- Email: [email protected]
Elementary interest
OPINION LETTERS Gods of the Earth From Adrian Bowyer, University of Bath In his letter (25 June, p 32) Alan Sangster accused Erle C. Ellis of taking a rose-tinted view of humankind’s relationship with the Earth in his article on the Anthropocene. My response would be to say that Sangster is guilty of taking an unduly bleak view when he calls us a “belligerent, warlike and rapacious species” with “little sign of this destructive nature abating”. It should take only a few seconds for anyone to discover the falsehood of this. Think of all the people you know and estimate how many are well-intentioned, loving and peaceful. The answer will be the vast majority, and that carries through to our species as a whole. Like any other species, we occasionally wage war, but only humans have rules against vile acts in war. Also like other species, from cyanobacteria to methanemaking gut microbes, we pollute our environment. Two billion
years ago, when the cyanobacteria caused the biggest ecological upset this planet is likely to see by releasing megatonnes of oxygen toxic to anaerobic life, they did not conduct dispassionate research into the problem, appoint committees to decide what to do, and then make laws to try to correct their mistake. One of humanity’s endearing characteristics is self-deprecation, of which Sangster’s letter is a good example. It is among our best tools for self-improvement. We are the kindest animal in nature and, along with our selfdeprecation, we should, in the interests of objectivity if nothing else, sometimes remind ourselves that we are the gods of the Earth. Bath, UK
Lies on the line From Chris Street, University College London The article “Hoodwinked!” (25 June, p 46) was a breath of fresh, optimistic air for those of us researching the detection of lies.
Tricky cards A
A A
A
D
A C
B
assumed that all the cards must be different, so she set about calculating how many different cards made up a full set. How many cards make up the set?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 10 August. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1654, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1648 Enigmarred: ENEMA represents the number indivisible by 9 The winner Jonathan Darch of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK
30 | NewScientist | 9 July 2011
To make practical use of such research, a number of outstanding questions need answers. Does increased cognitive load increase the number of false confessions? How should an investigator elicit a truthful statement from a suspect that allows for a meaningful baseline comparison with a lie? And given that training of investigators to improve detection of lying has often failed in the past, is there something entirely unknown driving their judgement, rather than the cues to deceit? It’s a very exciting time in this field. London, UK
Bad reaction
Enigma Number 1654 BOB WALKER Shown right are two of the cards Joe asked Penny to make for him. Joe specified four colours (A, B, C and D) and Penny could choose any one of them for any of the four areas. Penny had only made a few cards when she turned one round and noticed that it was the same as the one she had just made. She had
new drugs may wrongly assume they will experience all the side effects listed in a patient information leaflet. Many may not grasp the difference between coincidence and causality. Patient reporting of ADRs will only be a help if these problems can be rooted out. Sticklepath, Devon, UK
From Dave Goodwin Will reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) by patients refine our medicines (18 June, p 32)? I don’t think so. I have epilepsy and experienced many of the ADRs my drugs cause. Online, I have exchanged information and helped other sufferers – and every day people ask if their medication is causing all manner of symptoms. Take people who say they are feeling depressed. They have developed an illness, been diagnosed and started treatment. They probably feel low because they got ill, but nearly all will blame the drug for the depression. Common ailments get pinned on drugs when the chances are the immune system is busy fighting the main illness. People starting
Elementary interest From Eric Scerri, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California Lay persons and some chemists complain that newly synthesised and other exotic elements are of no practical use, and that any attention paid to them is more or less a waste of time. How wrong they are is demonstrated by James Mitchell Crow’s interesting article “Unsung elements” (18 June, p 36). It is good to see the elements and the periodic table gaining popularity. As well as my own book The Periodic Table, there have been bestsellers on the subject from Sam Kean and Hugh Aldersey-Williams. In addition, suggestions for new versions of the table continue to proliferate, and there is an increasingly serious debate on its optimal form and whether that is a matter of convention rather than scientific truth. Los Angeles, US From Gordon Marks A willingness to own up to its mistakes is one of science’s great strengths, as “When science gets it wrong” made clear (21 May, p 29). More important is a willingness to rectify the mistakes. Your article described how the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has done this, by acknowledging that an element’s atomic weight is not always a precise number, but a range that reflects the varying ratios of different isotopes across the globe. It would be good if IUPAC now
To join the debate, visit newscientist.com/letters
went further and followed the suggestion I made last year, along with co-author J. A. Marks, in Foundations of Chemistry, vol 12, p 85. Our proposal is for a periodic table that groups the elements based on electronic structure, but which offers greater clarity than the conventional form. This would help students and teachers no end. Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK
