Editor's pick: Could we be entering a new anaerobic age?
Alice Klein reports evidence that early anoxygenic photosynthesis produced so much methane that it warmed the planet by about 15°C (16 December 2017, p 11). She also notes that anoxygenic organisms exist today, photosynthesising in anaerobic environments, but they are not widespread and thus “no longer have a significant effect on Earth's climate”.
But anaerobic “dead zones” are proliferating in the oceans now and are probably increasing in size (9 December 2006, p 38). Does this mean that organisms of the sort described are due for a renaissance, thriving in this new human-made habitat? If so, has the effect of their methane production been factored into climate models?
The editor writes:
• Klein noted that anoxygenic photosynthetic organisms like green sulphur bacteria and purple bacteria cannot tolerate oxygen. But ocean dead zones tend to move around, so these organisms might only thrive if they evolved to be more tolerant.
First class post 鈥� 27 January 2018
But I don't want to gain extra time if I have to spend it all doing housework… Carolyn Jones by the suggestion that 150 minutes of housework a week can help extend life (13 January, p 26)
Many worlds are taken seriously… somewhere
You report Yasunori Nomura saying that the “many worlds” approach resolves the paradox around information loss from black holes and “should be taken seriously” (6 January, p 14). My self in another universe takes it seriously, but not in this one.
A balanced diet need not be expensive or futile
Anthony Warner says that “when people restrict what they eat, keeping nutrition balanced and adequate can be harder” (6 January, p 24). Some say that this is difficult because fruit and vegetables are expensive. Snow peas and dragon fruit, for example, may well be costly, but ordinary fruit and vegetables are not. Recently, I asked the assistant at my local greengrocer to tally the bill again because I could not believe the low total she had rung up.
The problem for most of us is that fruit and vegetables are not filling in the way that junk food can be. Repetition of “Mum, I'm hungry” is a quick way to wear down Mum's resolve to feed her children only “healthy” food. What is needed is more expertise in making food that is filling and healthy; and ensuring this is not the province of family doctors.
Dancing to the thrum of the generators at 6am
Combine your articles on psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs having beneficial effects on the brain (such as 25 November 2017, p 28) with the promising reports of 40 hertz bass tones and flickering lights reducing the tangles and plaques of tau and amyloid proteins that are correlated with Alzheimer's disease (6 January, p 6).
Then add the benefits of sharing an enjoyable social get-together with dancing as exercise… Is it time to admit the ravers were right all along?
Raise a dram to effects of the grape depression
Chris Simms traces some effects of the destruction of grapevines in 19th-century France by aphid-like phylloxera (23/30 December 2017, p 60). One other effect was a . As a result, particularly in the gentlemen's clubs in London, they drank malt whisky instead.
Until then, Scotland produced more whisky than it could consume and much was sent off to be turned into gin. But whisky became so popular after the phylloxera blight that distillers supplemented the malts with grain whisky, since these blends were cheaper to produce.
Why radiation and heat are a lethal combination
I am not surprised tardigrades are killed by high temperatures with ionising radiation (6 January, p 19). It has been known since the 1960s, for example, that bacteria succumb to a combination of radiation and vacuum.
An organism exposed to high temperature and vacuum can shut down and tough it out. But surviving radiation requires an active metabolism to turn out new proteins and repair DNA faster than those molecules are being degraded. This is bad news for the idea of panspermia – that life spreads on comets and so on. Deep space is a cold vacuum and cosmic ray particles are abundant.
Has brand loyalty had its day for drugs?
Alice Klein reports that doctors and patients alike are not keen to move to cheaper counterparts of biological drugs such as the breast cancer treatment trastuzumab, sold as Herceptin (6 January, p 23). This is despite studies finding that such generic biologics or “biosimilars” are just as effective.
I suggest that the reason for this is a cultural prejudice against imitators of popular products. If a well-known company sells a pair of shoes for £150 and another company makes exactly the same shoe with the same materials but without the logo, people are more likely to buy the branded make whatever the price. I think trust in well-known brands explains this, and the reluctance to accept generic drugs, more than the fact that biosimilars aren't exact copies of biological drugs. Do we need to change this?
Killer waves form at cross purposes
You reported 40 years ago that huge “killer waves” were more likely to occur where the sea floor topography rises more steeply at the edge of a continental shelf (Old 快猫短视频, 6 January). At about the same time, Chris Machen, then my colleague at Newcastle University, UK, demonstrated in a specially designed wave tank that another factor was also important: waves should be crossing and breaking.
Contrary to the conventional theory of the day, breaking waves crossing others approximately at right angles can rise more than the sum of their heights, even inshore. Examples can be found in the choppy waters at harbour entrances next to reflecting sea walls, though these are much smaller than offshore killer waves.
Some place names are drier than others
Richard Webb traced wet place names in the UK (23/30 December 2017, p 51). He might like to trace dry names as well. Clifton (“place on a hill”) is usually up a slope from a stream and St Michael's Church is often on a hill because St Michael threw the Devil down from heaven. There are indeed many keys in place names.
If we fall down, help us to get up again
Alice Klein's account of training for older people to prevent falls was interesting (6 January, p 12). My mother had frequent falls in her last decades, and said: “I can fall safely, but once I am on the floor, I can't get up again.” She had to wait for her carer to arrive, or press her emergency button to be rescued. Can we also have some research to help those who fall properly to then get on their feet?
No one actually needs a gas guzzler, do they?
Ernest Ager asks why cars with large engines should pay high vehicle tax as well as being taxed on higher fuel consumption (Letters, 23/30 December 2017). Such a car is a luxury, and we usually tax luxuries more.
Until we overhaul our society significantly, some road transport will be needed. But a small car can provide our transport needs, with lower emissions. A vehicle pumping out more is a choice.
How long do civilisations last, out there?
Fergus Hawkins writes that “any extraterrestrials we encounter are as likely to live in caves as to be superintelligent” (Letters, 13 January). This appears to assume that any civilisations that have existed in the universe have a very limited timespan.
For those two possibilities to be equally likely implies that a species takes a certain time to reach our stage of civilisation, then a similar time to destroy itself or otherwise fail.
This idea has, of course, often been put forward to explain why we do not hear from civilisations with even 1000 years more development than we have had.
Schrödinger's paradox is settled by actual cats
I have a solution to Schrödinger's cat-in-a-box paradox, based on the following verifiable observations. When I wish to use my armchair, I find our cat asleep on it. When I wish to use my study, the cat is asleep on my chair. When I go to bed, the cat is sleeping on my bed.
Therefore the answer to Schrödinger's paradox is surely that the cat is not dead, but merely sleeping. Furthermore, it is not even in the box, it's where it's not supposed to be.
I hope that settles the matter.
For the record – 27 January 2018
• Over-40s made up about a third of those at Andrew Kolodny's addiction clinic (13 January, p 35).
• The dead animal illustrating the article on trophy hunting was a wildebeest (13 January, p 42).
A balanced diet need not be expensive or futile
Warner comments that “Calories in, calories out, or CiCo to its new devotees on social media, is all the rage. It just doesn't add up…” Well, yes, it does, it may be the only sane way to diet, and it doesn't deserve dismissal just because millennials are on board.
Warner uses most of his space to explain that diets don't work for a collection of reasons that have nothing to do with dieting. At least he pointed out that CiCo is sounder than the faddier nonsense of recent years.