Turning back Ebola
While I agree population mobility and urbanisation are contributing factors to the size of the current Ebola outbreak (9 August, p 6), it is important to stress that there are many factors at play.
I recently returned from Gu茅ck茅dou, Guinea, where I worked with the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network.
The perspective on the ground is that the primary contributor to the size of this outbreak has been the cultural and traditional behaviours of the local population. Traditional funeral practices in the region involve close contact with the deceased, whose bodily fluids still harbour high quantities of virus.
Most confirmed cases are still from the more remote regions, and though they appear to be in close proximity, diverse cultural backgrounds means villages are very insular beyond family ties.
Often, family members travel to deliver care to a sick relative. When caregivers return to their homes 鈥� sometimes a significant distance from the original case 鈥� they develop Ebola and the cycle repeats itself.
The challenge is convincing the local people to break with strong cultural tradition in order to prevent transmission, while also developing trust between the population and health workers. This is a very difficult task.
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are all dealing with Ebola for the first time, and there is much misinformation and fear circulating in the general population about the disease. This has led to the problem of local resistance towards public health efforts.
The spread of this misinformation and mistrust is exacerbated by rapidly improving communications technology in West Africa.
Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK
Airborne alone
Your recent cover story explores what it would mean to fly in an aircraft without a human at the controls (9 August, p 30).
While it will certainly be possible to build autonomous passenger aircraft, the majority of airports would be unable to handle them.
In order that aircraft can execute an automatic landing, not only must the aircraft be fully equipped with the suitable technology, but so must the destination airport. In the UK, the majority of charter aircraft operate to destinations that could not meet this requirement.
In my view as a retired airline captain, these destinations would either be unlikely to upgrade, or the terrain and other restrictions would make it impossible.
If an airline’s autonomous fleet could not operate to all of its network, it would seem to me to be a self-defeating upgrade, even if passengers were happy to fly on these planes.
Southampton, UK
Airborne alone
Paul Marks’s excellent article on pilotless aircraft inevitably recalls the famous joke told to the Royal Aeronautical Society by the .
It concerns the world’s first automatic landing on scheduled services by a BEA Trident on 10 June 1965. The pilot drew attention to this historic first, and assured the passengers that he would remain in charge throughout, in order that “nothing can go wrong… can go wrong… can go wrong…”
Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey, UK
Solar for the people
Fred Pearce is right to highlight the disagreement over how electricity should be delivered to the world’s poorest people (2 August, p 26).
However, he is wrong to reiterate the idea that widespread adoption of solar panels might lock poor communities into a future that is “low-energy and low-income”. The answer is quite simple 鈥� get more panels. They are getting cheaper all the time.
This solution is available to both rural and urban citizens. Recent advances in wind and solar power can drive most technologies, increasing people’s prosperity over time.
With low-carbon energy we can have a solution to climate change as well as electricity for a billion more people. Any other solution just postpones problems for future generations. Hardly the sort of progress we want.
Port Lincoln, South Australia
Solar for the people
I once worked as the manager of a small electricity company in south-west Uganda. We supplied a hospital and the community using hydroelectricity, but the supply was limited and so we needed to promote alternative sources too.
The first need in homes is for lighting and telephones, which can be provided by solar power. Homes also need hot water and heat for cooking; some of this need can be met by solar water heating, solar cooking or biogas.
In short, delivering power is not a choice between alternatives, but of harnessing every available resource.
Heversham, Cumbria, UK
Fat of the land
The jury is still out on the link between saturated fat and heart disease, according to Jon White (2 August, p 32).
While this is a reasonable conclusion, dairy fat has been increasingly vindicated by a series of large, long-term studies.
Drinking milk has been shown to be associated with a small but worthwhile reduction in heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
The relationship with diabetes has been further strengthened by the finding that one of the fatty acids abundant in dairy produce appears to protect against the disease ().
Cardiff, UK
Life under pressure
One of the best simulations of long-haul space flights and planetary habitats may well be (2 August, p 13).
There are now years of experience of the process, which contains most of the elements of space travel, including cramped and unpleasant surroundings in complicated tubular habitats, limited washing and toilet facilities, poor communication and food delivered through a service lock.
There is also the added spice that simulations cannot provide 鈥� danger and the reality of being unable to escape in the event of any physical or psychological emergency.