Round trip? From Geoff Saunders Given the history of the sweet potato, the discovery of genetic links between Easter Island and South America (18 June, p 21) should be no surprise. Sweet potatoes originated in South America, but are widespread in Polynesia. The question is how did they get there? Surely it’s more likely the transfer was initiated by the Polynesians – who were master navigators of the Pacific – heading east than by South Americans heading west. Though the possibility of Polynesians reaching the American mainland is sometimes discounted, it was they who explored and settled the Pacific. Why would they have stopped at Easter Island? They didn’t know there were no islands further east. Dorking, Surrey, UK
Flight of fancy From Martin Savage I knew the proposed Zero Emission Hypersonic Transport concept aircraft (25 June, p 23) was a dog’s breakfast as soon as I saw that there were three different types of engine involved. I’m surprised that any engineer would seriously propose this. I am even more surprised that they haven’t included the obligatory artist’s impression of the interior, showing the sauna and fitness centre. Jomtien, Thailand
Fashion victims From Elaine Coates “Should the tailors of Savile Row start to worry?” asked Duncan Graham-Rowe in “Rag-trade robots” (18 June, p 46). No, the people who need to worry are the millions of textile workers in poor and developing nations who rely on the industry for their wages, meagre as they are. Are they all going to get better-paid jobs as robot engineers? The article also suggested that automation could lead to fashion trends coming and going much faster. Great! Our consumerist society can throw away even more perfectly good but unfashionable clothes at the expense of the environment. Stockport, Greater Manchester, UK
Act regardless From Daniel Staples Given the latest figures on global warming trends (18 June, p 7), it would be a damaging mistake not to act on the worst-case scenario. If we let climate change run its course, we could be leaving ourselves open to possible wipeout in the long run. Global warming may be hard to prove definitively, but the technological and environmental problems that we will solve by working against it will change the world for the better, regardless of whether our worst fears about the climate are realised. If we keep sweeping global warming under the carpet we are
going to hit major problems. If it turns out to be a mistake in statistical analysis, then at least we get some new technology out of it. Sheffield, UK
Underwater spiders From Neil Shirtcliffe, Nottingham Trent University I have done some research on the breathing of water spiders (18 June, p 20) and was surprised by the results reported, because my work, and that of others, suggests that the air trapped on a spider’s abdomen – a much lower surface area than the bubble nests mentioned – is enough to sustain the spider as long as it does not work too hard. This was supported by the behaviour of the spiders I kept, which sat around on the bottom of clumps of weed, surfacing only rarely, and usually to collect air for bubble nests, which they used for eating in. From this I concluded that the nest was unimportant to these spiders for breathing. Of course, it would be much more difficult to measure the oxygen level on the animal itself than in the stationary nest. But we calculated that the air layer next to the spiders’ bodies, known as a plastron, may be sufficient for them to remain under water for extended periods. The full paper is at Naturesraincoats.com. Nottingham, UK
Chirps not bangs From René Lapalme Perhaps there is a better alternative to using a highpowered propane cannon or gunshots for mapping caves with sound waves (4 June, p 26). As a graduate student in the acoustic building division of Canada’s National Research Council in Ottawa, I took part in an evaluation of the acoustic quality of two nearly identical
theatres. For this we used both gunshots and computergenerated chirps, which are intense, pre-calibrated sounds with a controlled frequency. Chirps produced reflected sounds that were easier to analyse than those from gunshots. Chécy, Loiret, France
Rock-a-bye sailor From Geoffrey Withington What a pity Michel Mühlethaler of the University of Geneva didn’t think to contact an old sailor before beginning his study of the benefits of rocking adults to sleep (25 June, p 17). I could have saved the university a small fortune. Years ago, I passed many a long hour sleeping blissfully in hammocks on assorted warships, from frigates to aircraft carriers. Bridge, Kent, UK
For the record n In the “Battle of the bulge” feature (11 June, p 32) we transposed the volume and page numbers in one of the references. It should have been Nature, vol 469, p 374. Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
9 July 2011 | NewScientist | 31
years ago, when the cyanobacteria caused the biggest ecological upset this planet is likely to see by releasing megatonnes of oxygen toxic to anaerobic life, they did not conduct dispassionate research into the problem, appoint committees to decide what to do, and then make laws to try to correct their mistake. One of humanity’s endearing characteristics is self-deprecation, of which Sangster’s letter is a good example. It is among our best tools for self-improvement. We are the kindest animal in nature and, along with our selfdeprecation, we should, in the interests of objectivity if nothing else, sometimes remind ourselves that we are the gods of the Earth. Bath, UK
Lies on the line From Chris Street, University College London The article “Hoodwinked!” (25 June, p 46) was a breath of fresh, optimistic air for those of us researching the detection of lies.
