Two become one
Your special issue on the self repeats the errors of earlier thinking (23 February, p 32). The contributors give us a string of straw men 鈥� views such as “we regard ourselves as unchanging” (p 34). They say these are central to our idea of ourselves, but actually they are just a continuation of parts of the argument by 17th-century philosopher Ren茅 Descartes for a separate, substantial soul.
Finding it easy to class these views as illusions, the writers then provide a source for them. They imply, by using words like “tricked” and “elaborate”, that some conjuror 鈥� probably “the mind” or “the brain” 鈥� has played the part of Descartes’s deity-like Great Deceiver. Such drama would only make sense inside Descartes’s dualist world of separate mind and body, a place that we no longer need to visit.
Life support
Resuscitation specialist Sam Parnia asserts that extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support for cardiac arrest patients is not routine in the US and UK because of a lack of regulation (9 March, p 32).
In my view, ECMO has been tried in these countries for several years, but not widely adopted because it offers little extra benefit to conventional CPR, given its considerable extra expense.
Friends for dinner?
I liked Brian Hare’s alternative theory on the origins of domestic dogs, in which “friendly” wolves that thrived on food scraps interbred, reinforcing their human-tolerant traits (2 March, p 30). I don’t suppose I will be alone in observing that we have, with the urban fox, another possible example of that process.
However, the fox also highlights a problem: they apparently sometimes become confused about whether humans give food or are food, if their reported attacks on children can be generalised (23 February, p 26).
I’m guessing that if a putative domesticated wolf became similarly confused it would jeopardise the whole adventure, particularly as it is unlikely to have been content with a nibble. Most likely the whole pack would be dispatched.
Ariane inspiration
I wonder if a US-centric approach to the choice of rocket for the Inspiration Mars project represents an unnecessary delay to what otherwise looks a fantastic plan for a crewed fly-by of the Red Planet in 2018 (9 March, p 6).
Requiring an estimated 10,000 kilogram payload delivery system, Inspiration Mars opts for an untested SpaceX rocket or, failing that, hopes NASA will step into the breach by 2017. But Europe’s established Ariane 5 ES rocket goes unmentioned. It is already used to send the Automated Transfer Vehicle to the International Space Station and can carry a 20,000 kilogram payload into low Earth orbit.
Hot spots
Stuart Clark’s article about the faint young sun paradox (16 February, p 44) said that liquid water was present on Earth more than 2.5 billion years ago, when the sun is thought to have been too cool for this. Perhaps this bolsters the argument that life, which emerged around 3.8 billion years ago, evolved around hydrothermal vents. These may have been more prevalent then.
Nuclear flaws
There’s not enough space to go into all the valid arguments against nuclear energy, despite the lament in your editorial for the industry following the Fukushima disaster (9 March, p 3).
But the three principal points of opposition are the unresolved issue of the disposal of nuclear waste, the secretive nature of the industry, and the fact that earmarking funds for it will weaken the will for energy conservation and the promotion of renewables.
Anti-liberalism
Responses to the article by Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell on anti-science attitudes among progressives (2 February, p 24) ignore the view of many leftists who think liberalism is an elite world view fitted to the interests of the well-educated professional class to which scientists belong.
Working-class people often lament the manner in which their competence and general worth to society is discounted by liberals who are bent on justifying not only their own authority within the economy, but also their disproportionate share of its rewards.
So perhaps in the US the liberal tendency among scientists might not be a consequence of Republican anti-science bias, but rather its cause. A backlash against liberalism’s worst excesses could inspire a widespread and likely catastrophic dismissal of science.
Virgin birth
Your look at parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction, speculates that genetics were the cause of high mortality rates in our early work on such births in a zebra shark (2 March, p 34). In our opinion this is incorrect.
This year we have had an exceptional success rate to date with our parthenogenetic pups. We attribute the higher mortality in earlier years to husbandry protocols, and not genetics. Although we cannot categorically state that genetics have no effect on survival, as the project has progressed we have learned how to better provide for our sharks, and the mortality rate has decreased significantly.
Surgical fears
You wrote about the search for a brain signature of returning consciousness in patients during surgical anaesthesia (9 March, p 16). Patient awareness despite anaesthesia is dreadful when it happens, but it is rare and already the object of research, much of which, like the study mentioned, uses electroencephalography.
To date, no method has been found to show that the patient is awake, let alone approaching awareness, only that activity in the anaesthetised brain changes in response to stimulation. The authors of the study you reported rightly say that their work “provides insights into the mechanisms of propofol-induced unconsciousness”, but it isn’t a panacea of awareness detection.
Finally, let me correct any misunderstanding that anaesthesia involves only an initial intravenous injection that might wear off. The drug is continually topped up by the anaesthetist during surgery.
Leak report
You reported the World Health Organization’s from radiation leaks at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan (9 March, p 4). It is worth adding that the very small predicted increases in the cancer incidence rate in the local population will be barely detectable, and hidden within normal random fluctuations.
Furthermore, the predicted increases in cancer due to the doses received by other populations will be extremely small, and certainly won’t be detectable. The WHO says that these predictions will be followed up with long-term monitoring to measure the actual cancer rates in years and decades to come.
Experience of previous incidents would suggest that the predictions will, if anything, overestimate the rates measured.
Comic appeal
I would like to add to the debate on the use of the font Comic Sans in scientific presentations (22/29 December 2012, p 68). Opposition is misplaced, based on a mixture of prejudice, a false sense of dignity and its populist image.
Unlike many alternatives, it maintains excellent legibility when projected, and is far better in smaller sizes than serif or sans serif alternatives. Its loose, almost casual style and curves seem to render it easy to read in many settings, and its whimsy can help reduce barriers between speaker and audience.
All in a good cause
I had an idea about raising money to save the Royal Institution (26 January, p 27). Based on information I found online, 快猫短视频 readers could save the institution if your cover price was increased by 30 pence.
I accept this may be a bit much for one magazine, but other publications could join in, and raise prices by a few pence each.
The cheapest option
Calling e-books “used” is misleading. What Amazon would be doing by enabling the sale of “second-hand” digital files via the patented system you report (23 February, p 22) is cutting the author and publisher out of the equation due to lack of royalties, which is why the price drops.
Since the files are identical, customers will always buy the cheaper used copies. Amazon will still make its profit, but sales of “new” books will stop at a certain point, severely harming publishers, who will eventually be forced to stop selling via Amazon.
A word for it?
It struck me that discussions of wave-particle duality lack a single word for the weird nature of photons or electrons before they are induced to reveal themselves as particle or wave upon measurement (5 January, p 36).
鈥� The is catching on.
For the record
鈥� No slight was intended to anyone when in a review of the 快猫短视频s Meet the Media event, Fiona Fox was wrongly described as a journalist for The Times (9 March, p 20). She is, of course, the chief executive of the .
鈥� An extra zero sneaked into a figure in our Instant Expert on photosynthesis (2 February). We should have said that oxygen levels had begun to stabilise at around today’s level 40 million years ago.
鈥� In our look at plans for a crewed Mars fly-by, Graham Scott of the Center for Space Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine should have been described as a biomedical researcher, not a geneticist (9 March, p 6).