Editor's pick: Political inertia and air pollution
Michael Le Page argues that we need to be angrier about our toxic air (2 April, p 25). In doing so we face the same political culture of institutionalised indifference that stalled action on climate change for years. Despite the social and health costs of 40,000 early deaths every year from pollution, the UK government values industry over public health – for example, recently, in supporting lax new diesel vehicle emission rules in Europe.
The UK government's response to the Supreme Court ruling in April 2015 that it was obligated to improve air quality was to do virtually nothing. It threw the problem to local authorities, which are strapped for cash after suffering massive austerity cuts since 2010. We have limited staff time to tackle air quality. It can become “just another issue” in transport and development plans.
Good on for bringing the Supreme Court case: their persistence through the legal system has focused minds more than anything. Institutionalised inertia needs to change rapidly into constructive action. Dealing with the invisible killer requires primary legislation – a new Clean Air Act – and a dedicated oversight body similar to the Committee on Climate Change. These two things could enable a new “can-do” culture across all levels of government.
Migration costs and benefits for whom?
In times such as these – when ignorance combines with prejudice and the worst of journalism – calm, logical, rational analyses such as those of Debora MacKenzie are essential antidotes. However, there are a couple of points in her piece on migration with which I must take issue (9 April, p 29).
MacKenzie refers to the ability of a “modern capitalist economy” to grow as it accommodates more workers. This is too simplistic: the boom and bust cyclical nature of a capitalist economy is well known.
As a positive non-supporter of capitalism, I challenge the implied assumption that the economic benefits of the system naturally accrue to everyone who contributes to them: see Robert Tressell's 1914 for a clear exposition of this. If we were to become much more concerned with distinguishing between the “deserving rich” and the “undeserving rich”, then many of humanity's modern problems would disappear overnight.
Migration costs and benefits for whom?
You quote John Torpey saying that passports were mere requests for safe conduct, rather than being restrictive documents determining where you could go. But in times gone by, when epidemics such as the plague could spell catastrophe for a community, there were also passes signed by the appropriate authorities on one's travels declaring that the holder came from an uninfected area.
In 1636, the Earl of Arundel sent his physician William Harvey to Venice to buy pictures for him. Harvey arrived at the gates of Treviso with his fede di sanita duly signed. This was “a pass which had to be signed at various points to certify that the holder was free from infection by the plague” as Geoffrey Keynes wrote in his .
The authorities refused to recognise Harvey's fede and had him incarcerated outside the city for 40 days – the origin of the term “quarantine”.
Migration costs and benefits for whom?
A major factor that one might expect a New 杏吧原创 article on migration to discuss is the ecological downside of population growth due to migration, such as loss of productive farmland, wildlife habitat and so on.
Migration costs and benefits for whom?
As someone who believes that the developed world should be more active in accepting immigrants, particularly those displaced by natural and human-caused disasters, the article on migration was extremely interesting and put to bed many anti-immigrant myths.
However, just after I read it I watched BBC News reporting that China has managed infrastructure costs of mass internal migration by banning migrants from taking their children, resulting in families being separated and children left in the care of their grandparents or even left to fend for themselves for up to a year.
First class post
Sounds like having a husband is like having a lazy child that destroys your health
Carly Anne that childcare and housework give women more heart problems (newscientist.com/article/2085396)
Blaming aliens for economic woes
I was interested in Christopher Boehm's observations on US presidential contestant Donald Trump and primate politics (13 February, p 26). There is also a view that Trump's rise is the result of distrust in conventional politics as people hear of economic growth but, outside the top decile, have seen little evidence of it for many years – longer in the US than in Europe.
This leads to rejection of the establishment and a turn to others who present a different model. Trump is copying a model used in Germany in the 1930s – where the middle class had been destroyed by hyperinflation. He is blaming an immigrant “alien” community (Mexicans, this time, not Jews) for this “betrayal”.
Better awareness of self-awareness
The idea of self-aware manta rays recognising themselves in a mirror has great appeal (26 March, p 11). But I wonder whether, on reflection, there is a more prosaic explanation. Anyone who has swum underwater will have noticed how the underside of the sea surface acts as a huge mirror.
As a plankton-eater that swims near the surface, the manta must be aware of this as a barrier (although mantas do breach it from time to time). To be presented with a mirror that mimics the sea surface but in a different plane, presumably the vertical, would certainly confuse me and elicit curiosity and odd movements.
As to the bubble blowing: every diver knows that releasing bubbles tells you which way is up to the surface when you are disoriented. A confused manta might resort to the same tactic when faced with what looks like a sea surface at right angles to where every other sense is telling the fish it should be.
Better awareness of self-awareness
There is a very anthropocentric approach to scientific testing of self-awareness in non-human animals. In humans, the base assumption is that humans are self-aware and intelligent until proven otherwise. However, for non-humans the base assumption is that they are unintelligent and not self-aware until rigorously and repeatedly proven to be otherwise. A more consistent and honest approach would be to use the same base assumptions for human and non-human animals when testing self-awareness and intelligence.
Random primes pair up in all bases
You report Kannan Soundararajan and Robert Lemke Oliver discovering that the distribution of the last digit of consecutive prime numbers isn't as random as expected and their investigation of this with prime numbers expressed in base 10 which “apart from 2 and 5, all end in 1, 3, 7 or 9” (19 March, p 12). Generally, for prime numbers expressed in any base, the last digit is either a 1, or a digit that is prime and is not also a prime factor of the base number. So, for example, in base 8, 15 is a prime number. I wonder whether the properties they found for consecutive primes would be the same if they were to repeat their investigation with different bases.
London, UK
The editor writes:
• The researchers found similar patterns in other number bases – see newscientist.com/article/ 2080613 for more details.
The case of the female orgasm
At the risk of being yet another male offering an opinion on a female issue, and on top of that a scientist outside the field, I nevertheless respond to Jessica Hamzelou's description of men arguing about the size of their pet theories on the female orgasm (12 March, p 27). I suggest females experience orgasm for the same reason men do: humans like intensely pleasurable things and seek to repeat them.
Unless females are enslaved, it seems to me that a woman who enjoys and seeks out intercourse with her mate would be more likely to reproduce than one who does not. The lesser frequency of female orgasm may be due to pervasive sexist cultural conditioning, which is rampant in the mass media even in the most liberal of countries.
I think the wrong question is being asked. It isn't a matter of whether the orgasm serves any purpose in women: it is what compelling argument exists for evolution to exclude one gender from getting any enjoyment out of intercourse. I cannot think of how that could possibly promote greater reproduction.
Breakfast serves more than food
Breakfast is not just a meal (26 March, p 39). For many it is a ritual – a transition between night and day, a time to resume one's public persona. It is the only meal, at any rate in the West, at which people tend to eat the same foods in the same way, day after day.
Sensing direction in my youth
Joshua Howgego says that even though humans have cryptochrome in our eyes we cannot sense magnetism (19 March, p 30). This prompts a memory of the sense of direction I had as a young adult. When the sun was not shining and there were no visible direction indicators I could still find my way in London, or in the countryside navigate a car around a traffic jam by resorting to side roads, without a map. Moreover, when asking myself the direction of north, I always seemed to have a good idea where it was.
Some time in my thirties I lost this facility. I have no idea whether my memory was better then so that I could envisage a map seen previously, or I was perhaps sensitive to magnetic fields. It would be interesting to know whether others have felt this ability slip away.
For the record
鈥� Say it loud: Demosthenes was an orator and politician in 4th-century BC Athens (2 April, p 34).
鈥� High-minded: Portugal has in fact decriminalised personal use of any drug (9 April, p 16).