Tricky cards A
A A
A
D
A C
B
assumed that all the cards must be different, so she set about calculating how many different cards made up a full set. How many cards make up the set?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 10 August. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1654, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1648 Enigmarred: ENEMA represents the number indivisible by 9 The winner Jonathan Darch of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK
30 | NewScientist | 9 July 2011
To make practical use of such research, a number of outstanding questions need answers. Does increased cognitive load increase the number of false confessions? How should an investigator elicit a truthful statement from a suspect that allows for a meaningful baseline comparison with a lie? And given that training of investigators to improve detection of lying has often failed in the past, is there something entirely unknown driving their judgement, rather than the cues to deceit? It’s a very exciting time in this field. London, UK
Bad reaction
Enigma Number 1654 BOB WALKER Shown right are two of the cards Joe asked Penny to make for him. Joe specified four colours (A, B, C and D) and Penny could choose any one of them for any of the four areas. Penny had only made a few cards when she turned one round and noticed that it was the same as the one she had just made. She had
new drugs may wrongly assume they will experience all the side effects listed in a patient information leaflet. Many may not grasp the difference between coincidence and causality. Patient reporting of ADRs will only be a help if these problems can be rooted out. Sticklepath, Devon, UK
From Dave Goodwin Will reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) by patients refine our medicines (18 June, p 32)? I don’t think so. I have epilepsy and experienced many of the ADRs my drugs cause. Online, I have exchanged information and helped other sufferers – and every day people ask if their medication is causing all manner of symptoms. Take people who say they are feeling depressed. They have developed an illness, been diagnosed and started treatment. They probably feel low because they got ill, but nearly all will blame the drug for the depression. Common ailments get pinned on drugs when the chances are the immune system is busy fighting the main illness. People starting
Elementary interest From Eric Scerri, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California Lay persons and some chemists complain that newly synthesised and other exotic elements are of no practical use, and that any attention paid to them is more or less a waste of time. How wrong they are is demonstrated by James Mitchell Crow’s interesting article “Unsung elements” (18 June, p 36). It is good to see the elements and the periodic table gaining popularity. As well as my own book The Periodic Table, there have been bestsellers on the subject from Sam Kean and Hugh Aldersey-Williams. In addition, suggestions for new versions of the table continue to proliferate, and there is an increasingly serious debate on its optimal form and whether that is a matter of convention rather than scientific truth. Los Angeles, US From Gordon Marks A willingness to own up to its mistakes is one of science’s great strengths, as “When science gets it wrong” made clear (21 May, p 29). More important is a willingness to rectify the mistakes. Your article described how the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has done this, by acknowledging that an element’s atomic weight is not always a precise number, but a range that reflects the varying ratios of different isotopes across the globe. It would be good if IUPAC now
To join the debate, visit newscientist.com/letters
went further and followed the suggestion I made last year, along with co-author J. A. Marks, in Foundations of Chemistry, vol 12, p 85. Our proposal is for a periodic table that groups the elements based on electronic structure, but which offers greater clarity than the conventional form. This would help students and teachers no end. Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK
Round trip? From Geoff Saunders Given the history of the sweet potato, the discovery of genetic links between Easter Island and South America (18 June, p 21) should be no surprise. Sweet potatoes originated in South America, but are widespread in Polynesia. The question is how did they get there? Surely it’s more likely the transfer was initiated by the Polynesians – who were master navigators of the Pacific – heading east than by South Americans heading west. Though the possibility of Polynesians reaching the American mainland is sometimes discounted, it was they who explored and settled the Pacific. Why would they have stopped at Easter Island? They didn’t know there were no islands further east. Dorking, Surrey, UK
