Coal clarification
Fred Pearce’s article on underground coal gasification (15 February, p 36) misrepresents both the science and the words of explanation given by three of the directors of UK energy firm Five-Quarter on its method of obtaining unconventional gas from rocks.
Five-Quarter’s process 鈥� called “deep gas winning” 鈥� involves different chemical processes from the endless references to “burning coal” 鈥� namely partial-oxidation and pyrolysis, gasifying both coal and the kerogen in the surrounding rock within a carefully-created finite chamber, with all gases captured and none released to the atmosphere.
Pearce quotes Bradbury on the subject of underground coal, saying: “We want to burn it where it sits to revive industry.” We did not use and would never use the term “burn”. Burning coal would be a wasteful, dangerous and pointless use of this complex and valuable energy source, as was clearly pointed out.
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Pain threshold
Your feature on whether invertebrates feel pain (22 February, p 38) captured my attention, as my research has focused on cephalopods. Our knowledge of the neural pathways that underlie behaviour has allowed us to search for the site of pain in these animals, but it is still unclear.
Recent changes in European animal welfare legislation now class cephalopods as sentient beings, and animals used for experimental purposes need to be suitably anaesthetised beforehand. For the most part, previous attempts have not produced true anaesthesia in the cephalopods. Several workers have used muscle relaxants or simple hypothermia under the name “anaesthesia”. This approach is no longer adequate.
We urgently need to clarify anaesthetic procedures for cephalopods, and our laboratory was chosen by the Italian scientific ethics committee for animal experimentation (CESA) to develop these for the benefit of researchers working on cephalopods around the world. Our protocol for anaesthetising Octopus vulgaris using inhaled anaesthetic is now under review for publication.
Naples, Italy
Pain threshold
Research into whether invertebrates feel pain is worthwhile, but misses the bigger point. They are living creatures that should be handled with respect and sympathy, even if it turns out that they don’t feel pain.
Port Melbourne, Australia
Hot air
I find the frequent puffing of the fusion power dream very depressing (15 February, p 11). We get these optimistic announcements of “getting there” at intervals, as we have for decades. Even if one day scientists really manage to make a fusion reactor work 鈥� and I have to admit to being very sceptical about even that 鈥� where is the tritium going to come from? You might be able to manufacture some of it in a lithium blanket around the reactor, but there is no way that this could produce enough. It would need a supplementary supply from a very large number of fission reactors.
Michael Dittmar, a particle physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, was quoted as saying: “In this chain reaction, you cannot lose a single neutron, otherwise the reaction stops. The first thing one should do [before building a reactor] is to show that the tritium production can function. It is pretty obvious that this is completely out of the question.”
Fusion? Great fun and lovely salaries for the scientists and engineers involved, but a practical source of energy? No chance.
Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK
Sea power
I was delighted to see your report on generating power from ocean heat exchanges (1 March, p 48). However, I was disappointed to see the warmed, nutrient-rich water from below the thermocline described in terms of unwanted algal blooms. This water should be compared with the natural upwelling caused by deep ocean currents which results in important fisheries, such as those off western South America. The balanced nutrient input from deep ocean water can create phytoplankton growth and support a full food web. Since it is a by-product of the power station, it must also be cheaper and less controversial than enriching the open ocean with iron.
Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, UK
Sea power
As a cynical retired engineer, I note the lack of any discussion of the major issue that bedevils all active structures in the ocean. Growth of marine organisms on and in the pipes, pumps and heat exchangers will rapidly reduce heat transfer efficiencies and require regular costly maintenance.
At an onshore gas processing plant of my acquaintance, emergency pumps draw in seawater to fight fires (fortunately seldom needed). On one routine test, the pumps were found to be inoperable, blocked solid by mussels that had grown in the inlet pipe.
Stirling, Western Australia
Liquid assets
I quickly became indignant at your leader (22 February, p 5) implying that UK flood defences cannot be given any priority because they would cost unspecified large amounts of money. Reading further, your special report (p 8) puts the figure of 拢500 million over four years as a requisite.
Compare this with the oft-quoted 拢30 billion for the planned high-speed rail link HS2, which has a habit of gaining a round number of billions depending on which publication you read. It seems to me that we would do much better to scrap this white elephant and spend money on other infrastructure, of which flood defences are an important part.
Chesham, Buckinghamshire, UK
Liquid assets
Adam Corner writes that “definitive proof that this weather is the result of climate change is currently beyond us” (22 February, p 28). As a retired statistician, this “currently” worries me more than a little. How can we ever definitively prove a single weather episode was caused by anything?
