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Rare Latin birds
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aren’t do to avoid catching it (21 March 1998, p 50). It should also be recognised that cultivating such “preventive altruism”, with interventions aimed at infected individuals rather than at the wider uninfected population, would be likely to have a disproportionately greater effect in stemming the spread of HIV. This is because HIVnegative people just about always outnumber HIV-positive people, usually many times over, and the impact of any particular individual taking up a preventive measure would reflect that disproportion. If, for example, the prevalence of the virus is 1 per cent, 99 negative folk would need to be persuaded to take up condom use to have the preventive impact of persuading a single positive person to do the same – a task which would generally be easier anyway, given the tendency to preventive altruism. An important opportunity has been missed through the overwhelming emphasis of HIV prevention work on uninfected populations. Routine testing would make it easier to start redressing that imbalance. Linlithgow, West Lothian, UK
Water is no fuel From Lucas Wilkins Your article on the zero-emission car being developed by Tareq Abu-Hamed and colleagues is titled “Power on tap” and says in the first paragraph that such a car could run “with nothing more than water in its fuel tank” (29 July, p 35). Why is it deemed necessary to put such outrageous claims in the titles and beginnings of articles? Saying that the car discussed in the article runs on water is equivalent to saying that the internal combustion engine runs on air. The water would more accurately be described as a catalyst (as it is regenerated), or maybe a means of chemical energy transduction and www.newscientist.com
transport. What it isn’t, though, is a fuel. The fuel is boron. Northampton, UK
Beating the air From John Scanlon, Riversleigh Fossil Centre Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species: “It is certain that many forms, considered by highly competent judges to be varieties, resemble species so completely in character that they have been thus ranked by other highly competent judges.” A century and a half later, the atmosphere is still being agitated by debate over the reality of a subspecies of meadow jumping mouse (15 July, p 12). Most biologists regard “subspecies” as a nearly useless category, to be replaced by quantitative data on geographic variation in morphology and genetics. Either the US Endangered Species Act exists to preserve the ecosystems and genetic diversity that will allow local populations to persist in their natural ranges, or it does not. But, as Darwin himself added to his statement above, “to discuss whether they ought to be called species or varieties, before any definition of these terms has been generally accepted, is vainly to beat the air”. Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia
Sliding passengers From Tom Holmes I liked the article about Einsteinian aeroplane boarding (29 July, p 42). Another solution might be to remove the fuselage from around the seats. Passengers could then walk directly to their seat without having to go down any aisles or doors. The practical version of this would be to have all the seats and lockers on a “tray” that could slide out of the nose (or tail) of the aeroplane. Passengers could get to their seats from any direction in an open departure lounge – and everyone would not
“board” at once – they would just find their seat as they arrived at the lounge. When everyone was seated you would slide them back into the plane. Harrogate, Yorkshire, UK
Hear it for Harriet
From Jay Pasachoff, Williams College Though most people’s interest in the recently deceased Galapagos tortoise Harriet was because of her supposed association with Darwin, now debunked by Henry Nicholls, my interest was astronomical (15 July, p 21). No human was alive for the 8 June 2004 transit of Venus who had seen the previous transit in 1882, much less the one in 1874. So Harriet was a creature who may well have seen those transits and eventually got to see three. My wife and I were glad to meet Lonesome George, the subject of Nicholls’s recent book, at last year’s Galapagos solar eclipse. Williamstown, Massachusetts, US From Robert Senior, Science Centre, Woolsthorpe Manor Nicholls lists the story that Newton was inspired by a falling apple as one of science’s myths. Including this particular story in his list is a little unfair. There are several published accounts that record Newton himself describing such an event. The first was by William Stukeley, who recalls sitting with Newton under another apple tree drinking tea and being told the story. John Conduitt records a similar story. So the story came from Newton himself. Of course
he could have invented it, but why should he do so? The event took place while Newton was at his childhood home of Woolsthorpe Manor during 1666 while Cambridge University was closed by plague. An apple tree there has long been identified as “the tree”. It was blown down in 1820, but the fallen trunk re-rooted itself. It is still flourishing and shedding apples. An analysis by the University of York, UK, of rings from the trunk taken in the 1990s dates the tree as well over 400 years old. We are fortunate in having such reliable records of this delightful story and, through the re-rooted tree, a tangible link to the mind of our greatest scientist. Uppingham, Rutland, UK
Rare Latin birds From John Woodgate Further to Elizabeth Bromham’s comment on the black swan (29 July, p 23), Wikipedia tells us: “Rara avis – ‘Rare bird’ – An extraordinary or unusual thing. From Juvenal’s Satires: Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno (‘a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan’).” Rayleigh, Essex, UK The editor writes: ● The full quote in the translation by Niall Rudd (Oxford University Press) is: “Suppose she is beautiful, graceful, wealthy, fertile, and also has ancient ancestors dotting her hallway; suppose she is purer than any Sabine with streaming hair who stopped a war – a rare bird, as strange to the earth as a black swan; who could endure a wife who was such a paragon?” 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 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.
