Deserts in bloom
Michael Slezak’s report on plans to turn tropical northern Australia into a giant food bowl (12 July, p 6) was well balanced as regards economic, environmental and social issues. But it omitted consideration of an important element 鈥� soil.
Soil types in northern Australia are complex and varied, and soil management for intensive agriculture would not be easy. Climatic extremes and variation, extensive and prolonged flooding with seasonal inaccessibility, and the lack of available soil nutrients means much of this area could not be considered suitable for irrigation.
The big question is: who will do the research, even for soils alone, to prevent a repeat of past mistakes? In recent years, Australian universities have decreased teaching and research in soil science, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) 鈥� our premier research organisation 鈥� long ago cut back its soils research.
There are reports in the Australian media that the CSIRO will also prune research into ecosystem management, including its forestry programmes, despite the fact that large areas of northern Australia are suitable for managed forestry.
Politicians inevitably view northern Australia as an area to be developed, but it won’t be cheap to do it.
Adelaide, South Australia
Deserts in bloom
I have just returned from the Kimberley region in the north of Western Australia. There are many problems preventing the development of this region.
The high tidal ranges there make it difficult to load any large boat continuously in a port. The only way is to put cargo on a barge and take it out to the ship.
Distances are enormous, and most roads need four-wheel drive vehicles. These transport and port issues mean the very large cattle stations find it hard to make a living, supplementing their income in the winter months with the tourist trade.
One bright light is the undeveloped mining industry of diamonds, oil, gas, iron ore and bauxite. There is also an active pearl industry at Broome in the west. Kimberley is a very beautiful empty land. It will probably end up as one large national park.
St Lucia, Queensland, Australia
Deserts in bloom
After walking from Alice Springs to the west coast of Australia, Robyn Davidson wrote in her autobiography Tracks that the desert is not empty, nor is it bleak. It is part of the soul of Indigenous Australians and they feel that the desert is alive.
Developing northern Australia, while well meaning, will actually kill off a huge amount of the Aboriginal soul and psyche, much like if Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace were razed to the ground and turned into desert by Indigenous Australians for what they would perceive as an ideal landscape.
The best thing Westerners can do for Indigenous Australians is to give more of their land back to them. They were there first and have been for thousands of years.
Derby, UK
Just add salt
My grandma could have given David Dunstan, who features in Stephanie Pain’s article, good advice on getting rid of slugs and snails (12 July, p 36).
Get a torch and a salt shaker and go out just after dusk. That’s when the creatures reveal themselves. All you have to do is sprinkle a little salt on them and, hey presto, they curl up and die. A few nights of this treatment in spring, before they lay any eggs, and you will have a slug and snail-free garden for the year.
Large snails may recover from this treatment in a day or so but they can be collected up while in shock and put in the recycling bin.
Stafford, UK
Just add salt
I was amused by Dunstan’s solution for the snails that were eating his flowers. He threw them into his neighbour’s garden.
My brother and I have a different and very effective solution. We eat them. With a bit of butter and garlic salt, mixed and cooked with the vegetables, the snails provided us with a very tasty meal. Not one of those snails ever returned to the garden except as pulverised shells that we sprinkled to add calcium.
Olympia, Washington, US
Depression diagnosis
Economist Richard Layard points out that less than one-third of people with common mental disorders are being treated, compared with more than 90 per cent of people with illnesses such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease (12 July, p 24).
Surely the lack of validated biological indicators for most mental disorders is a key factor. Developing such biomarkers to assess brain dysfunction will be a challenge, but in the same issue you draw attention to the excellent work of Abdul Hye and his colleagues who are developing a test to detect protein biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease in blood (p 5).
They suggest that their test might help to triage patients with early memory deficits for further studies such as PET brain scans, where some validated biomarkers for dementia can be seen.
A similar strategy of combining looking for biomarkers in blood and imaging, using the more advanced MRI techniques, is becoming realistic for clinical depression.
As well as being of value in diagnosis and in assessing treatment, validated biomarkers could help to remove the stigma surrounding mental health.
Giffnock, East Renfrewshire, UK
Electric currents
Liam O’Keeffe’s point about nimbyism and green energy (12 July, p 26) was rather diluted when you realise he was promoting tidal barrages from Surrey, a landlocked county!
There are alternative ways to harvest tidal energy with lower environmental impact, such as tidal pools.