If my uncle Bill died of lung cancer after smoking 60 cigarettes a day for 40 years, we can’t say that the cigarettes caused his cancer. What we can definitely say is that smoking raises the probability of getting lung cancer.
It seems that many people can’t, or won’t, accept that much of our scientific knowledge is about probabilities. We’re as certain of climate change raising the probability of extreme weather events as we will ever be.
Uki, New South Wales, Australia
Drug-free danger
As a practising mental health nurse, I found Clare Wilson’s article on treating schizophrenia (8 February, p 32) interesting on a theoretical level, but less insightful about the practicalities of patient management.
While the Mental Health Act can impose seemingly draconian treatment on individuals, experience tells us that patients who do not take their antipsychotic medication can quickly enter a florid psychotic phase and become a considerable danger to others. The recent case of Nicola Edgington, who attacked two strangers during a psychotic breakdown, sadly attests to this.
Wrexham, Clwyd, UK
Visible spectrum
Your item on ultraviolet vision (22 February, p 7) reminded me of the time I discovered I could see a little way into the ultraviolet.
In my first year at university, we were measuring the wavelengths of the spectral lines in the potassium vapour spectrum. I was taking much longer than the rest of the group, so the tutor came over to see why. He looked at my results and exclaimed, “You can’t see those!” So I lined up the spectroscope on three of the lines while he checked the textbook. “You’re right,” he admitted. “You’re seeing ultraviolet.”
In a long and very varied career since then, I have had many opportunities to check, and I can definitely see a short distance into the ultraviolet. It would be interesting to know if any other 快猫短视频 readers can do this. I have met only two other people who have this ability.
Congleton, Cheshire, UK
Love potion
There is clear value in being able to fix a broken heart (15 February, p 26), especially for the battered spouse. At the same time, how about developing an elixir for those whose genes or upbringing, or both, has left them unable to love. Abused children, orphans, and some reoffending criminals might all benefit.
I have the misfortune to be a victim of the health reformer Truby King’s “little-soldiers-for-the-Empire” school of childcare: changed and fed to a rigid 4-hour schedule and put back in my pram in the garden, cuddles strictly forbidden. Now over 70, with spouse, children and grandchildren, I have never experienced romantic love 鈥� some lust certainly, an occasional attraction, but definitely no attachment. I cannot be alone in feeling a love philtre is long overdue.
Name and address supplied
Plant food
Your article on the faeces-trapping plant Nepenthes (1 February, p 43) was fascinating, but I have a quibble. When I visited the padang of Bako National Park in Borneo some years ago, I saw vegetation rich in four different types of insectivorous plants (Nepenthes, Drosera, myrmecophytes, Utricularia) growing on the sandy soil. But rather than a vegetation driven by nitrogen scarcity, what I saw when I looked out over the Kerangas forest was a place dominated by phosphorus deficiency.
While plants have worked out at least three different strategies for nitrogen-fixing symbioses, there is no comparable work-around for phosphorus. All of the behaviour of insectivorous plants fits a need to acquire phosphorus and a way of doing so just as much as it does for nitrogen. Maybe one day someone will take a look, and I bet that phosphorus will be found to be the key to plant carnivory, with nitrogen nutrition just a secondary player.
Stanley Point, Auckland, New Zealand
Wild woods
A key question on returning environments to their wild state is to what are we comparing these environments (1 March, p 40)? There is a tendency to compare novel alternatives with an idealised natural or native ecosystem. However, especially in terms of long-lived species, the impacts of environmental change are likely to reshape the ecosystem with what we might term non-native climate, weather, pests and pathogens.
Thus, arguing against modifying the composition of ecosystems because of the danger of unforeseen problems needs to be set against the risk of unforeseen problems affecting our native status quo. We should not assume that novel is risky and native is safe 鈥� rather that novel and native both have risks that need to be taken into account.
Inverness, Highland, UK
Hard to stomach
Your special report on faecal transplants (1 March, p 10) mentioned “a nasogastric tube, which runs from the nose down through the stomach and into the colon”. Having swallowed jejunal tubes to access the upper part of the small intestine, I can tell you that passing an oral or nasal tube that could reach the colon would need to be another 6 metres long, and a task of Sisyphean magnitude to pass!
Lancaster, UK
For the record
鈥� Our article on the Wikipedia-sized mathematics proof (22 February, p 11) suffered a rogue edit: the researcher’s name is Boris Konev.
鈥� We got turned around when locating parts of the brain (8 February, p 38). Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas are typically found on the left hemisphere.