Independent states
It was heartening to see you highlight US president Barack Obama’s “war on inequality” (14 December 2013, p 5). It is, however, crucial to recognise a significant difference between US attitudes to poverty and those in, for example, the UK.
The US was founded by individualists, often in reaction to controls and interference from Europe, and the pervading legacy is a society based on individual success. America is about competition and winning. It is recognised that competition also produces losers.
If Obama’s reforms are to become successfully integrated into US law and culture, it will require such shifts of basic public perceptions that his chances of success must be remote.
Cracoe, North Yorkshire, UK
<i>The editor writes:</i>
鈥� It’s a question without a clear answer. We wrote about it in 2012 (2 June 2012, p 28).
Stake your claim
What’s missing from Jacob Aron’s article on mining asteroids (7 December 2013, p 14) is any consideration of the legal and ethical dimensions of doing this. Does the common heritage of humanity principle, by which we preserve things for the benefit of all, permit asteroid mining? If it doesn’t, should it?
Should the common heritage concept be modified or even ditched for good?
Mitchelstown, Cork, Ireland
Seeing is believing
You reported on attempts to simulate the vision of animal eyes (14 December 2013, p 23). Reproducing the image from an animal’s eyes is but the first step in a mysterious process.
All that remains is to transfer the 2D image to the input sensors of the 3D brain, imitate the processes of that brain and then you may (perhaps) view a realistic result.
Tintagel, Cornwall, UK
Mind and body
Patricia Churchland thinks expectations of an afterlife are one reason why people are apprehensive about accepting that they are just a bundle of neurons. This leads them to separate the concepts of mind and brain, she says (30 November 2013, p 30).
However, our lives centre on our direct experience. No separate entities are needed to explain that this experience is a central part of us. We think and feel, not as detached spooks but as whole people, using our brains to do these things, just as we use our arms and legs to move. Thus mind and body are not two things; they are two aspects of the whole.
Churchland acknowledges this wholeness when she urges us to use “self-control” in accepting this distressing truth. What would self-control be if you really didn’t have a self?
Newcastle on Tyne, UK
Nanny state
Despite being a breastfeeding zealot, I was frustrated by Mary Renfrew’s scheme to encourage breastfeeding by giving shopping vouchers to mothers who do it (30 November 2013, p 29).
Breastfeeding behaviour is changing because of the economic structure of society, the reduction in grandparenting as people become more mobile, and the different priorities of many young mothers.
Excessive welfare states in Australia, the UK and elsewhere make people dependent on them, which can lead to a loss of confidence, independence, skills and motivation. History shows that schemes of the sort proposed don’t work, and indeed that they may backfire.
Bega, New South Wales, Australia
Booming costs
Bent Flyvbjerg’s article on the biases that afflict megaprojects (30 November 2013, p 28) was very fitting from the Finnish point of view. The cost of a reactor for the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant in western Finland was estimated at the end of 2012 to have risen to at least 拢7 billion, three times the original cost. It has been under construction since 2005.
An even bigger issue has been the project’s timetable. According to the original plan, electricity production should have started in 2009. That has now been put back to 2016. The main contractor, French company Areva, and the plant’s Finnish operator, Teollisuuden Voima, are suing each other for billions because of the delay and cost overruns.
In mid-December Areva issued a statement saying, “We will finish the project”. No mention as to when. What the final cost will be is anyone’s guess. This experience might be worth bearing in mind for the UK’s new Hinkley Point nuclear plant timetable and the 拢16 billion price tag.
Helsinki, Finland
Moral dilemma
Obviously distance is a factor, but more important is the fact that it is down to you, and you alone, to save the drowning child. When responsibility for the starving children is shared with millions of others, your decision will be different. If there are other onlookers who may act when they see the child is drowning, the thought of ruining your new suit might yet hold you back.
Cudworth, Somerset, UK
Moral dilemma
The attraction of saving an identifiable child immediately could be equally great even if they were at a distance. All you need is a connection of the sort Facebook and Twitter enable. Committing to supporting many strangers for many years with no certain outcome is less attractive, and Greene did not convince me that it showed more morality.
Weymouth, Dorset, UK
Moral dilemma
In your interview with Joshua Greene, he invokes philosopher Peter Singer’s comparison between ruining the $1000 suit you are wearing to save a drowning child and donating a similar sum to save starving children on the other side of the world (7 December 2013, p 30). Greene says we don’t hesitate in the first case, but do in the second, because those at risk are distant.