Salcombe, Devon, UK
Electric currents
O’Keeffe has forgotten one of the UK’s most important natural resources 鈥� micro-hydroelectric installations.
There must be thousands, if not tens of thousands of small streams, many of them already with weirs and former or still-present mills.
For a cost of 拢25,000 or so, these streams can supply a small village with electricity, and if multiplied countrywide could make a significant contribution to the nation’s power supplies.
And rivers, unlike the wind, only fluctuate seriously after extreme and rare droughts.
Timsbury, Somerset, UK
Climate of disbelief
Howard Koch of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), dismisses as a mere “notion” the overwhelming scientific evidence that human activity is changing the climate (12 July, p 27).
The evidence his party seeks to ignore is so overwhelming that it is accepted by all world governments and academies of science, health experts such as the World Health Organization, military experts such as the UK Ministry of Defence and the US Pentagon, trade and farming unions, business organisations such as the Confederation of British Industry and Federation of Small Businesses, economic organisations such as the World Bank and the IMF, the International Energy Agency, development organisations such as Oxfam, and most people.
Perhaps the Ostrich Party might be a more appropriate name for UKIP.
Llanfallteg, Carmarthenshire, UK
Animal compassion
I read with interest Marc Bekoff and Daniel Ramp’s article on the ethics of killing zoo animals (21 June, p 26), as I am a conservation biologist working on human-carnivore conflict resolution.
The authors state “there is often conflict between those interested in animal welfare and those interested in conservation”.
In fact, animal populations are composed of individuals, and many of the behavioural processes that are of interest to welfare science at the individual level are also applicable to conservation when acting at the population level.
The question we, as researchers, should ask is how behavioural research can provide insights into conservation, because welfare and conservation are two sides of the same coin.
Ignoring the behaviour of individual animals and talking about conservation is similar to ignoring individuals and talking about national heath policy.
Attention to the welfare of wild animals may also attract more public support for conservation initiatives.
Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK
Data diet
If bacteria can bypass the conventional sugar and oxygen lifestyle by living on electrons (19 July, p 8), could other bacteria live on an even more abstract diet of pure information?
According to physicist Rolf Landauer, each bit of Shannon’s information entropy can be traded for a small amount of Boltzmann-Gibbs thermodynamic entropy. In this case, organisms consume high-grade energy, such as sunlight, to create order (low information entropy).
So, roughly speaking, the electron-eating bacteria are already doing what all of life does: transforming low entropy, high-grade energy into biological order.
Sheffield, UK
Flour garden
Laura Spinney made a good case for the promotion of breadfruit as a food staple, but there is yet another advantage to the plant that was not discussed (28 June, p 40).
Much of agriculture involves the continuous tilling of the soil, with the attendant risk of erosion. A food-bearing tree, on the other hand, is the ideal thing to anchor and conserve soil.
That is a double dose of good fortune that any country would welcome.
Vancouver, Canada
Eyes on the spies
On what basis does Colin Parrish claim (5 July, p 29) that organised terrorism is a far more serious threat than the US National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance?
In trying to prevent terrorism, security services take totally disproportionate actions against individuals all over the world.
Even if there is some point to what they are doing, the techniques are being misused, and pointing this out, as Edward Snowden has done, does not preclude the methods being used correctly.
Parrish claims we are in “even greater danger” now as a result of Snowden’s revelations. Hyperbole of this type is hardly scientific.
Maybe the terrorist threat can be quantified in some way, so that it might be compared with the far more serious dangers we face from, for example, driving our cars.
Vieu, France
Crunching numbers
In his letter, Peter Jones refers to a brain surgeon who saw equal numbers of head injuries among cyclists who were wearing a helmet and those who weren’t, but Jones notes that this could be because most helmeted riders were not seriously injured (19 July, p 33).
If such riders were only 10 per cent as likely to suffer injury, the logical implication is that helmet wearers were involved in at least ten times as many crashes.
The key question is: of all cyclists on the road, what percentage normally wear helmets?
Jomtien, Thailand
For the record
鈥� Jibo would never have let this happen: the crowdfunding campaign for the robotic family assistant is found on Indiegogo, not Kickstarter (19 July, p 21).
鈥� Dial M for muddle: the fields referred to by the acronym STEM are science, technology, engineering and maths, not medicine (12 July, p 26).
鈥� We got our numbers confused when discussing Alzheimer’s: the etanercept trial had 18 patients in the treatment group and 15 in the control (19 July, p 10).