Editor's pick: The lab going nowhere at 28,000 km/h
Reading Leah Crane's article on the uncertain future of the International Space Station (6 October, p 24), I noticed that nowhere was any reference made to the scientific experiments that are being carried out on board the ISS.
The exception was an oblique reference to the skill sets of Russian crew members, which I took to refer to the routine running of the station.
Surely, any decisions concerning the future of this wildly expensive facility must depend on the nature and significance of the current and future work taking place there. If there are queues of vitally important experiments waiting for inclusion, then that would be a reason to keep the ISS afloat.
If, however, the ISS is simply being sustained for symbolic reasons, then I would say we should abandon it as soon and as safely as we are able, and redirect the billions of dollars it requires into the long list of terrestrial problems that are urgently pressing for a solution.
Economists' dogmas don't always add up (1)
In comparing the opinions of economists with those of the general public, Pascal Boyer makes an interesting point (22 September, p 40). But from there he works on the assumption that the economists are right.
As a scientist, I prefer to use observation rather than opinion in my work, and the 2008 global financial crisis is enough to make one suspicious of economists.
Let's take one of Boyer's examples: “While 69 per cent of the public saw excessive executive pay as a reason the economy wasn't doing better, just 12 per cent of economists did.” Yet in the two powerhouses of the post-war economy, Germany and Japan, executive salaries are much lower than in the US, UK and Australia.
What's more, Boyer has a rather naive view of economic transactions in traditional human societies, focused on hunter-gatherer societies where “wealth” is distributed equally. The headman or respected elder gets the same share as everyone else.
The coming of agriculture, some 10,000 years ago, changed this dramatically and soon led to huge inequalities in wealth and status. For a striking example of how agricultural societies functioned before the invention of money, look no further than “How to read Inca” in the following issue (29 September, p 33). Both these examples colour our present-day mindset, but Boyer ignores this, imagining some Arcadian past.
Nymphs and shepherds come away – your world never actually existed.
Economists' dogmas don't always add up (2)
The world's economy does not function, and in fact has never functioned, as Boyer imagines.
There cannot be free trade when there is manipulation by governments to lower the value of their currency, giving their nation a competitive advantage that is not reflected in the real cost of production, or the quality of their products.
Then there is the blunt refusal of some governments to carry the expenses of environmental protection and the well-being of workers. These conditions create unsustainable trade deficits.
Finally, free trade supposes honesty, yet the consistent corruption and fraud in the global financial system shows this does not exist internationally, and has no prospect of existing in the foreseeable future.
First class post 鈥� 27 October 2018
Someone involved in the naming process is cackling every time they read about this
@_TinaD , by the revelation that moons can have moons and they are called moonmoons (20 October, p 10)
What other substitutions are found in alt-milks?
Chelsea Whyte lists alternatives to cow's milk (22 September, p 22). Potential convertees should be cautious as not all alternatives are what they seem, with price not necessarily being a helpful guide.
Soya milk can contain as little as 5 per cent soya beans. The best I've seen in the UK is 12 per cent. Similarly, almond milk can have wide ranging amounts of almonds from as low as 2 per cent. I once saw some that had no almonds, only almond flavouring!
The bulk of the liquid in dairy milk alternatives, apart from the headline ingredient, is made up of corn starches, maltodextrins, gums and sweeteners, usually apple juice, and added vitamins.
Continental soya milks fare much better at 17 per cent and up, even for cheap supermarket brands, and tend to have less or no bulking and “flavouring”.
Consumers should be careful that they are not being ripped off in the Wild West of milk alternatives, and should always check the ingredients.
Lack of IT hygiene puts patient data at risk
I.Glenn Cohen and Alex Pearlman rightly discuss ongoing concerns about the ownership and use of data from devices such as smart pills and medical devices (29 September, p 22).
But equally of concern is the almost total lack of “baked in” and properly audited security in the storage, extraction and transmission of the collected data.
Having worked in the field, I know that devices in wide use, such as blood glucose meters and always-online vital sign monitors, contain easily identifiable patient data in unencrypted storage, and use little or laughably insecure encryption and authentication to send this information to patient data management systems.
Worse still, these are often connected to the hospital's corporate IT network rather than a separate secured one, while unsecured Ethernet sockets on the same network are scattered around the hospital, often in areas such as waiting rooms.
This is unlikely to change until the law allows those who are responsible, the upper management of healthcare organisations and manufacturers, to be personally and heavily prosecuted for breaches or repeated audit failures.
At present, it is the organisation that gets prosecuted, so the taxpayers or patients end up paying the fines.
Shrimp's breakout punch doesn't hold water
You describe a mantis shrimp that “creates a force that shatters aquarium glass” (29 September, p 40). This is simply not true.
I'm a senior aquarium service technician with over 25 years of experience, and this is one of those stories that gets tossed around, yet there's no actual proof of it ever happening.
The silent majority are going to the polls
Simon Oxenham repeats the standard 快猫短视频 suggestion that a liberal outlook is the default in Western societies and that, conversely, a current propensity for conservatives to support right-wing “populist” parties is pathological (15 September, p 24).
His assertion that higher voter turnouts may lead back to “a more familiar political landscape” is questionable. It was contradicted in the UK referendum on EU membership, which engaged 3 million more voters than the previous general election.
Most of the mainstream media has acknowledged that the large parts of society that have not thrived under neoliberal economics and bewildering social change deserve respect, and to be understood on their own terms.
Unexamined legacy of the Vietnam conflict
Andy Coghlan writes that the bombs dropped in the second world war rattled the edge of space (6 October, p 16).
The total bomb load dropped on Vietnam in the mid 1960s and early 1970s was some three times that dropped on Europe over a similar timescale. One would expect a similar reduction in ionosphere electron densities. It would be interesting to know if any measurements of electron densities for that period exist.
Electric cars may clean air, but choke roads
The impact of electric cars raised by Roy Harrison focuses on sources of electricity to charge their batteries (Letters, 6 October). But the true impact will be seen when there is a substantial number of them, in the congestion they create. Will their drivers feel entitled because of the lack of pollution at the point of use, and make more and longer trips as a result?
Wipe out malaria, but keep the mosquitoes
Simon Terry and Stephanie Howard raise the ethics around deliberately causing extinctions, with the example of mosquitoes that infect people with malaria being genetically engineered to spread sterility in their species (13 October, p 24). Couldn't we instead engineer a mosquito not to carry the plasmodium that causes malaria? That would still allow the species to be preserved.
The editor writes:
• Engineering a mosquito that is immune to the malaria parasite may be possible and is a goal now being pursued.
The nose knows, but what about us?
Alastair Mouat writes that the head brewer at his Edinburgh brewery could distinguish between the same canned beer produced at different locations (Letters, 15 September). How does he know the head brewer wasn't having them all on?
A world populated mostly by impostors
Catherine de Lange mentions V.S.Ramachandran's work on Cotard syndrome, in which people believe they are dead, and Capgras syndrome, the belief that loved ones have been replaced by impostors (29 July 2017, p 40).
Who is to say they are wrong and we are right?
For the record 鈥� 27 October 2018
鈥� The actor who plays the lawyer in War with the Newts is Everal A. Walsh (13 October, p 48).