Balance of power
Reducing demand for energy is of course a good thing, but that doesn’t address the question of how to provide for energy we cannot or do not wish to do without (21 June, p 32).
In future, rather than selecting off-the-shelf technologies, countries will increasingly tailor their energy supply to fit their circumstances.
In the UK this is likely to mean a combination of wind power 鈥� where it is accepted by local populations 鈥� and nuclear, hopefully including a new breed of reactors that will make use of our substantial plutonium reserves, and fossil fuels in combination with carbon-capture and sequestration, if the North Sea can be given a new lease of life as a storage site.
None of these options are cheap compared with the operating costs of existing infrastructure, the capital costs of which were largely paid off decades ago.
However, the additional cost of going green will be more than offset by reductions in environmental impacts that we as a society, rather than the energy companies, are currently paying the price for.
London, UK
Balance of power
Indeed, efficiency savings are no substitute for investment in robust, sustainable energy generation. But as our article points out, market-based mechanisms to smooth peaks in demand can help to reduce the cost of that investment 鈥� to everyone’s benefit.
Balance of power
It’s a pity that the UK government doesn’t take energy reduction more seriously. We already have an efficiency-testing scheme for domestic appliances. Why don’t sales taxes depend on these, as they do with cars? An A-rated tumble dryer could attract a 5 per cent sales tax, a B-rated one 20 per cent and so on.
With houses, the effects could be even larger. External wall insulation reduces the rate of heat loss through a solid wall by a factor of 10. Unfortunately, such works are bogged down in bureaucracy. Despite the government offering loan or grant-based schemes to have such work done, you still have to get planning permission to do the work. This takes months and costs hundreds or even thousands of pounds.
Is it any wonder that such schemes have “largely fallen flat”, as you report? At just 3 per cent of our income, energy is far too cheap for anyone to bother with any of that.
East Wellow, Hampshire, UK
TB or not TB?
Adrian Williams and Robin Dunbar make a persuasive case for the probiotic effect of the tuberculosis pathogen in our evolutionary transition from a vegetarian to an omnivorous diet, and the increase in brain volume that accompanied it (21 June, p 28).
They propose that the pathogen served us by sustaining levels of a nutrient called nicotinamide in times of meat shortage. But like most attractive hypotheses, this raises some questions.
If no gut organism that secretes nicotinamide has yet been discovered, where in TB carriers do the TB symbionts reside to perform their function in times of meat deficiency? Not in the lungs, surely.
And if poverty increases the incidence of pellagra 鈥� a disease linked to an over-dependence on maize and a lack of meat 鈥� how is good health sustained in today’s vegans, or more cogently, communities such as the Jains of India, who have been vegetarians for millennia? Are they especially prone to pellagra or TB?
The authors rightly point out that nicotinamide is not readily available in a vegetarian diet. However, it is abundant in yeast and yeast extract. Could not a parallel case to the authors’ be made for the consumption of fermented beverages such as beer and mead being crucial to the persistence of our big brains?
Especially since the practice of filtering out the yeast is relatively modern. Our intestinal yeasts are opportunist pathogens, so they would fit the hypothesis nicely.
Lewes, East Sussex, UK
And baby makes four
You discuss the ethical and legal issues arising from the creation of “three-parent” embryos by assisted reproduction (14 June, p 28). A stated problem with this method is that changes made to mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can be passed down through the generations. But there is a simple solution.
As mtDNA is transmitted exclusively from the egg cytoplasm, all embryos created by this method could be genetically screened and only male embryos implanted.
These presumably healthy sons, once grown up, could not pass on this third-party DNA to any of their subsequent children, who would only inherit mtDNA from their mother.
The numbers of children born by this technique would be very low, so this sex selection would bear no impact on a country’s overall sex ratio.
I feel that this is a key safeguard that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) must debate before the final legislation is drafted.
Fareham, Hampshire, UK
And baby makes four
It is disappointing to see opposition to mitochondrial transfer based on such flimsy grounds. The safety concerns raised are dwarfed by those faced by parents who go ahead and have a baby carrying faulty mitochondria.
As far as the safety risks of pregnancy in affected women are concerned, they will also face these if they have a baby by the normal method, with the difference that the baby will certainly suffer from whichever condition mitochondrial transfer would have prevented.
Is the UK government really rushing the legislation? There has already been an extensive period of consultation by the HFEA in 2012, and by the UK government when the draft regulations were published in February this year.
