Editor's pick: Life expectancy is much worse if you're poor
Clare Wilson and Andy Coghlan cover many of the possible explanations for the decrease in the improvement of life expectancy in the UK (25 August, p 20). But they miss one out.
The effect is historically far more noticeable in the poor than the wealthy. There is a measurable gradient of difference across all social classes. This has been known since the time of the Whitehall studies into the health of UK civil servants, led by Michael Marmot (28 July 2012, p 42). The first of these, , showed that civil servants in lower grades died on average sooner than those in more senior positions, though the latter had far more responsibility in their roles (and also tended to come from higher socioeconomic groups).
One crucial question is: why are poorer people affected more than those who are better off, across all societies? This is key to admitting to the presence of health inequality, and the injustice it entails. In turn, I would argue, it raises a key ethical question that anyone looking at changes in health outcomes needs to consider.
Another possible effect on the rate of allergies
Penny Sarchet discusses what causes allergies (11 August, p 29). In an earlier article on the non-specific effects of vaccines, Michael Brooks writes that some may protect against allergies, while others encourage them (17 August 2013, p 38). of the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne and the University of Melbourne, Australia, suggested that vaccines using weakened viruses stimulate the “type 1” immune system that combats viruses and bacteria, whereas vaccines using dead viruses may stimulate the “type 2” system that fights parasites.
So measles and BCG vaccines might help to compensate for the lack of type 1 immune training in the outdoor environment and push towards natural type 1 dominance. Whooping cough vaccine may push the system towards type 2 dominance and hence vulnerability to allergies.
Has this been discredited? If not, has any progress been made in, for example, double-blind trials of different vaccines?
First class post 鈥� 15 September 2018
Who’s testing our thoughts to see how well we understand them?
Dave Probert to our report that AIs are being tested to see how well they understand our thoughts (8 September, p 10)
Why do relatives have a veto on organ wishes?
You report that an “opt-out” system for organ donation could reduce transplant rates, as relatives are less confident their late family member agreed and so may be more likely to veto donation (25 August, p 16).
I have always wondered why families are permitted to veto an individual's decision about organ donation. They aren't allowed to veto instructions on the distribution of assets after death, as specified in a will. Remove the ability for families to veto and the potential problems of the opt-out system would vanish. If that can't be done, we could allow a veto for opt-out cases unless the individual concerned has specifically – and optionally – indicated a wish to donate.
Contraception is not just women's responsibility
I was pleased to see the variety of speakers depicted in your ad for (25 August). It is great to see the scientific community become more inclusive and thereby enriched and inspirational.
However, I am disturbed by the cartoon accompanying Ian Angus's comment on population (25 August, p 22). All eight parents depicted as causing runaway global warming appear to be women. My understanding was that half of parents are men.
Angus rightly reiterates that contraception should be available to all, but then refers to women choosing whether and when to bear children. Can men not choose contraception?
A finding on solar cycles comes around again
Michael Marshall reports that a team from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing has found evidence of the 11-year solar sunspot cycle in Precambrian sedimentary rocks of south China (18 August, p 6). More than 50 years ago, Roger Anderson not only the 11-year cycle, but also resonances at 5.5 and 2.75 years in Precambrian “varved” sediments consisting of annual layers. added other examples in his 1972 book .
Always searching for another particle
Michael Brooks introduces us to the search for a particle that combines an axion and a flavon – an axiflavon – or a combination of this plus a Higgs, or some more convoluted combination (18 August, p 28). This reminded me of reading in 快猫短视频 in the mid-1960s of the search for the omega-minus, a particle needed to complete a symmetry model of particle physics. We needed to find one then, we need to find one now – plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose?
The editor writes:• Yes, the omega-minus was discovered, confirming our model of the quarks (). The axiflavon is slightly different in that it wouldn't in itself confirm any grand theoretical framework.
The roots of secure computing hardware
Sally Adee mentions work on more secure computer hardware carried out by Ruby Lee and Howie Shrobe (11 August, p 36). From the late 1970s, the late and others, including , who went on to design the C++ programming language, worked on the , which embodied a “capability architecture”, at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory.
This also had security as a fundamental concept. Access to all sections of memory, for example, was controlled by “capability tokens”. The system, being experimental, subject to being upgraded and built in-house, occupied several mainframe racks, though I am sure it would occupy a tiny fraction of today’s central processing units.
If there's a London cat killer, we should worry
I agree with Ian Adam in finding Stephen Harris's claims regarding foxes killing cats unconvincing (Letters, 18 August). If a fox had “weak jaws”, why would it chew off, and then remove, the head (which it presumably could not then eat), rather than going for the “soft underbelly” where the internal organs would be available as food? There is an established link between animal abuse and abuse of humans, concurrently or as an escalation of behaviour. If this is a person, then they need to be stopped, for the sake of the cats, but also, potentially, for that of other humans.
The editor writes:
• Our longer online version of Harris's piece noted that because foxes have weak jaws, they start chewing at narrower parts of a carcass, including the neck, where they can more easily get a grip with the sharper molars at the side of their mouth. Sheep farmers have seen foxes do this to dead lambs.
The five commandments of robotics need work
Douglas Heaven suggests five commandments for robots (4 August, p 38). I agree with the last commandment, that a robot should have an off switch, but I think the others need more work.
For example, the first prevents a robot from allowing a human to come to harm “unless it is supervised by another human”. Does this make it OK for a soldier to send a robot into a house with instructions to “kill anything that moves”, if the soldier is right behind, “supervising”? The second, requiring that a robot must be able to explain itself, won't work because humans can't do that either (Letters, 28 April).
An expert palate could distinguish canned beer
Bob Holmes describes the importance of yeast to the flavour of alcoholic drinks (18 August, p 32). This brings to mind a weekly event in the laboratory of the brewery in Edinburgh where I began my career in the 1960s.
The company owned several breweries throughout the UK, which all produced the same brand of canned beer. We collected samples from each brewery and carried out a range of physical tests to ensure that they were producing an identical beer.
The final test was a blind tasting with glasses of the beers set up in random order. To us lesser mortals they all tasted the same. But the head brewer identified them: “this one is Tadcaster, this Belfast, ah, this is good, it's ours…” Each brewery had its own strain of yeast, developed over many years, and each yeast produced its own subtle flavours.
Dismissing anecdote can drive pseudoscience
Rowan Hooper was disappointed by talks at the International Dream Conference (14 July, p 10). I share his sceptical opinion of parapsychology. But isn't it just as dangerous to dismiss hypotheses simply because they are difficult or impossible to prove via the scientific method?
Say someone has anecdotal dream-related experiences that cannot be explained yet by science. If they find, on attempting to discuss these, that the scientific community's only response is to dismiss this realm of study as head-shakingly laughable, that person is more likely to seek answers in pseudoscience. That is dangerous.
For the record 鈥� 15 September 2018
鈥� Actual allergy to gluten , but is (11 August, p 28).
鈥� In a nuclear reactor, a moderator slows neutrons after they are released (1 September, p 32).
鈥� A study finds that eukaryotic cells first appeared between 1.21 and 1.84 billion years ago (25 August, p 5).