Survivor tactics
There is one group of people who can do a lot to help stop Ebola (18 October, p 10). They are the survivors. About 50 per cent of those who get the disease survive, and they are then, as far as is known, immune.
They should be recruited to take care of those who have the disease and to clean up after them. Since the disease has a short duration compared with the rate at which the number of cases doubles, there should be more survivors than sick people.
They can also give blood, which can then be used to give antibodies to those who are sick.
Les Essarts-le-Roi, France
For the record
鈥� We should have located Alan Fridlund, who worked on finding research subject “Little Albert”, at the University of California, Santa Barbara (4 October, p 10).
鈥� In our account of topological insulators, on one occasion we called them topical insulators (11 October, p 38). Doh.
Flipped universe
While my unschooled self secretly thinks that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics (27 September, p 32) is patently ridiculous, I’m happy that the piece of toast that my doppelg盲nger just dropped on the floor in another universe landed buttered side up.
Seattle, Washington, US
Code cognition
Your article on kids coding is the most exciting thing I have read in a long time (6 September, p 38).
At 79, I suggest that such initiatives would benefit the elderly too. I am currently a volunteer in a programme at the Glasgow University Memory Clinic looking at the effect of age on cognition, and have come to appreciate that there is a need to help older people to retain cognitive skills.
The skills now being offered to children could fulfil that function in older students too.
Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, UK
Power struggle
鈥� The latter. The Sunflower will generate this power while the sun shines. In the regions of the world in which Airlight hopes to sell the device, it expects 10 hours of sufficient sunshine each day.
Power struggle
You report that the Sunflower solar collector “should be able to provide 12 kilowatts of electricity and 20 kilowatts of heat from 10 hours of sun” (4 October, p 19).
Is that 12 and 20 kilowatt-hours of energy in a 10-hour sunny day, or 12 and 20 kilowatts of power for 10 sunny hours, or what?
Cambridge, UK
Too hot to handle
鈥� The researchers report a temperature of 1.16 脳 1010 kelvin: two million times our sun’s surface temperature of 5778 kelvin. For the purposes of the story, “a million times” conveyed “really very hot”.
Too hot to handle
Discussing waffle-like grids of matter in neutron stars (11 October, p 11), Hal Hodson mentions that they occurred when a simulated star was “a million times hotter than the sun”.
Our star has a complex structure with many different temperatures. Do you mean the photosphere, the coronasphere or the core?
Slough, Berkshire, UK
Plane crazy?
快猫短视频 has acclaimed the idea of pilotless planes (9 August, p 30). Thoughtful attention to the issue of cosmic rays (4 October, p 12) should ground these proposals. What would be the fate of a pilotless plane that experienced data errors due to cosmic rays, as did in 2008 when a software bug caused the plane to pitch sharply downward, injuring many passengers?
Despite the claims of science fiction, “intelligent” computers behave worse than do knuckle-headed people, who may use free will to make a sensible choice.
Oklahoma City, US
Mulled multiverse
鈥� Max Tegmark, who popularised quantum Russian roulette a couple of decades ago, says the thought experiment wouldn’t confer immortality on any versions of you, because people don’t die as the result of a quantum fluctuation. A gradual death does not, he says, prompt universes to fork. Sorry.
Mulled multiverse
For the last 45 years I have regularly read astrophysics articles, rarely understanding more than 10 per cent, but always fascinated. Now I read that in any game of quantum Russian roulette I would continue to breathe in one universe (27 September, p 32).
Surely this would apply to other potentially fatal situations 鈥� pneumonia, falling off a cliff, and so on 鈥� and to all other organisms (including cats). Some universes must be getting rather crowded.
For my part, I am glad that somewhere I will be able to read 快猫短视频 for at least another 45 years.
Bad Soden am Taunus, Germany
If voting changed…
Laurence Steinberg presents some very interesting results on voting age and decision-making (11 October, p 30). But they are fatally compromised because, far from “thinking outside the box”, as the headline says, he has defined an arbitrary box called adolescence to dwell inside.
Adolescence is a modern construct, less than 100 years old. A 16-year-old can make a sensible decision about which politician to vote for, but what does this mean? People over 50 might be so fixed in their ways that they can no longer make a rational decision.
I’m not saying this is the case, but without considering the whole age spectrum, Steinberg’s results are meaningless.
St Albans, New South Wales, Australia
Turbocharge all
I approve of Michael Le Page’s “Turbocharge our plants” plan to introduce improved photosynthesis genes not only into our food crops, but into wild plants as well (4 October, p 26).
