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Pioneering unity
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they have a role during delivery. The venous outflow from the brain returns to the heart via valveless channels; increased intrathoracic pressure and chest compressions during resuscitation increase pressure in the dural sinuses and may cause intradural bleeding, which is common in the young infant and readily mistaken for the thin film subdural bleeding often associated with non-accidental injury. Such physiological mechanisms should be considered. While childbirth and potentially CPR may cause intradural bleeding, whether the “unconscious action of squeezing a baby… to calm it” might do so is an interesting, but unproven, hypothesis.
Acoustic intent From Paul Devereux Trevor Cox’s article on acoustic archaeology mentioned the debate about the intentional use of sound in prehistory (21 August, p 45). Archaeo-acoustics is a broad subject, and there is no doubt about intentionality in the case of lithophones – rocks that ring
when struck, creating drum or bell-like sounds. Indeed, Palaeolithic and Neolithic lithophones have been found bearing rock art or percussion marks. Under the auspices of the Royal College of Art in London we have been conducting acoustic mapping on Carn Menyn in Wales, the source of the Stonehenge bluestones. A ringing rock there
is marked with artificial hollows – anyone making the markings would have heard the stone ring out. Intentional use of the acoustical characteristics of stone chambers in Neolithic mounds is indeed harder to prove, but they would have been evident to anyone at any time who had ears. There is also some evidence of deliberate engineering. Archaeo-acoustic research helps us to acquire additional information from some archaeological sites and, in my view, the approach will become increasingly important and sophisticated. Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, UK Peter Sheppard Skaerved I read Trevor Cox’s excellent article about the acoustics of ancient architecture on the way home from recording some new music, on a 17th-century violin, in a small 13th-century church. My sound engineer and I find that working in acoustic detail inside old buildings actually raises the awareness of the natural world outside their walls: the sounds of leaves, sonic qualities of different weather and even, on one occasion, a butterfly’s wings on medieval glass. Rather than modern people being acoustically primitive, as Cox’s article suggests, my experience of listeners’ reactions to music and silence in different environments shows me that we are profoundly affected by subtle changes in our acoustic space. It is just that, with the constant aural clutter in the media, people get treated as if their aural sensitivity is crude. London, UK
Pioneering unity From Robin Russel Reporting on Petr Horava’s ideas on how to unify quantum theory and relativity (7 August, p 28), Anil Ananthaswamy comments that
the theory will be difficult to test because the “predictions will deviate from those of Einstein’s relativity only at energies far, far higher than can be probed in labs today”. Rather than high energies, could we instead look to tests carried out over longer time periods and distances? The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, currently heading into the outer solar system, are experiments which have been running for nearly 30 years. Their acceleration towards the sun is greater than is predicted by general relativity – a phenomenon known as the Pioneer anomaly. Other satellites have experienced similar effects, but not planets. Might this scenario provide a useful test bed to judge Horava’s theory against Einstein’s? Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, UK From Simon Williams I read about the end of space-time with great interest, thinking that Horava must be about to replace Einstein, and everyone else would be using his work to good effect, until almost the end of the article and the mention of dark energy. Here it transpired that Horava’s theory “contains a parameter that can be fine-tuned” to allow the value for vacuum energy to fit observations. This parameter sounds remarkably like what I, as a business analyst, would call a fiddle factor… Cramlington, Northumberland, UK
Space recycling From Malcolm Watts Your article debates how to recycle a space station (21 August, p 5). I should think the enormous cost of constructing the space station would dictate that the facility be “mothballed” in orbit as a resource after its useful life. Its components could be used for future missions, a moon colony,
or sold to a private operator for space tourism. Is it feasible to lift the facility to an orbit such as the Lagrange point L5 that doesn’t
decay because it has the same orbital period as the Earth? Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
Probably guilty From Mats Andersson The worst mistake in the thinking behind the use of DNA evidence in court is a simple one of mathematics (21 August, p 8). Say that a court is told that there is a 1 in a million chance that the DNA matches someone apart from the suspect. If we assume that gender can be identified with absolute certainty, this means that for a case in the UK, there are 30 other people in the country who would match the DNA profile. So it is not a 1 in a million chance the police got the wrong person, it’s 1 in 31 that they got the right one – based on DNA evidence alone. This is why it is important to have other evidence too, such as an eye witness. Täby, Sweden
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.