12 August 2006 | NewScientist | 19
aren’t do to avoid catching it (21 March 1998, p 50). It should also be recognised that cultivating such “preventive altruism”, with interventions aimed at infected individuals rather than at the wider uninfected population, would be likely to have a disproportionately greater effect in stemming the spread of HIV. This is because HIVnegative people just about always outnumber HIV-positive people, usually many times over, and the impact of any particular individual taking up a preventive measure would reflect that disproportion. If, for example, the prevalence of the virus is 1 per cent, 99 negative folk would need to be persuaded to take up condom use to have the preventive impact of persuading a single positive person to do the same – a task which would generally be easier anyway, given the tendency to preventive altruism. An important opportunity has been missed through the overwhelming emphasis of HIV prevention work on uninfected populations. Routine testing would make it easier to start redressing that imbalance. Linlithgow, West Lothian, UK
Water is no fuel From Lucas Wilkins Your article on the zero-emission car being developed by Tareq Abu-Hamed and colleagues is titled “Power on tap” and says in the first paragraph that such a car could run “with nothing more than water in its fuel tank” (29 July, p 35). Why is it deemed necessary to put such outrageous claims in the titles and beginnings of articles? Saying that the car discussed in the article runs on water is equivalent to saying that the internal combustion engine runs on air. The water would more accurately be described as a catalyst (as it is regenerated), or maybe a means of chemical energy transduction and www.newscientist.com
transport. What it isn’t, though, is a fuel. The fuel is boron. Northampton, UK
Beating the air From John Scanlon, Riversleigh Fossil Centre Darwin wrote in On the Origin of Species: “It is certain that many forms, considered by highly competent judges to be varieties, resemble species so completely in character that they have been thus ranked by other highly competent judges.” A century and a half later, the atmosphere is still being agitated by debate over the reality of a subspecies of meadow jumping mouse (15 July, p 12). Most biologists regard “subspecies” as a nearly useless category, to be replaced by quantitative data on geographic variation in morphology and genetics. Either the US Endangered Species Act exists to preserve the ecosystems and genetic diversity that will allow local populations to persist in their natural ranges, or it does not. But, as Darwin himself added to his statement above, “to discuss whether they ought to be called species or varieties, before any definition of these terms has been generally accepted, is vainly to beat the air”. Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia
Sliding passengers From Tom Holmes I liked the article about Einsteinian aeroplane boarding (29 July, p 42). Another solution might be to remove the fuselage from around the seats. Passengers could then walk directly to their seat without having to go down any aisles or doors. The practical version of this would be to have all the seats and lockers on a “tray” that could slide out of the nose (or tail) of the aeroplane. Passengers could get to their seats from any direction in an open departure lounge – and everyone would not
“board” at once – they would just find their seat as they arrived at the lounge. When everyone was seated you would slide them back into the plane. Harrogate, Yorkshire, UK
Hear it for Harriet
From Jay Pasachoff, Williams College Though most people’s interest in the recently deceased Galapagos tortoise Harriet was because of her supposed association with Darwin, now debunked by Henry Nicholls, my interest was astronomical (15 July, p 21). No human was alive for the 8 June 2004 transit of Venus who had seen the previous transit in 1882, much less the one in 1874. So Harriet was a creature who may well have seen those transits and eventually got to see three. My wife and I were glad to meet Lonesome George, the subject of Nicholls’s recent book, at last year’s Galapagos solar eclipse. Williamstown, Massachusetts, US From Robert Senior, Science Centre, Woolsthorpe Manor Nicholls lists the story that Newton was inspired by a falling apple as one of science’s myths. Including this particular story in his list is a little unfair. There are several published accounts that record Newton himself describing such an event. The first was by William Stukeley, who recalls sitting with Newton under another apple tree drinking tea and being told the story. John Conduitt records a similar story. So the story came from Newton himself. Of course
he could have invented it, but why should he do so? The event took place while Newton was at his childhood home of Woolsthorpe Manor during 1666 while Cambridge University was closed by plague. An apple tree there has long been identified as “the tree”. It was blown down in 1820, but the fallen trunk re-rooted itself. It is still flourishing and shedding apples. An analysis by the University of York, UK, of rings from the trunk taken in the 1990s dates the tree as well over 400 years old. We are fortunate in having such reliable records of this delightful story and, through the re-rooted tree, a tangible link to the mind of our greatest scientist. Uppingham, Rutland, UK
Rare Latin birds From John Woodgate Further to Elizabeth Bromham’s comment on the black swan (29 July, p 23), Wikipedia tells us: “Rara avis – ‘Rare bird’ – An extraordinary or unusual thing. From Juvenal’s Satires: Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno (‘a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan’).” Rayleigh, Essex, UK The editor writes: ● The full quote in the translation by Niall Rudd (Oxford University Press) is: “Suppose she is beautiful, graceful, wealthy, fertile, and also has ancient ancestors dotting her hallway; suppose she is purer than any Sabine with streaming hair who stopped a war – a rare bird, as strange to the earth as a black swan; who could endure a wife who was such a paragon?” 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 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.
12 August 2006 | NewScientist | 19