Coming clean
Fred Pearce describes a key caveat to announcements in 2010 that the Millennium Development Goal target for access to safe drinking water had been met (12 April, p 12). In his article, I am quoted as saying that the World Health Organization has been silent on this issue. To clarify, I was referring to the fact that there has been no formal response to published estimates of the gap between what is “improved” and what is “safe”.
The WHO/UNICEF-supported Joint Monitoring Programme, which measures global progress towards water and sanitation targets, has repeatedly articulated that access to an “improved” water source is a useful but imperfect metric, quite different from more direct measures of microbiological or chemical water safety. This is widely acknowledged in the sector, including by the WHO, and there is consensus that much work remains to be done to expand global access to safe and sustainable water.
The purpose of our on the subject, cited in Pearce’s article, was to describe some of the complexities that may apply to both current and future water metrics, and to encourage caution in their interpretation.
Atlanta, Georgia, US
Synthetic state
Synthetic biology could, as Colin Barras suggests, be useful in addressing many of the world’s challenges, such as how to easily and cheaply produce medicines (12 April, p 34). But the technology could also face a backlash if the public’s genuine environmental and social concerns aren’t recognised and acted on.
Environmentalist Jonathon Porritt recently chaired a stakeholder process that identified 10 conditions for the safe development of industrial biotechnology. Synthetic biology researchers and businesses would do well to take note of these. A reasoned societal debate is needed if this technology is to get the public mandate it needs.
York, UK
Insecurity services
While I applaud efforts described by Merijn Terheggen to improve software integrity (19 April, p 21), the reality is that such measures are too little too late. We have a situation in which well-funded commercial and government organisations have incentives to keep security weak.
Security services should focus on defensive measures rather than all-out-assault, and it should become a criminal offence for them to deliberately weaken security standards and products.
The US National Security Agency reportedly knew nothing about the Heartbleed internet vulnerability. Given its budget, that is an embarrassing and scarcely credible admission. The money that is ineffectively and unconstitutionally being bled on warrantless mass surveillance should instead be spent on improving internet security, including by software audit and assurance, validation of the integrity of encryption and other relevant internet standards.
Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, UK
Hard to swallow
I was disappointed to see the recent study on fruit and vegetable intake given such an easy ride in Clare Wilson’s article (5 April, p 12). The study’s results were a mixed bag. When just including overweight people (about 60 per cent of the participants) the extra benefit of seven or more portions a day vanished. More strikingly, when restricted to those who had never smoked (about half the participants) the group eating seven or more portions actually did worse than those eating fewer.
Calling for 10-a-day, as the press release did, is a blatant attempt to generate a media flurry. It was a shame nobody called them on it. It could discourage those already struggling to hit their five-a-day target, while giving the false impression that lower levels of intake had little benefit.
The study authors could have chosen a more positive message: eating between three and five portions of fruit or vegetables a day consistently showed significant benefits, with five to seven portions showing a modest additional benefit. That wouldn’t have had the same media appeal, but would have avoided the unwelcome boost to public disaffection with the science behind health messages.
Handcross, West Sussex, UK
Conscious state
I see that the emperor is still wearing his new clothes. I refer to the implausible garments paraded by theoretical physicist Max Tegmark in his examination of a physical description of consciousness (12 April, p 28).
The idea that the complexity of a system explains consciousness is very old hat and fundamentally illogical and unhelpful. Complexity is a feature that can only be apprehended by a pre-existing conscious entity 鈥� no consciousness, no complexity, or no anything for that matter.
It is time for physicists to admit that there are phenomena that cannot, and never will, be embraced by materialistic science. Tegmark should stand back and take a deep breath, before indulging in even more flights of fancy.
Sheffield, UK
Conscious state
I was disappointed that Tegmark ended his excellent article by referring to “calculation” of how conscious observers “perceive” their world. A more fruitful emphasis would be on how conscious observers “create” their world.
One of the essential features of consciousness is that it interprets perception, deduces meaning and imposes that unified meaning on the world, in a continuous feedback process. That’s why it “senses” the tiger crouched on the rock above the path, despite the least of clues, and why it is so useful for survival.
Bakewell, Derbyshire, UK
Natural GMOs
Michael Bailey is wrong that genetic modification is novel or unnatural (12 April, p 33). Lateral gene transfer is the natural process of organisms getting genes from unrelated species.