18 September 2010 | NewScientist | 27
they have a role during delivery. The venous outflow from the brain returns to the heart via valveless channels; increased intrathoracic pressure and chest compressions during resuscitation increase pressure in the dural sinuses and may cause intradural bleeding, which is common in the young infant and readily mistaken for the thin film subdural bleeding often associated with non-accidental injury. Such physiological mechanisms should be considered. While childbirth and potentially CPR may cause intradural bleeding, whether the “unconscious action of squeezing a baby… to calm it” might do so is an interesting, but unproven, hypothesis.
Acoustic intent From Paul Devereux Trevor Cox’s article on acoustic archaeology mentioned the debate about the intentional use of sound in prehistory (21 August, p 45). Archaeo-acoustics is a broad subject, and there is no doubt about intentionality in the case of lithophones – rocks that ring
when struck, creating drum or bell-like sounds. Indeed, Palaeolithic and Neolithic lithophones have been found bearing rock art or percussion marks. Under the auspices of the Royal College of Art in London we have been conducting acoustic mapping on Carn Menyn in Wales, the source of the Stonehenge bluestones. A ringing rock there
is marked with artificial hollows – anyone making the markings would have heard the stone ring out. Intentional use of the acoustical characteristics of stone chambers in Neolithic mounds is indeed harder to prove, but they would have been evident to anyone at any time who had ears. There is also some evidence of deliberate engineering. Archaeo-acoustic research helps us to acquire additional information from some archaeological sites and, in my view, the approach will become increasingly important and sophisticated. Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, UK Peter Sheppard Skaerved I read Trevor Cox’s excellent article about the acoustics of ancient architecture on the way home from recording some new music, on a 17th-century violin, in a small 13th-century church. My sound engineer and I find that working in acoustic detail inside old buildings actually raises the awareness of the natural world outside their walls: the sounds of leaves, sonic qualities of different weather and even, on one occasion, a butterfly’s wings on medieval glass. Rather than modern people being acoustically primitive, as Cox’s article suggests, my experience of listeners’ reactions to music and silence in different environments shows me that we are profoundly affected by subtle changes in our acoustic space. It is just that, with the constant aural clutter in the media, people get treated as if their aural sensitivity is crude. London, UK
Pioneering unity From Robin Russel Reporting on Petr Horava’s ideas on how to unify quantum theory and relativity (7 August, p 28), Anil Ananthaswamy comments that
the theory will be difficult to test because the “predictions will deviate from those of Einstein’s relativity only at energies far, far higher than can be probed in labs today”. Rather than high energies, could we instead look to tests carried out over longer time periods and distances? The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, currently heading into the outer solar system, are experiments which have been running for nearly 30 years. Their acceleration towards the sun is greater than is predicted by general relativity – a phenomenon known as the Pioneer anomaly. Other satellites have experienced similar effects, but not planets. Might this scenario provide a useful test bed to judge Horava’s theory against Einstein’s? Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, UK From Simon Williams I read about the end of space-time with great interest, thinking that Horava must be about to replace Einstein, and everyone else would be using his work to good effect, until almost the end of the article and the mention of dark energy. Here it transpired that Horava’s theory “contains a parameter that can be fine-tuned” to allow the value for vacuum energy to fit observations. This parameter sounds remarkably like what I, as a business analyst, would call a fiddle factor… Cramlington, Northumberland, UK
Space recycling From Malcolm Watts Your article debates how to recycle a space station (21 August, p 5). I should think the enormous cost of constructing the space station would dictate that the facility be “mothballed” in orbit as a resource after its useful life. Its components could be used for future missions, a moon colony,
or sold to a private operator for space tourism. Is it feasible to lift the facility to an orbit such as the Lagrange point L5 that doesn’t
decay because it has the same orbital period as the Earth? Newmarket, Ontario, Canada
Probably guilty From Mats Andersson The worst mistake in the thinking behind the use of DNA evidence in court is a simple one of mathematics (21 August, p 8). Say that a court is told that there is a 1 in a million chance that the DNA matches someone apart from the suspect. If we assume that gender can be identified with absolute certainty, this means that for a case in the UK, there are 30 other people in the country who would match the DNA profile. So it is not a 1 in a million chance the police got the wrong person, it’s 1 in 31 that they got the right one – based on DNA evidence alone. This is why it is important to have other evidence too, such as an eye witness. Täby, Sweden
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.
18 September 2010 | NewScientist | 27