London, UK
Doctor on call
I read with interest your leader on telemedicine (14 June, p 5).
In 1905 in the Netherlands, Willem Einthoven used his string galvanometer to transmit a patient’s electrocardiogram to a lab a mile away using a telephone line. Eighty years later, the Queensland government leased a transponder on the AUSSAT 1 telecoms satellite and established a health network to reach some remote Aboriginal communities in the far north of the state.
As the project director, I reported the benefits delivered to patients and providers. Follow-up clinics for hypertensive, diabetic and psychiatric patients were effectively conducted without the patient or consultant leaving their respective locations. In the event of an emergency in a remote location, the healthcarer was sometimes able to manage the situation with the assistance of a remote consultant.
The network enabled a greater range of medical conditions to be dealt with at remote sites, avoiding the expense of airborne evacuations. The Flying Doctor call-outs were reduced and the flights that were made were more economically scheduled.
Albany, Western Australia
Mechanised meals
I enjoyed your special report on the future of eating, but the article raised a number of issues (7 June, p 10).
The environmental and health benefits of substituting plant protein for animal protein seem incontestable. The downside is that this will further ratchet up the importance of high-tech manufactured food, further distancing the consumer from primary production. And it will be amenable to industrial scaling, increasing the corporate domination of the food chain.
Nutrigenomics and personalised diets sound attractive, but will only further encourage lone eating and displace the social benefits and feelings of well-being that come from sharing a meal.
Dunmow, Essex, UK
Rational distrust
John Wallace makes the point that disease-resistant American chestnut trees might have been a more persuasive ambassador for genetic modification than Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybeans (21 June, p 30).
This touches on something at the heart of anti-GM sentiment. Many people, including those with a science background like me, are not opposed to GM in principle, but to the ways in which corporations like Monsanto do business.
I understand that GM is a powerful set of techniques which can result in many benefits. But I have deep reservations about the wide-scale deployment of a technology driven by a narrow, corporate-profit mentality.
There is irrationality in public distrust of GM science, but this stems from rational distrust of corporations attempting to foist their products on us.
Blockley, Gloucestershire, UK
Ethical code
Forgive me if I fail to share your joy in response to “whistle-blower” Edward Snowden’s exposure of the US National Security Agency’s surveillance techniques (21 June, p 5).
Of course we should be alert to the problem of overly intrusive governments, but by far the more serious threat right now is that posed by organised terrorism.
As a result of Snowden’s disclosures, we are all in even greater danger than we were before his treachery. This is hardly a cause for rejoicing 鈥� or for awarding Pulitzer prizes.
Bessacarr, South Yorkshire, UK
Robotic personality
Derek Scherer’s interview on making robots loveable reminded me irresistibly of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation (SCC) in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (14 June, p 29).
Specifically, their attempt to give robots “Genuine People Personalities”, which resulted in Marvin the paranoid android.
I can only concur with protagonist Arthur Dent that it sounds ghastly, and remind Scherer that SCC’s complaints division eventually took up the major land masses of three medium-sized planets.
Polegate, East Sussex, UK
Hard water area
Ascension Island wasn’t the only outpost of the British Empire to worry about its fresh water supply (7 June, p 24). Gibraltar was parched too.
Between 1898 and 1928, six reservoirs were excavated on the Rock of Gibraltar, and on the east side of the peninsula a water catchment area covered 5.6 hectares. Timber piles driven into the slope of the Rock held a framework of galvanised iron sheets that channelled rainwater into the reservoirs. This apparatus remained until 1993, when it was replaced by distillation and desalination systems.
Ramsgate, Kent, UK
A lot of hot air
I was surprised to read UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate Howard Koch’s claims that his is a science-friendly movement (14 June, p 32).
The UKIP website reveals only one science-related policy: .
I might be forgiven for thinking that UKIP’s science policy is as single-issue as its foreign policy.
Middleton St George, Durham, UK
For the record
鈥� Our leader on the human microbiome suffered a terminological failure. The idea that TB might have helped us evolve large brains is only a hypothesis (21 June, p 5).
鈥� Ali Maalin was the last person to catch smallpox naturally (14 June, p 38), however the final cases occurred in a lab accident in 1978.
鈥� A slip of the tongue: the closing remark in our article on the space-borne X-ray machine should have been attributed to Rich Boling (21 June, p 14).
鈥� A case of mistaken identity: the gorillas of Virunga National Park are the Eastern lowland subspecies (24 May, p 12).