Steventon, Oxfordshire, UK
Catching a wave
The southern Gulf of California in Mexico offers an opportunity to observe rogue waves on a small scale (26 July, p 42).
Gale-force north winds blow for days in winter, raising waves of 2 metres that are interspersed with 6-metre-high rogues, all travelling in the same direction. The rogues travel almost intact across wide stretches of ocean, becoming part of the “sets” beloved by surfers.
As a windsurfer, I found the conditions excellent. The rogues were always in a group of two to four, with the individual waves travelling through the rogue system twice as fast as the system itself moved through the water.
I would pick up a nascent group member at the rear, accelerate and ride it through the group as it peaked at 6 metres, and shoot off the front as the wave died.
The rogues would overrun the smaller, slower waves, harvesting their energy and leaving the sea much smoother behind them.
Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia
Liquid capital
I enjoyed Michael Brooks’s feature exploring California’s water problems (26 July, p 36).
The proposed $25 billion pipeline to address water shortages will not provide any additional water, and may cause more problems than it solves.
A better solution is desalination plants to get water from the Pacific Ocean. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that California has 17 planned desalination plants, and a $1 billion facility to provide San Diego with 200 million litres of drinkable water per day is under construction.
Spending $25 billion on such plants instead of a pipeline should provide almost 2 billion cubic metres of water per year. This should alleviate the need to draw water from the delta.
Unfortunately, too many people in California can only see water-shortage solutions in new reservoirs and pipelines taking water from resources that have already been overexploited.
Nipomo, California, US
Off-label therapy
In arguing for access to a greater variety of therapies on the UK National Health Service (NHS), Sian Lloyd makes claims that I think are contradictory (26 July, p 30).
She says that therapists who are able to choose from a wider range of therapies are more likely to help people, while at the same time admitting that the lack of official endorsement for some treatments is “a reflection of the very limited number of studies that have been carried out”.
Without these studies, how is it possible to tell which approaches are more likely to help people? One only has to refer to books such as Joel Kovel’s A Complete Guide to Therapy to understand the array of possible therapeutic approaches, almost all of which are unsubstantiated, unproven and according to the philosopher Karl Popper, would fail any verifiability criteria.
Approaches such as psychoanalysis (Freudian or non-Freudian) and neurolinguistic programming, to mention just two, are not substantiated by any research design which would pass muster with a typical reader of 快猫短视频.
It would be a grave mistake to unleash those who practise unproven and unprovable therapies upon patients, and a further drain on finite NHS resources.
Ilkley, West Yorkshire, UK
Sleepy performance
Readers have recently discussed athletes’ use of xenon as a performance-enhancing substance (26 July, p 31). The gas has been classified appropriately as a drug for many years.
When administered in sufficient concentration with supplemental oxygen, xenon is a potent general anaesthetic. Its high cost is the principal reason it is not used in clinical practice.
Adelaide, South Australia
Faith in society
Jihadi threats surely arise from basic differences in philosophy between people (26 July, p 30).
This is a problem of fundamentalism, a term which applies to the many religions which require strict adherence to a particular interpretation of an established text.
Such differences will not be resolved by military or punitive actions, which are likely to enhance a sense of justification in taking retaliation.
Surely the only reliable long-term solution is to show, by example, that the sort of society supported by a given philosophy actually works well, is fair to everyone in that society and enables everyone to contribute whatever capabilities they may have to a common good.
If we believe in our form of society, we should feel confident in extolling its benefits without the need to force it on others.
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK
What the flock?
Jacob Aron’s article on bird flocks behaving like waves reminded me of something I observed a few years ago (2 August, p 16).
I saw two flocks, one of gulls and one of crows, of about 20 birds each. They were making a lot of noise because the flocks were on a collision course.
As the birds merged, pairs of gulls and crows broke off their straight flight and engaged in dogfights, making tight turns trying to attack one another.
However, even though all the birds were doing this, the two flocks as a whole kept moving in their original directions at essentially the same speed as before, as if nothing had changed. I was amazed at the difference between the behaviour of the birds as individuals and as groups.
I don’t know if this is a common observation but I have not come across any reports of it elsewhere. Perhaps other readers can tell me.
St Albans, Hertfordshire, UK