Editor's pick: What it takes to beat a viral epidemic
Debora MacKenzie's report on the recent outbreak of Nipah virus in the Indian state of Kerala and the search for vaccines and treatments is timely and informative (16 June, p 25). What is also important to highlight is the effective way Kerala seems to have contained this deadly outbreak. The virus causing the disease was quickly identified. Those infected were isolated and treated, with medical personnel risking their lives, and in some cases tragically losing them, in caring for these individuals. The fiercely competitive political parties rapidly agreed that they would all support the state government's measures in fighting the disease.
People in Kerala have a low average income, but the state has a well-known record of improving human development indicators such as literacy rates and the number of medical facilities. These often match those of more affluent societies and most probably have something to do with what appears to be, and we must hope is, an effective containment of the Nipah outbreak there.
Hunting consciousness and locating the soul (1)
In searching for “neural correlates of consciousness”, Christof Koch and others look for brain activity that distinguishes conscious from unconscious processing of a stimulus (23 June, p 28). This is to treat a relatively easy problem as equivalent to the hard one of understanding how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience, then imply that the physical correlates of behaviour relevant to the hard problem have been identified by uncovering those relevant to the easier one. It is not a new strategy.
The quest to locate the soul in the body was transformed by acceptance of the argument by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle that it must be at a point where information from all the senses comes together (the sensus communis). This made the problem more tractable, but disagreement about its solution remained. In 1611 , Caspar Bartholin the Elder in the membranes around the brain. René Descartes put it in 1649, Thomas Hobbes in 1650, and others in the cerebrospinal fluid, the spinal marrow and so on.
The current search for the seat of consciousness in the brain is not unlike this earlier search for the seat of the soul. Koch, with Francis Crick, considered a brain structure called the claustrum: in 2001, Gemma Calvert as the sensus communis.
Hunting consciousness and locating the soul (2)
I think it reasonable to assume that consciousness evolved to make optimal use of neural data acquired both from the external environment through the senses and from internal signals. That suggests to me that the nervous system produces a model or representation of these data that enables them to be linked.
I experience my self-awareness “jumping up a level” when a subjective experience becomes relatively objectified. For example, I may go from being unselfconsciously drunk to become conscious of being drunk.
Recognition of this next level of awareness is itself a feedback from the nervous system, triggering additional sensations. I suggest that this is what we experience as consciousness. This does not identify the neural correlates being sought, nor precisely how consciousness emerges. But it may offer a way to think about how it does so. In the waking state, it leans more towards the “global workspace” theory, but possibly towards the “integrated information” theory in a dream state.
Hunting consciousness and locating the soul (3)
Consciousness is a feeling I have; I am alive, I am conscious. I have a strong sense of self that seems to go beyond my physical being and beyond time. This can only be an illusion, bestowed by evolution, to give me, and all humans, a survival advantage.
It may be impossible to find out where our consciousness lies in the brain. Would trying to create consciousness in an artificial intelligence be a better approach? In simulating consciousness, we might learn more about how our own mind is made to have this illusion. We might also produce a “real” artificial being.
First class post – 14 July 2018
Now to more important things: which rapper will be the first to put it on their teeth?
DragonQueen in the story of a new form of gold that's much golder than normal gold (7 July, p 16)
Solar and wind energy outperform nuclear
Fred Pearce quotes Mark Lynas saying that nuclear energy not being covered by the Climate Bond Initiative smacks of green political correctness (23 June, p 36). Lynas responds to the reason given for this – that nuclear power is too expensive and not commercially viable – thus: “solar and wind were once hugely expensive too”.
But solar and wind energy have seen a dramatic fall in costs within 20 years – for solar energy by almost three-quarters between 2010 and 2017, according to the . Despite colossal investments for more than half a century, nuclear power has failed to reduce its price to below that of wind and solar, according to Lazard's . And no one has found a solution to its waste problem.
What drove Australia's mammals into the night?
Michael Le Page reports that wild animals are turning nocturnal to keep away from humans (23 June, p 14). I have often pondered why modern Australian mammals are mostly nocturnal.
Was there an ancient daytime predator that drove them into the night? Candidates could include thylacoleos (marsupial lions), dromornithids (demon ducks of doom) or Megalania (triple-sized Komodo dragons). The piece quotes a researcher who says that predator was probably us. We've only been on the continent for 60,000 years: could we just be holding the place of the previous predators?
Stone Age sailors could have used bamboo rafts
Colin Barras's interesting article on ancient sailors raised doubts about the suitability of bamboo for building rafts (2 June, p 36). He says freshly cut bamboo is not suitably light and buoyant, and dried bamboo too tough to work.
When I was a surveyor in Papua in the 1950s, I noticed that people used bamboo extensively in buildings and simple structures. They were well aware that it became stronger and lighter when it dried.
A 1.2-metre length of fresh-cut bamboo 7o millimetres in diameter will support a person in a river – provided it is cut in the afternoon. Cut in the morning, it could be full of water.
I think it most likely that early hominins would have been well aware of the differing properties of fresh-cut and dried bamboo.
Would aliens want to learn to speak dolphin? (1)
Douglas Vakoch asks what form of language we should use to send messages to aliens (9 June, p 22). I have no idea – but dolphins, whales or birds may have. Perhaps we should be sending recordings of their communications into space as well as human sounds.
We could also put as much effort into learning to speak dolphin as we do broadcasting to aliens. After all, if aliens visit Earth, they may be more interested in us working out how to communicate in their language than in learning ours, except as a curiosity.
Would aliens want to learn to speak dolphin? (2)
Someone needs to caution Douglas Vakoch that he does not hold a democratic mandate to broadcast humanity's existence to potential threats. Some may scoff about the vast distances, but I am sure the Incas and Aztecs would have felt that Madrid was a long way away.
The editor writes:
• All the same, the argument that any being advanced enough to wage interstellar war will already know we are here is a strong one.
Spacefaring must be cooperative and peaceful (1)
You say “without both the dreamers and the doers, we will never get anywhere” in space (Leader, 23 June). All space activity so far has been mission-oriented, so every new venture has to start from scratch. We should instead concentrate on infrastructure: a real space station, with facilities for building large spacecraft and for refuelling. Creating such an infrastructure would be difficult, but think of the payoffs.
Spacefaring must be cooperative and peaceful (2)
I read your Leader and other space news with sadness. In the 58 years since humanity first ventured into space, it is still mainly explored competitively. There is cooperation in the European Space Agency and International Space Station, but the narrative is, on the whole, nationalistic or militaristic. Donald Trump's proclamation of a US Space Force will worsen this (23 June, p 5).
I could have forgiven most of his many flaws had he announced an International Space Peace Corps, forsaking militarisation and heralding a united Earth benefiting from exploration of the solar system and beyond.
The captain spells out the price of virtual war
John Phillips suggests that war could be fought in the virtual world (Letters, 9 June). In a 1967 episode of Star Trek titled ““, our heroes encounter civilisations engaged in virtual war. Having decided that this is meaningless if there are no real-world consequences, at regular intervals the parties count casualties and send that number of real people on each side to death chambers. Property is spared. A stalemate develops, there is no victory, both sides adapt to ongoing casualties and the war is never-ending. Captain Kirk implores the combatants to abandon this virtual war, seek to inflict bloody and catastrophic losses – or make peace.
For the record – 14 July 2018
• Einstein's general relativity says that gravitational waves should not corkscrew. A possible theory including an extra field says that they should (23 June, p 32).