Of course such manipulation will leave chaos in its wake, but that’s a given. This is the Anthropocene age; we might as well get with the programme. The question is not whether we are an evolutionary catastrophe; it is how good an evolutionary catastrophe we shall be.
San Francisco, California, US
Virtual inversion
The article calls to mind my daily experience. On first trying on spectacles with progressive lenses, which have a gradient of lens strength, it is difficult to make sense of the tumbling, tilting view of the world, with stairs appearing to move as you look down at them.
For most, this soon settles down: the brain somehow sorts it out. But you always have to adjust for the difficulty of judging distances if not looking directly ahead.
Blagnac, France
Virtual inversion
What the article did not mention is that our single-lens ocular system normally and always inverts the image on our retinas. If our sense of up and down depended only on the physical orientation of the retinal image, we would think we were walking on the ceiling.
This surely is the most potent reason to think that there is more to seeing than meets the eye.
Buderim, Queensland, Australia
Virtual inversion
Laura Spinney writes about perception changes while wearing various types of inverting goggles (11 October, p 42). I wonder how experiments in this area will change as high-definition virtual-reality headsets like the Oculus Rift become more widely available.
For example, “perception” could be switched in an instant, without framing cues; or one eye could get 10 degrees of rotation more than the other.
Aberdeen, UK
Define crime
The “pro-surveillance mantra” you mention 鈥� “if you have nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about” 鈥� is indeed stupid (11 October, p 5). Governments can redefine what constitutes a crime, and may say this includes holding a certain opinion or belonging to a certain minority.
Where I live, 70 years ago it was a death-penalty “crime” to be a Jew. In a democracy, only the people should be able to decide what is a crime, but strong surveillance tools in the hands of a government undermine that same democracy. This is the way into dictatorship.
Cologne, Germany
Fishing Chagos
How the marine protected area (MPA) in the British Indian Ocean Territory came about reads like the makings of a thriller, as described by Fred Pearce (27 September, p 26).
The significance and future value of protecting such vast areas of coral reef and associated marine habitat cannot be overstated. But the rights of those forcibly evicted decades ago cannot be denied. There is no reason why the area cannot support sustainable fisheries for the Chagossians. It seems reasonable to allow those who want to fish to do so, if there is sufficient monitoring.
Sustainably managed fishing would satisfy Marine Stewardship Council requirements and, using the nearby airfield, fresh fish could be flown out to markets worldwide. The profits may even pay for the increased management and surveillance needed to maintain the MPA.
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Tax e-vasion
I read Hal Hodson’s article on e-citizenship (18 October, p 24) and your editorial (p 5) with a chill running down my spine. I am aware of the growing movement away from physical nations and geographical citizenship, but one of the most important functions of a nation state is to ensure that the poorest and weakest are protected from the worst excesses of the strong and powerful.
In short, states must provide the social safety net that most people in our modern world believe to be essential.
Both pieces offer strong hints that most of those who would seek Estonian e-citizenship would do so for the sole purpose of avoiding their own nation’s taxes, and that Estonia’s prime motivation is to join the club of “offshore” bankers and providers.
Best estimates indicate that between 35 and 40 trillion dollars, euros or pounds (it hardly matters at this level) are currently stashed away in offshore accounts. Given that these stashes exist to circumvent the democratically-decided tax intentions of national finance ministers, e-citizenship would make keeping track of such funds ever more difficult.
Glasshouses, North Yorkshire, UK
If voting changed…
Considerations around setting appropriate voting ages need to include the role of voting in creating democratic societies, as well as young people’s decision-making faculties. Voting may increase young people’s stake in the system, stimulating their further involvement, as well as encouraging politicians to prioritise young people’s views and needs in policy-making.
Edinburgh, UK
If voting changed…
Steinberg says that because the “cold cognition” of adolescents is, by 16, likely to be as mature as that of adults, they should be allowed to vote. I would argue, though, that democracy has less to do with sampling the collective wisdom of the populace and more to do with ensuring the continued diversification of power.
The reason that democracies have evolved to give each citizen one vote is because this decision-making process is the hardest one for a powerful elite to control. The question of lowering the voting age should thus be answered not by considering whether young people are capable of reasoning logically, but by how easily they can be manipulated. The fact that they attend state-controlled schools is a bad start.
Leixlip, Co. Kildare, Ireland