Higgs hunting
Steve Wilson writes to suggest that experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) record only particle collisions that fit the standard model (SM) (7 April, p 32).
I am part of the Compact Muon Solenoid collaboration at CERN. We typically do data analyses that test theories beyond the SM. Examples include looking for signs of fourth-generation quarks, black holes, gravitons and supersymmetric particles.
A direct search for the Higgs is the easiest way to test the theory behind the SM. We also do many more general searches that look for anything unusual. These do not receive as much public attention. They have so far seen nothing unexpected, but the experiments necessarily give weaker results: it is always easier to look for something specific, especially in the mountains of data collected at the LHC.
View from a mouse
Dan Jones begins his piece on why we are different from chimps saying: “Nobody would mistake a human for a chimpanzee, yet we share more DNA than mice and rats do” (24 March, p 34).
I’m sure your average mouse couldn’t tell a human and a chimpanzee apart, but would see no relationship whatever between mice and rats. It all depends on your point of view.
Retroactive revision
Experimental results suggesting precognition discussed in Bob Holmes’s article (14 January, p 38) remind me of a quirk of certain high performers at college. Upon finishing an exam, they would rush back to their rooms to open their books and see what they’d got wrong.
I had always assumed that this was a sign of the obsessive behaviour that had led to long nights in the library, rewarded by good marks. Silly me, little did I realise they were studying for the test they’d just taken. This is a bit like the volunteers in psychologist Daryl Bem’s experiment, who appeared able to anticipate words from a list they had not yet been given to memorise.
Slight scan risk
Jessica Hamzelou writes that because obese people receive a higher dose of X-rays in a CT scan, “they are 60 per cent more likely than those of average weight to develop the disease” (14 April, p 13). No – they are 60 per cent more likely to develop the disease as a result of the CT scan.
But CT scans only slightly increase the risk of cancer. The increased risk for obese people is 60 per cent of “slight”.
Antibiotic attack
You report on another attempt to ban routine use of low-dose antibiotics to increase growth in livestock, mainly because it will encourage the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (31 March, p 6) – and over the page say that antibiotics may also play a role in making people fat (p 8).
If antibiotic-induced growth in animals is also disproportionately of fat, we will consume more fat. Epigenetic studies link higher birth weight in babies (as result of maternal nutrition) to their later susceptibility to obesity and related diseases such as diabetes.
Perfect storm anyone?
From Alasdair Cook
A retired vet gave me copies of the Veterinary Record, and I found this little gem from 10 January, 1948: “For some time past, there appears to have developed a diminution in the efficiency of penicillin, and it is significant that about two or three months ago, general medical practitioners were increasing the dosage by as much as 100 per cent. The British Medical Journal of November 29 directs timely attention to what it calls ‘the magnitude of this unwelcome change’, and discusses the possible causes hereof.”
That was just four years after penicillin .
Dumfries, UK
Shipping forecast
Your story on laying fibre-optic cables in the Arctic (17 March, p 19) stated “the underside of sea ice also has ridges, or ‘bummocks’, that reach depths of 18 metres”.
I thought I remembered greater depths mentioned, and on rereading the accounts of the submarine USS Nautilus‘s journeys under the Arctic in 1958 and those of USS Skate, I found reports that they often encountered ice 18 metres down, with the lowest at 38 metres. Arctic Fibre’s aim of staying at least 50 metres down does not seem overly cautious.
From Clive Semmens
Jeff Hecht writes that the biggest threats to marine cables in warmer waters come from “fishing trawlers and ships’ anchors”, which are extremely rare in the Arctic. This is true today, but for how much longer?
Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK
Another network
Your discussions of social networks were rather good, but tended to oversimplify the story (Instant Expert, 7 April). Take the assertion that we typically have two networks: friends and relatives. I would say most people have at least three, the third being work colleagues, who are mostly not friends or relatives.
It is also not uncommon to be part of two or more networks of friends, perhaps with no other individuals a member of both.
Scared to death
David Hirst asserts that deaths will have occurred among evacuees from the zone surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and implies that these can be fairly blamed on the accident (31 March, p 30).
But Wade Allison, author of Radiation and Reason, has was ordered on the basis of far lower levels of excess radioactivity than can be justified. So the health risk to the ill and infirm of staying put was far less than that of being evacuated, and anyone who died was a victim of a scare.
Stand up and be…
Kate Douglas discussed why humans became bipedal (24 March, p 36). I see a big gap. When the great ape that was our distant ancestor came down out of the trees and onto the veldt, it had something that very few other prey species had: binocular vision, usually a feature of predators. Prey have monocular vision for a greater field of view to spot approaching danger.
This great ape would have been relatively slow, without claws, and not very weighty or muscular compared to many prey species. How this human ancestor succeeded, despite its binocular vision, is a major question.
Pie and bash
Feedback was puzzled by the term “hand-raised” appearing on a shop sign advertising pork pies (31 March). The notes to P. G. Wodehouse’s novel Sunset at Blandings include a description from Fortnum & Mason, London purveyors of fine food, to the effect that “a raised pie is made as follows: pastry… is moulded round, or raised up, a wooden mould. The mould is removed and the pastry filled with meat… and the contents closed over with pastry again.” So it’s not the pork that’s hand-raised, it’s the pie.
It takes two
Discussing matter-antimatter annihilation, you say “each photon created in this process carries an energy exactly equivalent to the annihilated mass of an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron” (31 March, p 33).
An electron and positron usually annihilate to give two photons. Creating just one photon in such an annihilation is impossible because both energy and momentum would not be conserved. Also the particles are not always relatively at rest, so there may also be some kinetic energy to top up the total.
Feathers or quills?
The feather-like projections on the back of the pre-dinosaur Longisquama insignis (24 March, p 8) remind me of a defensive feature of much later animals.
Could these “early feathers” have acted in a similar way to a porcupine’s quills? That could explain the thick border on one edge: to strengthen them. A would-be predator would probably leave with a mouth full of these “feathers” instead of the creature itself.
Turtley awesome
In my appropriately slow-but-steady reading of 91av, I have just got round to reading the article on cognitive research in tortoises and turtles (24/31 December 2011, p 44).
It brought back pleasant memories of working as a research assistant in the turtle lab at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.
The turtles pushed one of two buttons with their noses to earn a squirt of food. They were able to learn some quite complex rules to get their reward. As a lab animal, they were much nicer to work with than the rats I had for my later graduate work.
Why haven’t they been more popular? Perhaps the answer might in small part be due to the fuss an auditor was reputed to have made the year the lab was set up – on finding that someone had spent grant money on sun lamps and a swimming pool.
Intergalactic lasers
I am amazed that astronomer Geoff Marcy assumes the most technologically advanced method of interstellar communication available to extraterrestrial beings would be the laser (31 March, p 28).
Instead of limiting our ideas to our own abilities, think of faster-than-light techniques that we can barely imagine, probably using wormholes.
Anyway, if extraterrestrials have been observing us, they will have seen enough reality TV shows to conclude that we are beyond redemption.
Toy Town cars
The idea of driverless cars (31 March, p 19) was originally conceived by Enid Blyton over 60 years ago in her Noddy stories.
The central character owns a car that is capable of driving by itself. I hope the first autonomous model will be finished in chrome yellow with scarlet wheel arches in honour of her prototype.
The editor writes:
• Unfortunately, General Motors to the front of the grid in its Futurama exhibit at the World’s Fair in 1939.