sending
Reading Nicola Jones's article on light-based communication (9 January, p 30) reminded me that the German army had an in the 1940s. This worked by so-called frustrated total internal reflection: the audio signal varied the very small spacing between a right-angled prism and a sheet of glass backed with an absorber.
For the record
• Roxana Hickey and James Meadow were both postdoctoral researchers at the University of Oregon when they experimented on identifying people by microbe haloes (5 March, p 38).