The poster child for this phenomenon is the sea squirt, an animal that makes cellulose, a fibre normally only found in plants. It has pinched the entire synthesis pathway, comprising several genes, from seaweed and uses the cellulose to make the leathery tunic it wraps itself in.
Dundee, UK
Stinging advice
Unfortunately there is a problem with promoting beekeeping if advocacy is for the honeybee alone (12 April, p 21).
Many honeybee species raised commercially for pollination are kept throughout the world, well beyond their native range. Where successful, this apiculture can negatively affect native bees and other animals dependent on nectar and pollen. Further, outside their native ranges, these honeybees often escape to become highly successful ferals, again generating ecological problems.
Diseases have compromised the commercial supply of honeybees in many parts of the world, but native bees are promising and economically viable substitutes. My guess is that if a fraction of the money that goes into the honeybee industry is diverted into supporting native bee research, the relocation of honeybees, together with their diseases and costs, could be avoided.
Sydney, Australia
Potty mouth
Your article on whether our brain is encoded from birth to make infants pop everything into their mouths was thought-provoking (5 April, p 19). There must be an evolutionary benefit that overrides the risk of choking on the small parts. Perhaps the choking hazard itself isn’t important, but the grubby hands of the sibling or slobber from the pet dog is. The infant is ingesting microbes to colonise their gut. Yes, it’s that old hygiene hypothesis again!
Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK
Much ado about 0
Your article on the influence of radical cosmology on Shakespeare (19 April, p 41) reminded me of “nothing” in particular.
Shakespeare introduces zero as a number in King Lear. In the first act, the Fool says to Lear, “now thou art an O without a figure. I am better than thou art now; I am a Fool, thou art nothing.” Although the cutting jibe is to Lear’s loss of his identity as king, the sense of an O without a figure, as a mathematical number, must have seemed anti-intuitive at the time.
Northampton, UK
End of intolerance
I am surprised to find letters in 快猫短视频 every other week presenting contrasting views concerning religious belief and atheism (5 April, p 33). I read your magazine to keep abreast of scientific developments, and although I would love to wade in with my own opinions, I don’t believe they would add anything to the science I enjoy in your magazine.
It is possible to spend a fruitless eternity criticising badly practised religion and badly practised atheism. Properly presented opinion pieces can have their place, but my love of science rests on its objectivity, and I would hate to see a respected science publication habitually make space for issues that don’t truly concern scientific enquiry and endeavour.
Sandown, Isle of Wight, UK
Russian gas
The Russian annexation of Crimea has highlighted the dependency of Germany and eastern Europe on Russian supplies of natural gas (8 March, p 6). We are told that generating power using natural gas rather than coal reduces our emissions of carbon dioxide.
But this is a dishonest claim, because the CO2 produced when propelling the natural gas along the pipeline from Siberia isn’t counted. The CO2 produced by the inefficient pumping stations used should count towards the Russian CO2 total, but the figures that Moscow produces are about as believable as their vote counting.
Bournemouth, UK
All talk
Bob Holmes’s article on the human capacity for language (5 April, p 11) features the work of researchers Jennifer Culbertson and David Adger.
All they have shown in their research on preferred language constructions is that people consult an internal semantic hierarchy when confronted with an artificial language, and not that language is innate. It is likely that infants develop this hierarchy at the same time as their language facility and other cognitive capabilities.
Most linguists nowadays dismiss Noam Chomsky’s notion of universal grammar, and it is perhaps about time that respectable publications like yours stop giving Chomskyan linguists publicity.
Lancaster, UK
Sound mirrors
The ongoing search for the wreckage of Malaysian flight MH370 (12 April, p 6) prompts me to wonder if it would be possible to increase the reflectivity of aircraft flight recorders by shaping the casings to incorporate a number of corner cube reflecting surfaces, rather than leaving them smooth.
Small surface craft such as yachts frequently carry reflectors of this shape to increase their radar profile and make them easier to spot. Might a similar idea be useful underwater, at sonar wavelengths?
Edinburgh, UK
Out of the sun
In the argument over whether Voyager 1 has left the solar system, many different definitions of where that boundary lies were discussed (5 April, p 39). But to me, the most obvious suggestion was the one disregarded early on, the Oort cloud.
Shouldn’t the end of the solar system be where the sun’s tangible effects, most notably its gravity, are reduced to nothing? It is after all called the solar system.
Boulder, Colorado, US