Helping the Great Barrier Reef and its communities
Keith Noble
Townsville, Queensland, Australia
It was good to read Thomas Lewton’s story on the health of our world’s coral reefs. What caught my eye was one researcher’s point that the success of initiatives to restore reefs “often comes down to social factors” and that giving “autonomy to the people of the reefs… seems to be a recipe for success”(13 June, p 38).
Here in Australia, government spending on Great Barrier Reef protection and research has been well over AUS$5 billion in recent years, a reasonable investment in maintaining a complex natural asset that generates 77,000 jobs and contributes $9 billion annually to Australia’s economy. But funding can be fickle, which has led my colleague Jelenko Dragisic and I to propose , rather than a closed environmental system.
Reef adaptation should be systemic, not siloed, with economic resilience, ecological health and social stability equally recognised as essential outcomes. A Great Barrier Reef economic zone would be a step towards a governance framework that redefines traditional conservation funding models, fostering a self-sustaining economy that builds resilience and prosperity for both the Great Barrier Reef and the reef region.
Q-Day won’t be stopped by rolling back research
Richard Machin
Marston, Oxfordshire, UK
John Bell is right to be concerned about the threat that quantum computers pose to encryption. But I don’t think legislation, however well-meaning, will achieve much. The security services of every nation will make use of quantum computing – I’m sure they already are – and they don’t always answer to civilian laws. The only way to stop quantum computing from rendering our current encryption methods obsolete is to devise new encryption methods(Letters, 4 July).
I know firsthand how the brain changes as we age
John Newton
Seaton, Devon, UK
I read with interest your article on our ever-changing brain. I have rewired mine several times, first as a bank clerk, then as a student and member of the clergy. Next, I became a school chaplain and teacher, before finally becoming a theatre and event-lighting technician. Along the way, I have also been a coastguard, auxiliary firefighter and coach driver(27 June, p 30).
Apart from the usual forgetfulness of words that comes with age, I don’t feel my mind is at all old and, at 87, I am still doing some lighting and driving safely (so I think). In all, I have been blessed with an active and varied life, which I feel sure has helped me keep an active and healthy mind. Or is it the other way round?
Say no to driverless cars in London and elsewhere
Alfred Beale
London, UK
There are three reasons why I don’t share Matthew Sparkes’s positive attitude towards driverless cars, the first being my negative experience of them. As I crossed a road near a junction recently, a Waymo was coming towards me. I’d expect a human driver to ease up slightly to ensure I crossed before they reached me. (It would be clear to a human being that I was laden and slow-moving.) But the Waymo continued accelerating, and then, at the last moment, it or its human minder hooted its horn. I had to leap out of the way(27 June, p 20).
Second, what happens when driverless cars kill pedestrians or cyclists, as has already happened in the US? Who will be in the dock facing charges? Until there is a clear law holding a named individual liable for any harm, there should be no question of allowing them on our roads. And third, any development that encourages the use of single-user powered transport in London is environmentally disastrous.
Don’t disregard the ethics of insect experiments
Anthony Spiteri
Durhamville, New York, US
You write that cockroaches have been controlled via electrical implants and fitted with diving suits. As a biological scientist, I understand that animal experimentation can, in certain contexts, be ethically justified. I also understand the importance of proportionality, necessity, refinement and careful welfare assessment in experimental design. This is why I found the framing of this work so disturbing(4 July, p 9).
The issue isn’t sentimentality about cockroaches. It is the principle that uncertainty about an organism’s capacity for suffering shouldn’t be treated as permission to instrumentalise it without serious ethical scrutiny. If the same procedure were described in relation to a mammal, we would speak of coercion, bodily violation, distress and confinement. With insects, the moral discomfort is simply bypassed. I am not arguing that all invertebrate research should be prohibited, but that this particular framing crosses a line. It treats a living animal as an engineering substrate while the ethical burden is almost entirely unexamined.
What’s inside Uranus? Its axis may be a clue
Bruce Denness
Niton, Isle of Wight, UK
The thick, gassy atmosphere of Uranus “makes it hard to know what is inside” it, writes Alex Wilkins. That it is only a quarter of the density of Earth suggests it is mainly gas, but with a rock or ice core. The fact that, unlike most planets, the axis of Uranus lies almost parallel to (rather than perpendicular to) its orbital plane seems to challenge received wisdom on planetary formation(27 June, p 9).
Perhaps a clue might lie in the core’s origin. For instance, if it had been a lump of debris from a distant stellar explosion – perhaps like Oumuamua, which recently passed through the solar system – it may have entered the proto-solar dust and gas cloud already rotating on its side and attracted, and imparted its angular momentum to, its dusty gas mantle. When I once presented this idea to the astronomer Fred Hoyle, he told me I was “entering a subject in which there are as many theories as people working in it”.
For the record
Gamma decay can occur when one element transforms into another (25 April, p 34).
Producing a lithium-ion battery emits about as much carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt-hour of capacity as driving a petrol car 1000 km (4 July, p 10 and 11 July, p 47).
Gottfried Hohmann and Barbara Fruth are at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behaviour in Radolfzell, Germany (4 July, p 30).
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