Flight of fancy From Martin Savage I knew the proposed Zero Emission Hypersonic Transport concept aircraft (25 June, p 23) was a dog’s breakfast as soon as I saw that there were three different types of engine involved. I’m surprised that any engineer would seriously propose this. I am even more surprised that they haven’t included the obligatory artist’s impression of the interior, showing the sauna and fitness centre. Jomtien, Thailand
Fashion victims From Elaine Coates “Should the tailors of Savile Row start to worry?” asked Duncan Graham-Rowe in “Rag-trade robots” (18 June, p 46). No, the people who need to worry are the millions of textile workers in poor and developing nations who rely on the industry for their wages, meagre as they are. Are they all going to get better-paid jobs as robot engineers? The article also suggested that automation could lead to fashion trends coming and going much faster. Great! Our consumerist society can throw away even more perfectly good but unfashionable clothes at the expense of the environment. Stockport, Greater Manchester, UK
Act regardless From Daniel Staples Given the latest figures on global warming trends (18 June, p 7), it would be a damaging mistake not to act on the worst-case scenario. If we let climate change run its course, we could be leaving ourselves open to possible wipeout in the long run. Global warming may be hard to prove definitively, but the technological and environmental problems that we will solve by working against it will change the world for the better, regardless of whether our worst fears about the climate are realised. If we keep sweeping global warming under the carpet we are
going to hit major problems. If it turns out to be a mistake in statistical analysis, then at least we get some new technology out of it. Sheffield, UK
Underwater spiders From Neil Shirtcliffe, Nottingham Trent University I have done some research on the breathing of water spiders (18 June, p 20) and was surprised by the results reported, because my work, and that of others, suggests that the air trapped on a spider’s abdomen – a much lower surface area than the bubble nests mentioned – is enough to sustain the spider as long as it does not work too hard. This was supported by the behaviour of the spiders I kept, which sat around on the bottom of clumps of weed, surfacing only rarely, and usually to collect air for bubble nests, which they used for eating in. From this I concluded that the nest was unimportant to these spiders for breathing. Of course, it would be much more difficult to measure the oxygen level on the animal itself than in the stationary nest. But we calculated that the air layer next to the spiders’ bodies, known as a plastron, may be sufficient for them to remain under water for extended periods. The full paper is at Naturesraincoats.com. Nottingham, UK
Chirps not bangs From René Lapalme Perhaps there is a better alternative to using a highpowered propane cannon or gunshots for mapping caves with sound waves (4 June, p 26). As a graduate student in the acoustic building division of Canada’s National Research Council in Ottawa, I took part in an evaluation of the acoustic quality of two nearly identical
theatres. For this we used both gunshots and computergenerated chirps, which are intense, pre-calibrated sounds with a controlled frequency. Chirps produced reflected sounds that were easier to analyse than those from gunshots. Chécy, Loiret, France
Rock-a-bye sailor From Geoffrey Withington What a pity Michel Mühlethaler of the University of Geneva didn’t think to contact an old sailor before beginning his study of the benefits of rocking adults to sleep (25 June, p 17). I could have saved the university a small fortune. Years ago, I passed many a long hour sleeping blissfully in hammocks on assorted warships, from frigates to aircraft carriers. Bridge, Kent, UK
For the record n In the “Battle of the bulge” feature (11 June, p 32) we transposed the volume and page numbers in one of the references. It should have been Nature, vol 469, p 374. Letters should be sent to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Email: [email protected] Include your full postal address and telephone number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to articles. We reserve the right to edit letters. Reed Business Information reserves the right to use any submissions sent to the letters column of New Scientist magazine, in any other format.
9 July 2011 | NewScientist | 31