FEEDBACK thinks the Global Seed Vault in the Norwegian territory of Svalbard, which opened in February (快猫短视频, 15 March, p 54), is an idea to marvel at. Brush aside the that there鈥檚 no substitute for actually growing seeds and maintaining the environments they grow in 鈥� not to say supporting the farmers who grow them. Just wonder at the vision of dedicated technicians maintaining the means to rebuild agriculture, come what may, secure behind the massive steel doors in an Arctic mountainside, guarded (in Feedback鈥檚 imagination) by the Panserb酶rn Division of armoured bears from Philip Pullman鈥檚 novels.
We have, though, a niggling worry. Picture this scene: civilisation has collapsed. Epidemics, epizootics and epiphytes stalk the land. Nothing edible is growing.
Advertisement
You paddle across the open Arctic waters 鈥� thankfully mild these days 鈥� to Svalbard; you clamber up to the super-secure Seed Vault. Your pulse races in anticipation of you and your band restarting civilisation in the banana fields of Quebec, just as soon as you have those seeds of the essential and long-extinct Gros Michel.
But the key isn鈥檛 under the doormat after all.
WHEN Jolyon Martin closed Internet Explorer, a pop-up appeared titled 鈥淢icrosoft Internet Explorer鈥�. All it had underneath was the word 鈥淔ailed鈥� and an 鈥淥K鈥� button.
Martin clicked on this, but now he is wondering whether this was the right thing to do. He doesn鈥檛 want to encourage Microsoft to think that failure is acceptable.
RESEARCHERS get understandably impatient at the delay that can occur between submitting a manuscript of their findings to a journal and actually seeing their paper published. However, the journals, to be fair, have to find referees who are prepared to peer-review the work, and the more eminent the referee, so Feedback hears, the further down the list of their priorities such correspondence may fall.
Feedback is therefore delighted to congratulate Cancer Letters (owned by Elsevier, incidentally, which also owns 快猫短视频) on its determined effort to get important results published promptly, and to brook no dallying by referees.
In May, Karen Pooley received a message from the journal鈥檚 editors saying they 鈥渨ould be grateful if you would review the above-mentioned manuscript that has been submitted for publication鈥�.
Milliseconds later she opened another email with exactly the same time-stamp: 鈥淵ou were recently invited to review the above manuscript, but as yet we have not received your reply. Due to time restrictions we have decided to proceed with evaluating this manuscript without your input.鈥�
She wrote back instantly, saying she would try to reply more quickly in future.
鈥淭he fourth floor has been moved鈥�
WAITING at a hospital in Olympia, Washington, for an elevator to the fourth floor, Earle McNeil read this sign: 鈥淭he fourth floor has been moved to the ninth floor.鈥� This made him wonder, as you might expect. If he still opted for the fourth floor, would he find himself in a 3-metre-high open space? If he visited the ninth, now with added fourth, what problems would it 鈥� and he 鈥� face with interpenetrating physical objects, not to mention patients?
Can any reader with expertise in the mathematics of non-continuous number fields and topologies advise?
鈥淭he bottle of Metromint demineralised water bought by Michael Jaklitsch told him: 鈥淲e start with pure water. We filter it for impurities so nothing gets in the way of its clean, crisp taste鈥濃��
AS WE have often said, and as our colleague Jeff Hecht well knows, nominative determinism is dead. Even so, Hecht informs us that the senior legal counsel for Cox Communications, a US cable-television company, is Linda Trickey.
And, on the subject of lawyers, Gerry Wright thought we should know about Wright Hassall solicitors: see for details.
Oh, all right, here鈥檚 another one. Alan Burckitt-Gray alerts us to a report in The St Petersburg Times, Florida, about a project to mark the grave of Almon B. Strowger, the inventor of the automatic telephone exchange. A director from the phone company Verizon toured Greenwood cemetery, where the grave is to be found, to assess its potential as a showcase.
鈥淚 was very impressed with the cemetery. I could really see what could be done there,鈥� said the official, whose name is Cristina Coffin.
FINALLY: when he received a brochure from the Royal Air Force museum in Cosford, Shropshire, UK, Feargus MacIntyre was so impressed by the photos of the exciting exhibits that he began to schedule a holiday visit.
Then he noticed a line on the back page of the brochure warning: 鈥淥nly guide dogs are permitted in museum buildings.鈥�
Not being a guide dog, he has decided not to risk it.