The crucial factor is not distance, but responsibility. If you alone were thought responsible for the fate of the starving children, the incentives to act morally could look quite different.
Helsinki, Finland
Clear the air
Frank Swain’s look at the sidelined antibiotic role of fresh air and sunlight in controlling infection (14 December 2013, p 34) raises questions about hospital design.
I was a medical student in the 1980s, in hospitals built in the Victorian era 鈥� huge airy spaces flooded with natural light. They almost seemed to be half outside. Now many hospitals have low ceilings, slit-like windows that barely open and fluorescent lights. With a lack of fresh air and 24-hour artificial lighting, it is not surprising that patients succumb to infections or get depressed.
Our new hospitals are designed to reduce infection risk and to be cleaner and more efficient. But if such designs add to morbidity, perhaps we need a rethink.
Fochabers, Moray, UK
Slaves to time
Michael Slezak poses the question: “Do past, present and future exist only in our heads?” (2 November 2013, p 34). If time indeed does not exist as a separate dimension and is an illusion, could it be that we are creatures who have evolved to perceive the expansion of space as “time”?
Wrexham, Clwyd, UK
Angling for the truth
Richard Webb’s excellent article on fungi mentioned the use of amadou, a felt-like substance derived from a bracket fungus, by anglers (7 December 2013, p 39). However, it is used for drying flies, rather than as bait 鈥� although desperate anglers have been known to try anything.
You might also be interested to know that the tradition of making hats from amadou has survived not only in a few spots in central and eastern Europe, but also here in Yorkshire.
Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK
Pervasive spread
I disagree with Lu铆s Bettencourt’s comparison of cities to stars (14 December 2013, p 30). A city is more like a colony of bacteria in a biofilm than it is like a star.
Norwich, New York, US
Wind of change
Bob Holmes reports that keeping E. coli in constant lab conditions over many generations does not result in a strain reaching a static peak of evolutionary perfection (23 November 2013, p 12). This should come as no surprise to evolutionary biologists who are familiar with the dynamic nature of ecosystems.
That the conditions causing a population to evolve should then be changed by the evolved population is inherent in a networked system. Both the environment and the gene pool will keep changing: so the evolutionary process is like a dog chasing its own tail, even in a culture vessel.
Years ago, a colleague explained that weevils breeding in his flask need only pass wind to change their environment. Surely this induced change is the inherently dynamic driving force of evolution.
Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
Life less
Reader Ed Prior reduces the estimate of stars in our galaxy that have a habitable planet from the 40 billion stated in Lisa Grossman’s article (9 November 2013, p 12) to 1 million at any one time (14 December 2013, p 33). But that figure can be cut further.
Many stars are in the galactic centre and the there would make life as we know it rare, if not impossible.
There are other factors important for life 鈥� plate tectonics and protective magnetic fields. And consider how our planet was altered . Perhaps to get complex life you need the right collision at the right time, to get the right-sized moon at just the right distance.
Leicester, UK
Clear the air
Another overlooked traditional weapon against infection is salt. Used on wounds it kills bacteria and dries the wound. The pain resulting from the salt might cue a stronger immune response.
Jomtien, Thailand
Clear the air
When will hospitals and schools revert to using brass instead of stainless steel for door furniture? I understand that some germs like iron, but most hate copper. In an epidemic, even a small reduction in transmission is worthwhile.
St Neots, Cambridgeshire, UK
Clear the air
Swain’s article accurately describes good hospital practice of 50 years ago. However, there were downsides.
After a successful operation, I was one of the bedridden patients wheeled outside to benefit from the autumn air. Unfortunately, we were left unattended under horse chestnut trees, which shed their hard conkers onto our heads. We were powerless to take evasive action.
Stoke Gabriel, Devon, UK
Clear the air
Energy efficiency seems to be a reason behind keeping the windows closed in hospitals. Surely the way to get the antibacterial benefits of fresh air without losing heat is to pass incoming fresh air through a heat exchanger with the outgoing hot air on the other side. I believe this has been done in Scandinavia for decades. This might also be a cure for “sick building syndrome”, in which occupants have various symptoms but there is no specific identifiable cause.
Bristol, UK