Japan's whaling
If Japan is indeed going to get real over whale research (5 April, p 5), it needs to consider the implications on its activities in the North Pacific of the landmark ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against its “scientific whaling” in the Antarctic.
Paragraph 246 of the ICJ judgment states: “It is to be expected that Japan will take account of the reasoning and conclusions contained in this judgment as it evaluates the possibility of granting any future permits.”
A panel convened by the International Whaling Commission’s scientific committee made the same points about the scientific value of Japan’s whaling in the North Pacific as those contained in the ICJ judgment of the Antarctic catch. Having indicated that it will respect the ICJ judgment in the Antarctic, Japan shouldn’t issue a permit for the upcoming summer whaling season in the North Pacific.
Bristol, UK
Scientific exclusion
In your leader, you correctly decry the lack of recognition afforded to female scientists, and you mention Rosalind Franklin, Lise Meitner, Emmy Noether and Gerty Cori (5 April, p 5). It is perhaps worth pointing out that your examples had two hurdles to overcome. Not only were they women, but all four were Jewish.
Commugny, Switzerland
Scientific exclusion
The downplaying of women’s part in scientific discoveries is real and needs to be rectified. But gender bias isn’t the only one operating.
The 2003 Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the discovery of “porins” 鈥� protein channels that transport molecules through cell membranes. It went to the Americans Peter Agre for aquaporins, or water channels, and Roderick MacKinnon for potassium channels. But aquaporins were first described in 1986 by Gheorghe Benga, in what was then communist Romania.
There is no doubt that Agre told us much more about aquaporins than Benga did, but I can’t believe Benga would have been excluded from the award had he been working in a Western nation.
Sydney, Australia
Age of reason
I enjoyed Alex Pentland’s article on the death of individuality (5 April, p 30), but his grasp of the history of ideas is faulty. He asserts that before the 1700s, Westerners saw truth as coming from God and king, and that only after then did “the idea that humans were individuals with the freedom of rational choice” start to become acceptable. This is wrong.
Take the following, from Nicholas of Cusa’s On God as Not-Other, dating from around 1462: “I shall speak and converse with you on the following condition: viz., that unless you are compelled by reason, you will reject as unimportant everything you will hear from me.”
Earlier still, Thomas Aquinas, in the 1260s, saw human reason as vital not just to philosophy and science but also to theology. Reason wasn’t somehow discovered by early modern Europe 鈥� the medieval and the classical world already appreciated its importance.
Spaxton, Somerset, UK
Climate threat
Fred Pearce’s review of Windfall by McKenzie Funk presents us with selfish businesses looking forward to climate change so long as they can make a profit out of it (29 March, p 52). These companies must be thinking of the story of the two explorers on the veldt being charged by a lion. One looks with derision at the other, who is hurriedly putting on running shoes, scoffing that he hasn’t a chance in hell of outrunning a lion. “I only need to run faster than you,” the runner coolly replies.
These businesses need to see that a collapsing ecosystem isn’t a single lion, but a surrounding circle of them. The urge to remain the wealthiest in a doomed species will bring death by pride.
Bristol, UK
Fusion facility
Clive Semmens’s fear that a deuterium-tritium fusion reactor can’t produce enough tritium for its own needs is unjustified (15 March, p 32).
Lithium comprises two isotopes. Lithium-6 has an enormous cross-section to capture slow neutrons, fissioning to tritium with a large energy yield. Even better, lithium-7 absorbs fast neutrons, fissioning to tritium plus an extra slow neutron for the lithium-6. This neutron-multiplying ability of lithium was discovered in 1954, when the Castle Bravo H-bomb test on Bikini Atoll produced twice the expected yield, with consequences for the islanders of nearby Rongelap among others.
By juggling the ratio of the two lithium isotopes, a fusion reactor can be made that produces either exactly enough tritium to keep itself going, or even a surplus if desired. This is almost spookily fortunate: lithium is the only light element capable of fission. Liquid lithium has a large heat capacity, low melting point, high boiling point and a low vapour pressure. It conducts, so can be pumped electromagnetically. It is light enough to act as a moderator, slowing rebounding neutrons. It is the perfect fluid-come-shield for a fusion reactor.
Physicists sometimes grumble that the universe seems designed to make fusion hard. These improbably helpful properties of lithium are more like a hint: if you can’t do fusion when it’s this easy, frankly you don’t deserve it!
