Editor's pick: Plants, too, have their own low cunning
Erica Tennenhouse describes snails, starfish and slime moulds learning without brains (15 July, p 32). But any judgement that this is surprising is coloured by our limited animal perspective. We equate behaviour with visible movement and elevate nerve cells in reasonable numbers as the only means of learning, remembering and delivering intelligence.
A simple definition of intelligence as behaviour that profits from experience during the life cycle fits immune systems perfectly. In the single-celled Physarum slime mould, intelligent behaviour arises from sophisticated and complex networks of tens of thousands of proteins and thousands of protein-modifying enzymes.
Higher plants, Earth's dominant life form, continue to develop in the face of a variable and usually unpredictable environment. They learn and profit from experience by adjusting their characteristics. It is easy to demonstrate that plants remember former parts of their experience over many months and even years. That, too, is intelligent behaviour.
Climate change needs a collective response
Bob Holmes suggests ways in which you can make a difference to climate change: reducing air travel, eating less meat and so on (24 June, p 35). He mentions only individual consumer behaviour.
Surely getting actively engaged in social movements, such as 's Fossil Free campaign, should also be considered?
This aims to get institutions such as universities and pension funds to ditch investments in the oil, coal and gas industries, to break the hold they have on our economy and governments.
In five years, it has persuaded more than 740 institutions in more than 75 countries, managing assets worth over $5.4 trillion, to make some form of divestment commitment. I am sure such local campaign groups would welcome new, scientifically minded members.
Climate change needs a collective response
In your feature on climate change, you mention schemes that would take up large tracts of otherwise useful land, but not culturing and harvesting microalgae. The at the University of Queensland, founded and directed by my colleague Ben Hankamer, is working on large-scale culturing of microalgae. This can provide biofuels and remove carbon from the atmosphere using a tiny fraction of the land area needed to do these things in open paddocks.
The editor writes:
• We have reported on this idea in the past (20 February 2016, p 30).
First class post
Artificial intelligence learns ‘noise’ unless partnered with human oversight
– Bonny McClain about artificial intelligence outperforming human doctors (15鈥疛uly, p鈥�36)
The changing market for fossil fuels
Oil companies being “doomed” is old news to the market (8 July, p 20). BP and Shell are yielding 7 per cent, double the market average – another way of saying that their share prices are half what they would be if the firms' futures weren't so depressing.
All this is an action replay of tobacco, which has been “doomed” for decades, but still refuses to die. So really smart investors are probably buying oil shares not selling them, as markets invariably overreact.
The changing market for fossil fuels
In your leader on the risks of failing to recognise the economic restructuring that dealing with climate change will produce, you assert that oil and gas reserves will become “worthless, stranded assets” (8 July, p 3). But fuel is not their only use. They are raw materials for many other products, such as plastics, pharmaceuticals and lubricants. These are already a better use of a limited resource than burning.
Of course, since the majority of production is currently used as fuel, there will need to be significant structural change in the oil and gas industries when demand drops.
Fetuses following faces from inside the womb
Babies may “look for faces as soon as they are born” – or even in the womb (17 June, p 12). But we should be wary of over-interpreting this: looking does not necessarily imply recognition.
Others argue that newborn babies don't necessarily have a predisposition to look at faces: it may be that they simply attend to moderately complex, high-contrast visual stimuli.
Fetuses following faces from inside the womb
Experimenters looking at fetuses spotting face-like patterns shone three dots of light into the womb, configured to resemble two eyes above a mouth (17 June, p 12). As a control, they inverted the three dots, with one dot sitting above two. Does this suggest that fetuses already understand “up” and “down”, which would be immediately handy at their birth?
The editor writes:
• The orientation of the three dots relative to the position of the baby's head at the time, not to gravity.
Some already impose population controls
Daniel Cossins asks whether “we” should impose population controls (8 July, p 34). But it has been obvious since effective contraception and safe abortion became available that it is men worldwide who are at the controls.
Evidence exists that, given affordable access to the means of regulating their fertility, women do their best to avoid having more babies than they anticipate being able to raise successfully. That there are so many of us on the planet is because men maintain social structures in which safe abortion is restricted, banned or unavailable and where access to contraception costs too much, is forbidden or is still unavailable – China excepted.
Birth control is indeed a massive human rights issue – the problem is the denial of women's human rights. The solution is not to start, but to stop imposing the current controls. Free each woman to be the sole decision-maker over her own body. Give her access to safe, affordable means to regulate her fertility, to get an abortion if and as soon as she needs one. Then watch the global birth rate plummet.
Philanthropists should look at where they got it
David Auerbach suggests how Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, should act as a philanthropist (1 July, p 24). He assumes that it is good and natural that Bezos should use the money he has gained from his company to fund philanthropic work outside the ambit of Amazon.
But shouldn't charity begin at home? What about using his wealth inside Amazon? Wouldn't it be better to ensure that his employees and suppliers are treated fairly, for instance, through better working conditions? The social inequality produced by his platform needs to be ameliorated. Shouldn't Bezos create an equitable company first and foremost, rather than extract vast monopolistic profits for himself and his major investors, and then flaunt them in public philanthropy?
Credit for illumination where credit's due
Please don't perpetuate the myth that Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb (17 June, p 44). Heinrich Goebel in 1854. Edison rejected an offer from Goebel to sell his patent, claiming it had no merit – but eagerly snapped it up at a bargain price from Goebel's impoverished widow.
completely defeated Edison's attempts to overturn his patents for the technology. Edison first formed a joint company then bought him out. The existence of so much “prior art” should have prevented Edison from ever being granted a US patent – but, as with Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone, the US patent office was notoriously partisan, if not downright corrupt.
Another gourmet bacon sandwich in space
Sandrine Ceurstemont says “the first and last people to enjoy bread in space were the two astronauts on NASA's 1965 Gemini 3 mission” (17 June, p 14). But Britain's liquid-nitrogen-loving chef Heston Blumenthal in 2015. Major Tim selected seven meals he would like to eat in space, including, of course, the great British bacon sandwich. After two years of testing, Blumenthal came up with a sandwich that would still be edible after the NASA sterilisation process: heating for 2 hours in a can at 140°C. The brown bread was described as dense and sticky, this being to avoid the crumb problem. The whole meal of seven small dishes was sampled by Tim Peake in 20 minutes and is reported to have cost $2.6 million.
What is it that gives some eggs a pointy end?
I was fascinated by the shape of bird eggs being related to flying style (1 July, p 16). Maybe birds that are better at flying have more precarious nests, and eggs that aren't spherical and so don't roll out? Could it be the nature of the nest and the shape of the eggs that are related, with the birds' flying style directing the nest type?
Theories of mind at work in the laboratory
You report evidence that some animals have a theory of mind (8 April, p 10) and Bryn Glover asks who is studying whom (Letters, 13 May). First laboratory rat to second rat: “I've really got that fellow in the white coat well trained. Every time I press this lever he gives me a raisin.”
For the record
• The final illustration of our report of investigations of flow was in fact of copper rods (1 July, p 32).
• The musician and author we quoted on birds with swing is (15 July, p 11).