Let there be… dark
Musing on your look at future trends in artificial lighting (30 June, p 42) and, in particular, light pollution, it occurred to me that maybe we are approaching the problem from the wrong direction.
I accept that night-vision glasses are currently clunky, expensive and lack full-colour HD technology. But if everyone had them the need for lighting would diminish, at the same time reducing CO2 emissions.
Imagine a future in which night-vision technology could be incorporated into car windscreens, normal glasses, and ultimately, ocular implants at birth.
From Andrew Kelly
Your article mentioned the use of multicoloured LEDs on the Boeing Dreamliner to simulate natural light. My team and I developed this very technology for the Airbus A380 in 2004. Red, green, blue and white LEDs were mixed to produce any colour at any intensity. However, the high cost means most airlines opt for the pure white version.
Hounslow, Middlesex, UK
Sorry state of affairs
Kennette Benedict is right to flag up the dangers of an arms race in cyberspace (30 June, p 26). One point I would add is that the US is once again being blasé about collateral damage. The Stuxnet virus apparently “escaped” its original targets because of a programming error. There has been no apology for this, let alone an attempt to compensate non-combatants in neutral countries for the damage caused.
When the US bombed the wrong targets with conventional weapons at least there were apologies. Now, apparently, not even an insincere sorry is considered appropriate.
Chatbot detector
I have a suggestion for dealing with chatbots (23 June, p 45): include something really crazy in your chat with them, but phrased as if it were normal.
Maybe, “I was beheaded yesterday, but I’m feeling much better today”, or “I’ve a friend in the US who lives at the Gettysburg Address”. Or “there are too many cannibals in my neighbourhood”. A human would notice the oddity but a chatbot would probably give a glib response.
The crooks behind the chatbots could programme in sensible answers to known test questions, so you would need to keep making up new ones.
Larger than life
Your article exploring how simple and complex life may have emerged on Earth (23 June, p 32) presumes that it must have arisen there from scratch.
Furthermore, the spontaneous transformation of chemical monomers to life, such as a simple cell, is taken for granted, provided the appropriate energy routes can be identified. There is no experimental basis for this, however, and every indication is that the transformation from non-life to the first life must involve extremely rare conditions.
On the other hand, once microbial life has started somewhere, its spread and propagation appears, on the basis of all available evidence, to be unstoppable. The process of panspermia maintains a galaxy-wide exchange of bacterial genes, mixing the products of local evolution on a cosmic scale.
Energetic and thermodynamic considerations elaborated upon by Nick Lane, although interesting, do not necessarily lead to profound insights into how life began on Earth.
Climate solution
Further to Fred Pearce’s editorial on the outcome of the Rio+20 Earth Summit (30 June, p 3), the disarray in international politics that he highlighted with regard to climate change is now so potentially dangerous that no one can affect to be a disinterested observer.
We are, quite literally, all in this together. Anyone who imagines that solutions to climate change will come from governments is blinded by wishful thinking. Solutions will – and can only – come from the people now.
Duct dilemma
Your article on breast cancer surgery (23 June, p 42) exemplifies the gulf between epidemiologists and doctors in their thinking about disease.
To the epidemiologist it seems absurd to operate on a woman with a non-invasive ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) -a tumour in a milk duct that is unlikely to spread. As “few” as 4 per cent will go on to develop an invasive carcinoma.
These odds are far from negligible. What is the surgeon to say to a woman with DCIS? “Don’t worry, you only have a roughly 1 in 25 chance of going on to develop a disease that may kill you.” How about when the patient asks if the surgeon can guarantee she will be one of those who does not get invasive carcinoma?
When the surgeon is forced to admit that, at present, there are no guarantees, a lumpectomy is most likely to be the outcome.
Follow-up checks without surgery are an option, but that means the continued agony of uncertainty and further stress with each mammogram or biopsy. Better to get it out until there is a means of determining which ductal tumours will become invasive. And that is not likely to happen soon.
Schrödinger's sock
With regard to Steve Field’s letter concerning the possible quantum explanation for disappearing socks (23 June, p 31), this is in fact a biological phenomenon. Has he not noticed that metal coat hangers seem to mysteriously multiply? The answer is simple. Socks are a larval form of coat hanger.
From Bob Millar
On the subject of missing quantum socks, my own experiments have thrown up interesting observations – and we all know how important observation is in quantum theory.
I have discovered it is the rotation of the washing or drying drum that causes the disappearances. Just like a planet, there is a degree of frame-dragging going on. This imparts a stress on space-time and some socks manage to disappear from our continuum.
There is evidence – I have noted a missing sock has turned up in a previous wash, indicating time travel of a week or more.
Stockholm, Sweden
Bald truth?
When analysing the possible causes of baldness (16 June, p 44), Rob Dunn barely mentions the most likely evolutionary explanation: that baldness, like adult-onset nearsightedness, is not adaptive, but happens too late to be weeded out by natural selection.
Also, if baldness were an adaptation meant to increase scalp exposure to sun, this would be testable. In men of African ancestry curly hair has been shown to act as effective protection (see Nina Jablonski’s or Luigi Cavalli-Sforza’s ).
Historically, African men have also had more than enough sun exposure, so they should on average be less prone to baldness than those of northern-European ancestry.
Wrong bucket
Richard Fisher’s look at creative processes contained an irresistible quiz (16 June, p 34). The second challenge asks: “In 2 minutes, how many uses can you think up for a bucket?” The solution is given as: “No right answer”.
“No wrong answer” would surely be fairer.
Open is closed
There are probably few of us who pursue scientific work with no pay and no funding at all, but if open-access publishing of papers becomes universal (23 June, p 26) we will cease to exist entirely.
Open access is actually a closed shop. Only those who belong to an academic establishment or research facility will be able to afford to publish. Everyone else will be disenfranchised, irrespective of merit.
Sinking feeling
Apart from the miserable failure of the Rio+20 Earth Summit, surely the most disturbing recent report in 91av was that on legislators in North Carolina debating a bill forbidding coastal managers from predicting that sea-level rises will accelerate (30 June, p 5). And the bill was passed by the state’s Senate before being rejected by its House of Representatives.
If a state legislature can even contemplate trying to pass such laws, then we really are in a desperate situation.
Top marks
That the ancient artists who made outlines of their hands on cave walls (23 June, p 10) were communicating something to their contemporaries seems obvious – such art was most likely the Stone Age equivalent of “Zog was here”.
But if the paintings were not signatures, then perhaps they were just having fun.
Damage of divorce
In his letter, Ken Green describes modern divorce as “effortless” (23 June, p 30). On the contrary, it is a difficult, damaging and far from effortless process.
There’s enough social evidence to conclude that marriage for life is unrealistic. It’s just unfortunate that we’re not all wise enough to understand this early on.
Growing pains
The idea that we can truly break the link between economic growth and increased resource consumption, as some have suggested, is rightly open to challenge (16 June, p 38).
The industrial fix lasted 250 years, the green revolution 50 years, the next “breakthrough” probably 20 years, and so on. Until we come to terms with living on a single planet, we are simply stealing the future.
For the record
• Feedback’s recent look at food labelling (9 June, p 64) should have said that vanilla pods come from the tropical orchid Vanilla planifolia, not a tree.