Bad vibrations
If the working of the brain includes a mechanical element, as Anil Ananthaswamy’s article indicates (31 August, p 32), could this help our understanding of conditions such as memory loss and dementia?
Maybe it will prove possible to see if the older brain becomes stiffer at the synaptic level, in the same way that the ageing body does at the level of the skin, muscles and joints. If so, perhaps this could lead to a completely new realm of treatment.
Given the demographics of an ageing population in many countries, this could prove a crucial line of further research.
Stockport, UK
Bad vibrations
Your article may have resolved a personal mystery. I’ve had several episodes of transient global amnesia (TGA), in which short-term memory is disrupted. The first was triggered by jet lag, but the second was more curious.
I was in a concrete-lined room and there was a diesel machine working nearby, creating a strong, resonant, unpleasant vibration. I felt like I was going to faint and had to sit down.
It was only later that day that I developed TGA symptoms, yet I felt they were triggered by that experience. I’ve been very wary of strong vibrations since.
Melbourne, Australia
Once bitten
I have long thought that the lack of police available to catch those committing trivial offences has led to an increase in crime because people expect to get away with it. Perhaps the growing use of algorithms to solve crimes will restore some balance (7 September, p 36).
I can testify to the importance of this. As a youth in the 1960s I often rode my bike at night without lights, and worried about getting caught. Eventually I was stopped and cautioned. This one incident heightened my fear of detection and thus made me more law-abiding.
Medstead, Hampshire, UK
Frack offshore
Rightly or wrongly, fracking seems to provoke many fears in those living near a drilling site (10 August, p 36): discharge of toxic chemicals, pollution of drinking water, earth tremors, messing up the countryside and so on.
If shale gas can be found underneath our feet, surely it can also be found beneath the sea and extracted there instead. So far I haven’t seen any mention of this. Am I missing something?
Kingsland, Herefordshire, UK
Frack offshore
鈥� The British Geological Survey, in a , said logistical hurdles and higher costs at sea have so far deterred offshore fracking, but it is possible. In the US, it says extensive reserves on land make fracking at sea redundant.
Victims all
Your report on research into the prevalence of rape in some Asian countries notes that 1 in 10 men surveyed admitted to “raping a woman other than a partner” (14 September, p 6).
In fact, stranger rape is in most countries a minority of all rapes. The separation of rape into non-partner and partner categories is at best perplexing, at worst disturbing. It certainly reinforces unhelpful stereotypes.
Cape Town, South Africa
Cyber threat
Thomas Rid claims that cyberwar has not taken place, is not taking place at present, and is unlikely in the future (7 September, p 26). Furthermore, he also dismisses the cyberattacks against Iranian nuclear facilities by Israel and the US using the computer worm Stuxnet, and claims that a computer breach causing an electricity blackout would not amount to war.
But let’s imagine a computer attack bringing down the power grid of the US. Not a cause for war? I beg to differ. In the past, the casus belli for war has been much more modest. For the 1898 Spanish-American war, for example, it was simply the loss of a battleship. The idea of cyberwar may not be so phony.
Chicago, Illinois, US
Hack a factory
Manufacturers offering remote machine operation will need more than nerves of steel (7 September, p 22), they will need a whole new generation of control software designed with security in mind.
Machine manufacturers risk falling into the same trap that plagued Microsoft in the early days of the internet and spawned the so-called “firewall” industry: that of assuming a benign environment. As a writer of industrial control software I know that most of it takes a pretty casual approach to defending the machine against abuse by the intended operator.
After all, the traditional operator is in the employ of the owner and has a vested interest in not breaking the machine. Exposing this interface to the public opens it to an army of black-hatted hackers. The Stuxnet incident is an object lesson in what could be done.
Haslingden, Lancashire, UK
Mind into machine
Considering the objects we use as an extension of our minds (7 September, p 28) brought back my driving instructor’s words of wisdom: “The car will become part of you; it will be like an extension of yourself 鈥� your body and your brain.” He was right, as any driver knows.
This feeling takes time to develop, and does not just apply to cars but also to aircraft and even ships. There are plenty of veteran fighter pilots who have said that their aircraft felt like an extension of themselves.
Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex, UK
Public doubts
Mariana Mazzucato’s view that major innovation should be credited to government support (24 August, p 26) doesn’t resonate with me. That Apple received a $500,000 small business investment loan is scant evidence the hand of government had a measurable role, and it is even arguable whether Apple has created new technology.
There is a place for government to create the political, legal and economic framework for innovation to occur; if big pharma is closing down its R&D labs, it is because government is failing to provide such a framework. But it is certainly not the dominant force or major driver for technology development that Mazzucato portrays.
Houston, Texas, US
Plea for humanity
In 1959, British physicist C. P. Snow, in the Rede Lecture at Cambridge in the UK, famously declared that there were two camps of intellectuals 鈥� science and humanities 鈥� that rarely spoke to one another and that this hindered progress. This still seems to be the case.
Take for example your article on the legal implications of futuristic innovations such as teleportation (14 September, p 40), and the letter in the same issue on the potential of AI to create virtual zombies (p 30). The issues at hand have been studied in philosophy for years.
Southampton, Hampshire, UK
Glitzy name
The look at brown dwarfs finishes by making an argument for a new classification of these bodies, which are neither stars nor planets (24 August, p 37).
The portmanteau “starlet” seems appropriate.
Chichester, West Sussex, UK
Flare scare
Your article on the dangers of super solar flares evokes the ultimate scenario of societal collapse in a world reliant on electronics (10 August, p 46).
If such a flare occurs there doesn’t seem to be any obvious plan to get infrastructure back up and running. There are not enough computer chip manufacturing facilities in existence to repopulate all vulnerable electronic devices now in use, and there are not enough rockets to launch replacement satellites on any reasonable time scale. Time to rethink how we can defend ourselves.
Geostationary solar-powered airships could be the solution, with essential commmuniction equipment protected by Faraday cages to ensure minimum disruption after a super flare.
London, UK
Word search
The research you report likening the way the brain structures language to a dictionary (31 August, p 11) raises the possibility that it is dictionaries that structure language in the same way as the brain. In fact, lexicographers often strive to match the pattern of children’s language acquisition.
Psychologist Edward L. Thorndike pioneered the practice of defining in words likely to be already known, in the manner discussed, in dictionaries that still bear his name, and for which I have worked.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
Yellow peril
Further to Anthony Wheeler’s letter on distracting road “safety” signs (7 September, p 30), am I alone in being alarmed by the trend for big yellow signs on dangerous stretches of road stating “13 accidents in 4 years” or something similar?
As well as distracting the eyes, they invite the driver’s mind to take a statistical diversion from the road ahead. The above example suggests to me one accident every 112.4 days, or a 0.0089 probability of an accident occurring today.
Not bad odds, particularly considering I’m unlikely to be the most dangerous driver passing this way.
On the other hand, if I then factor in the chances of overlooking the oncoming juggernaut while I’m doing the above calculation, I come to a somewhat different result.
Meeth, Devon, UK
For the record
鈥� In our article on tissue regeneration inspired by the body’s extracellular matrix (14 September, p 32), we should have said is at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.
鈥� We incorrectly identified Trypanosoma cruzi as the organism that causes sleeping sickness in our story on frugal science in developing countries (7 September, p 2). It causes Chagas disease.