Editor's pick: Self-driving self-managing cars
Readers raise interesting points about a future with autonomous cars (Letters, 5 March). An ideal with only ownerless autonomous cars may be reached eventually, but car-makers already have a strategy of increasing semi-autonomy to boost their products’ appeal for owner-drivers. There will be a period when all sorts of cars coexist.
I hope consumer pressure leads to us seeing intermingling of pedestrians and cars in shared town spaces; collaborative driving where cars, vans and lorries give way to pedestrians and cyclists and each other without emotion; and “trains” of slipstreaming vehicles parting to allow others to overtake or exit.
Who will own the cars 鈥� the manufacturers or the energy corporations, perhaps? And what difference will they make to new housing developments when you simply summon a car as needed, not park it outside? Imaginative estates could resemble villages, with otherwise impossibly narrow child-friendly roads, village greens, proper communities and so on. This will be the first chance to end the domination of our built environment by the car. Even if there are some downsides, and there will be, bring it on.
Disobedience is our original virtue
Andy Coghlan reports new studies on submission to authority (27 February, p 14). I’d like to see such studies turned on their head. I have always been inspired by Oscar Wilde’s declaration in The Soul of Man Under Socialism that “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and rebellion.”
The sensational aspects of Stanley Milgram’s 1974 book Obedience To Authority seem to have distracted readers from its shortcomings. “The student observes that arrogance is not passively accepted by authority,” Milgram wrote, “but severely rebuked, and that deference is the only appropriate and comfortable response to authority.” Why talk of “arrogance” rather than, say, self-interest or nonconformity?
Disobedience is our original virtue
Your report on a modified version of Milgram’s notorious obedience experiments suggests that in such cases, our brain loses control. This may strengthen the case for the fragility of such a concession to authority, and the possibility of regaining control and reversing it.
In Obedience To Authority, Milgram reported later work which found that doubts about the legitimacy of the authority, as well as disagreement between those in authority, negated the obedience. He concluded that “Revolt against malevolent authority is most effectively brought about by collective rather than individual action… We may now examine in what degree group influence can release the subject from authoritarian control”. When accomplices posing as peers of those ordered to administer shocks refused such orders, 36 out of 40 participants then also refused.
First class post
Could they balance this out and subsidise fresh unprocessed foods too?
Becky De La Haye the UK tax on added sugar in drinks isn’t enough (newscientist.com/article/2078233)
Reflections on our microbial cloud
Julian Smith’s report on the human microbiome cloud (5 March, p 39) reminded me of studies carried out by colleagues at the UK Microbiological Research Establishment, Porton Down, in the early 1970s. These may have been the first attempts to analyse and quantify the way humans shed bacteria into the air.
Volunteers made a variety of movements while wearing different types of clothing in an enclosed chamber fitted with a range of air samplers. Much to colleagues’ amusement, one male stood out because his shedding peaked significantly after he removed his undergarments.
Reflections on our microbial cloud
Ever since I mentioned this article to my husband Dan, he says he can’t stop imagining the Pigpen character in the Charles Schultz Peanuts cartoon, dragging his cloud of debris wherever he goes.
Gravitational waves are pristine
Alan Wilson asks about the waveform of gravitational waves (Letters, 5 March). It is distinctive, with a strongly evolving “chirp” pattern in which both frequency and amplitude increase sharply: you can see it at .
This waveform would have evolved over millions, perhaps even billions, of years as two black holes spiralled in towards each other. It was only within the final 1 second that it reached a high enough frequency and amplitude to be detectable by LIGO.
Wilson asks whether these waves interfere with each other. Based on our observations so far, we estimate that an event like the one we detected last September may well occur somewhere in the universe every 15 minutes. Most are far too weak to pick up here.
Gravitational waves interact very, very weakly with matter 鈥� which is why they are so difficult to detect. We do not expect them to be attenuated or absorbed by intervening matter, or to exhibit interference effects. The signal we saw was a pristine representation of the gravitational waves that the source emitted, unaffected by its 1.3-billion-year journey to us. This is why gravitational-wave astronomy offers such exciting prospects. It will be able to probe regions of the universe that would be completely inaccessible using light signals alone.
How much solar power from space?
Paul Marks assures us that using microwaves to relay solar power from space would involve weak beams, at 100 watts per square metre, that will not fry birds or people (13 February, p 38). But the 10-kilometre-wide beam mentioned implies a collecting station the size of a small city. This will take up at least as much land as the solar panels it replaced.
Forensic non-science scepticism
Forensic science is increasingly coming under scrutiny, quite rightly, since very little of it has been properly tested and when it has, it has often been found wanting. DNA and fingerprint evidence are just two cases in point (5 March, p 5).
Now the US courts have turned their gaze on forensic odontology and are beginning to doubt the validity of tooth bite evidence 鈥� not before time. The idea that a bite mark could be infallibly matched to a suspect is fanciful. The oedema produced by a bite must distort the impression far too much to allow any meaningful comparison, for a start.
A number of convictions in the US are to be reviewed, no doubt leading to the release of some wrongfully convicted individuals. You have done well to highlight deficiencies in forensic tests, and let’s hope that this leads to many more studies of their validity.
It's grass that turns milk healthier
You briefly report levels of heart-protecting omega-3 fatty acids in organic milk (20 February, p 7). An author of this study, interviewed on BBC radio, made clear that the cause, most likely, is that organic dairy cattle are fed more grass and less cattle feed than non-organic cattle, on average. I recall him saying that non-organic cows thus fed would show the same effect.
Debating the European Union
Fiona Reynolds asserts that if the UK “hadn’t been in the EU for the past 40-odd years it wouldn’t have the cleaner beaches and rivers, safeguarded landscapes and less polluted air enjoyed today” (27 February, p 30). Perhaps so 鈥� or perhaps we’d have even better protection of natural resources.
Reynolds makes no mention of international agreements such as TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between and . This would give multinational corporations new rights to take legal action against governments whose policies they disliked 鈥� and we know how keen most of these firms are on environmental protection.
We may at the moment have an anti-scientific government that is incapable of recognising evidence when it sees it, but this will not always be the case.
Debating the European Union
At last, Reynolds’s contribution to the debate about the UK’s EU membership gets the priorities right and stands out amid the generally negative and short-termist arguments on both sides. As she says, “If UK citizens care about the planet and future generations they must cooperate 鈥� the country cannot find solutions on its own.”
Rather than squabbling over the immediate advantages of leaving or staying, it would surely be more respectable to consider what contribution the UK can make to the future of Europe. There is a crying need for leadership. A role for Britain? Or is that too much to hope for?
Carbon dioxide as an insurance policy
Fred Pearce refers to sucking carbon dioxide out of the air as a means of ameliorating climate change (20 February, p 30). While the climatic effects of CO2 may be highly damaging in the next few hundred years, in the longer term it could be an extraordinary gift: a way to partially control climate. We might even put an end to the sequence of ice ages that have dominated Earth’s history. If possible, carbon sequestration should be done in a manner that enables our descendants to release CO2 back into the atmosphere, should a period of cooling make this desirable.
An unusual use for <i>快猫短视频</i>
I wonder whether my use for 快猫短视频 qualifies as one of the most unusual? I am a volunteer shepherd, or , for Brighton and Hove council. The sheep I look after are pretty tame and don’t run away as I approach. Part of my job is to check if any of them are limping, which means I have to make them trot. Flapping my hands doesn’t work: they just stare at me, perplexed. I’ve tried flapping a book at them, and a newspaper. They ignore me. But when I wave a copy of 快猫短视频 in their faces, they run…