Oxford, UK
Valdez legacy
In his assessment of the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill 25 years on, John Wiens remarks that “fisheries closed, people’s lives were disrupted, and so lawyers went to work” (29 March, p 26). Of this, only the part about lawyers is accurate. For Exxon fought endless costly legal battles to deny every claim rather than pay adequate compensation for any fisheries closed and livelihoods destroyed. Many fisher families truly were destroyed (not merely disrupted). And the historically huge, healthy, financially important Prince William herring fishery didn’t resume after the spill.
Anchorage, Alaska, US
Lessons in honesty
Your leader on scientific fraud (29 March, p 5), particularly the perception that scientists “adjust their findings to get the answers they want”, reminded me of science practicals at school. The results were rarely as expected and would frequently be edited in the hope of getting a higher mark 鈥� teaching scientists from childhood that it is sometimes desirable to manipulate results.
I suggest that curricula should reward the reporting of actual results as much as expected ones, and that schoolchildren need to be made aware of the importance of honesty in science.
Bristol, UK
Genetic image
What a fascinating article on reconstructing mugshots from DNA (22 March, p 14). If we are only a decade away from mastering this, how long will it be before we can predict someone’s DNA from a photo? People’s privacy would be severely at risk. Insurers could look at someone’s photo on a social network and make assumptions about their likely health risks, bumping up premiums accordingly.
London, UK
Electric bus
I think the Swiss buses to which Peter Murray refers (22 March, p 31) are using the flywheel in a slightly different way from how he described it. With any urban transport system that has frequent stops, it is important to decelerate and then accelerate as smoothly and efficiently as possible. My understanding is that the bus is driven normally by an electric motor. As it approaches a stop, the flywheel is engaged, slowing the bus and storing energy that would otherwise be lost as heat during braking. That energy is then used to help get it moving again a short while later. The regenerative braking used on many cars is based on a similar principle but in that case feeds a battery.
Many rapid transport railway systems, including London Underground, achieve conservation of energy in a different manner. The rails between stations dip, so as the train approaches the station it is climbing a gradient which naturally slows it down. On leaving the station the train will run down the slope on the other side, recovering its kinetic energy.
North Nibley, Gloucestershire, UK
Coal-fired carriage
I have followed with interest Fred Pearce’s article on recovering coal energy in situ (15 February, p 36) and the subsequent letters on coal gasification. I think some confusion still exists.
My memory is that coal was “destructively distilled” by heating it in the absence of air. This yielded five products: coal gas, coal tar, an aqueous phase called ammoniacal liquor, coke and retort carbon. The coal gas was supplied to the consumer and comprised hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide and other gases. Your correspondents seem to be confusing this with “producer gas”, obtained by blowing air through a thick bed of hot coke, and “water gas”, produced by blowing steam through the same. Alternately cycling air and steam kept the process productive.
When fuel for public transport was scarce in the second world war, some British buses ran on water gas generated in trailers behind the bus, with the product stored in a balloon on top of the bus. During the severe winter of 1941, Illustrated magazine had a delightful cartoon showing a bus conductor with a busy trade in roast chestnuts and baked potatoes cooked on the gas generator.
Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, UK
Warming to the task
Your interview with Christiana Figueres revealed that she has “the unenviable task of getting 194 governments to sign a deal that will stop global warming” (15 March, p 30). This will be equivalent to all 12 of the labours of Hercules plus those of Sisyphus to boot. I wish her well.
Buderim, Queensland, Australia
Older and wiser
In the whole of your article about the fading brainpower that comes with age (22 March, p 28), it is apparent that one cardinal word is never mentioned: wisdom. It isn’t very popular in our materialistic society. Maybe some people grow wiser as they grow older. And maybe they replace, in their limited head space, unnecessary names and factlets with insight. But then wisdom 鈥� like kindness and other such concepts 鈥� doesn’t sell things.
Cudworth, Somerset, UK
Down to Earth
I was with reader Steve Pickering 100 per cent until he proposed a crewed space programme as an alternative project to maintaining the UK’s arsenal of nuclear weapons (5 April, p 33).
Perhaps reading your excellent analyses of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the same issue (p 8) would show him and others that there is one massive challenge facing us all, and the sooner we get on and face it the better. Unless, of course, he imagines shifting humanity out into space en masse to avoid the consequences of climate change.
Cracoe, North Yorkshire, UK
For the record
鈥� Thanks to those who poked holes in our story on the space-faring surgery robot (5 April, p 10): we should have said the machine would repair perforated ulcers, not perforate them.
鈥� We made an accidental precedent claim in our leader on gravitational waves (12 April, p 5). As the accompanying feature noted (p 38), the BICEP2 results provide new indirect evidence of their existence, but not the first.
鈥� It was Peter Rhee, not Hasan Alam, who first demonstrated the technique of emergency preservation and resuscitation in pigs (29 March, p 8).