- Email: [email protected]
Norfolk the nation
See newscientist.com for letters on: G Silent dawn G Two legs good G Norfolk the nation G Closed for repairs
animals (29 March, p 8) confirms research in the late 1980s by ethnographer Arnold Arluke of Northeastern University. He found high levels of guilt and sorrow among animal care staff and some research technicians. In that respect, they resemble workers in animal shelters, found by my colleague Robert Roop to have the highest levels of burnout and compassion fatigue of any “care-giving” professionals yet surveyed. We have found that laboratory animal facilities tend to encourage their staff to block or remove emotional reactions from their professional lives because “scientists must be objective”. Thus, normative behaviour for laboratory personnel would involve not naming any laboratory animals, not becoming attached to the animals in any way, and certainly not treating any of them as pets. Yet most laboratory animal facilities contain one or more “pets”. Washington DC, US From Gill Langley, Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research What a bizarre reversal of priorities that animal technicians, who freely apply for and continue with their jobs, should seek emotional support for the remorse and grief they cause themselves by harming and killing animals, albeit in the name of science. Hitchin, Hertfordshire, UK
WIMP force From Brian Wood Jason Palmer reports that weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) may in fact interact, annihilating one another and releasing gamma radiation (15 March, p 10). If so, this would presumably cause the universe’s mass to slowly decrease, so reducing the gravitational drag on its expansion. What’s more, the masses of the postulated WIMPs are supposed to be much larger than a proton’s, www.newscientist.com
so WIMPs being destroyed would release a strong pulse of radiation. Radiation can exert a pressure, so this would also tend to accelerate expansion. This seems to me to be a plausible picture of how disintegrating WIMPs could offer an alternative explanation to dark energy for the universe’s accelerating expansion. But then I am only a microbiologist, so what do I know of such things? Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, UK
Here be humans From Margaret Kettlewell Stephen Kirby suggests monkeys may prefer silence to any music at all so that they can listen for danger (15 March, p 22). This poses the further question: why do humans like noise so much? Children playing can sustain their shouting and screaming for long periods. Adults generate hours of noise in football crowds or musical events. Perhaps early humans used noise within their settlements as a sonic equivalent of a bee’s stripes: a warning to predators of spears and arrows. When out on our own, however, staying silent and alert is the safer option. Bournemouth, Dorset, UK
that appear regularly in New Scientist and wonder: with all that light-bending going on, it seems strange that none of the bent light obscures the black hole’s event horizon and disc from external observers. I would expect intuitively that one would see a smudge or a normal space-scape, not a black black hole. If this is the case, it raises a tricky question for illustrators: how can black holes be both accurately rendered and scary-looking? Beijing, China
Acronymism From Chris Mulligan You mention the Associates for Research into the Science of Enjoyment, a group funded by the tobacco industry that attacks health “puritanism”
(16 February, p 11). Was this a case of acronymal nominative determinism? New York City, US
For the record G An editing error had us stating that the monks at Canterbury cathedral who made one of the first sightings of transient lunar phenomena did so in the 10th century (28 March, p 41); in fact it was in 1178, which was, of course, in the 12th century.
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.
Turn up the volume From Paul Mander I always enjoy Feedback taking the mickey at the expense of foggy thinking. But you refer to the difficulty of visualising ninedimensional spaces occasioned by measurements in “cubic litres” (15 March). This implies the cubing of a cube – and, no matter how hard I try, the cube of 3 will not come out at 9. Oakdale, New South Wales, Australia
Black hole quandary Michael Fett I look intently at the pictorial representations of black holes 19 April 2008 | NewScientist | 17
animals (29 March, p 8) confirms research in the late 1980s by ethnographer Arnold Arluke of Northeastern University. He found high levels of guilt and sorrow among animal care staff and some research technicians. In that respect, they resemble workers in animal shelters, found by my colleague Robert Roop to have the highest levels of burnout and compassion fatigue of any “care-giving” professionals yet surveyed. We have found that laboratory animal facilities tend to encourage their staff to block or remove emotional reactions from their professional lives because “scientists must be objective”. Thus, normative behaviour for laboratory personnel would involve not naming any laboratory animals, not becoming attached to the animals in any way, and certainly not treating any of them as pets. Yet most laboratory animal facilities contain one or more “pets”. Washington DC, US From Gill Langley, Dr Hadwen Trust for Humane Research What a bizarre reversal of priorities that animal technicians, who freely apply for and continue with their jobs, should seek emotional support for the remorse and grief they cause themselves by harming and killing animals, albeit in the name of science. Hitchin, Hertfordshire, UK
WIMP force From Brian Wood Jason Palmer reports that weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) may in fact interact, annihilating one another and releasing gamma radiation (15 March, p 10). If so, this would presumably cause the universe’s mass to slowly decrease, so reducing the gravitational drag on its expansion. What’s more, the masses of the postulated WIMPs are supposed to be much larger than a proton’s, www.newscientist.com
so WIMPs being destroyed would release a strong pulse of radiation. Radiation can exert a pressure, so this would also tend to accelerate expansion. This seems to me to be a plausible picture of how disintegrating WIMPs could offer an alternative explanation to dark energy for the universe’s accelerating expansion. But then I am only a microbiologist, so what do I know of such things? Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, UK
Here be humans From Margaret Kettlewell Stephen Kirby suggests monkeys may prefer silence to any music at all so that they can listen for danger (15 March, p 22). This poses the further question: why do humans like noise so much? Children playing can sustain their shouting and screaming for long periods. Adults generate hours of noise in football crowds or musical events. Perhaps early humans used noise within their settlements as a sonic equivalent of a bee’s stripes: a warning to predators of spears and arrows. When out on our own, however, staying silent and alert is the safer option. Bournemouth, Dorset, UK
that appear regularly in New Scientist and wonder: with all that light-bending going on, it seems strange that none of the bent light obscures the black hole’s event horizon and disc from external observers. I would expect intuitively that one would see a smudge or a normal space-scape, not a black black hole. If this is the case, it raises a tricky question for illustrators: how can black holes be both accurately rendered and scary-looking? Beijing, China
Acronymism From Chris Mulligan You mention the Associates for Research into the Science of Enjoyment, a group funded by the tobacco industry that attacks health “puritanism”
(16 February, p 11). Was this a case of acronymal nominative determinism? New York City, US
For the record G An editing error had us stating that the monks at Canterbury cathedral who made one of the first sightings of transient lunar phenomena did so in the 10th century (28 March, p 41); in fact it was in 1178, which was, of course, in the 12th century.
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.
Turn up the volume From Paul Mander I always enjoy Feedback taking the mickey at the expense of foggy thinking. But you refer to the difficulty of visualising ninedimensional spaces occasioned by measurements in “cubic litres” (15 March). This implies the cubing of a cube – and, no matter how hard I try, the cube of 3 will not come out at 9. Oakdale, New South Wales, Australia
Black hole quandary Michael Fett I look intently at the pictorial representations of black holes 19 April 2008 | NewScientist | 17