Editor's pick: Let's do the time walk again
Michael Marshall's fascinating article on the first 3.5 billion years of life on Earth reinforces how fleeting human history is when placed in the context of such a vast period (12 January, p 28). A fantastic way to convey this point would be to represent the history of life along a walk in a popular location. I envisage plaques at waypoints detailing significant evolutionary and geological events in our planet's 4.5-billion-year history.
For example, such a walk could start with Earth's formation at the Tower of London and run along the side of the Thames to end with the present day at the Houses of Parliament. This route is about 4.5 kilometres long, so would create a scale of 1 million years per metre walked. That would mean a critical part of human history, from the 12,000 years ago, when the shift to farming began, occupies the final 12 millimetres of the walk. And the period since the – a sobering point to reflect upon when arriving at Parliament.
The human fetus is far from sedentary
I was fascinated by your account of fetal sharks observed by ultrasound to be swimming around in their mothers' uteruses (12 January, p 8). , , was also interested in observing fetal movement using ultrasound. He would have raised his eyebrows at the article's description of most mammal fetuses as ““.
The neonatal reflexes, a set of instinctive movements that young babies make, are used by doctors to assess the neurological well-being of a newborn. But Milani Comparetti believed that some of these movements have a prenatal function: a fetus actually uses them to navigate out of the uterus. Specifically, he proposed that some of the reflexive actions we observe postnatally are what enable the fetus to get into the optimum position for birth.
The human fetus has a tortuous path to navigate during delivery. For a smooth passage, it must be at an angle, head down and facing the mother's back, slightly off-centre. Today's modelling abilities and movement analysis methods could test his idea.
First class post 鈥� 2 February 2019
It should show the pain it feels and bite the person who kicked it
Evelyn on reading of a dog-like robot that learned to get up when kicked over (26 January, p 12)
Health service plan risks more privatisation
Some health campaigners may have welcomed the launch of the UK government's 10-year plan for the National Health Service (NHS) in England (12 January, p 6). But, for example, Youssef El-Gingihy, a doctor in east London and author of , notes that the form of the so-called “integrated care” being pushed by NHS England boss Simon Stevens – US private health insurance company UnitedHealth Group – is a US model of healthcare designed to consolidate privatisation of the NHS, not reverse it.
For 70 years, the NHS has provided a cost-effective universal health service, largely free at the point of need to all, irrespective of their background, circumstance or ability to pay. Its dismantling will only be stopped by abolishing its division in England into “purchaser” and “provider” bodies, ending the rules that force purchasers to buy services through competitive tender and re-establishing public bodies accountable to local communities, as advocated by the .
Open offices are hell and workers need choice (1)
Your workplace survival guide was far too easy on open plan offices (12 January, p 33). Employees hate them. Even “good” examples are anathema to people who have to do work that requires sustained thinking without interruption.
Their use may be legitimate in start-ups with few staff creating something new on the fly. That breaks down with more people or if you need to slow down and solve deep problems. So why are open plan offices more popular than ever? There are broadly three groups that like them.
Architects love them because the offices are trendy and look cool, and they may not care how non-functional they are. Executives love them because they are trendy, make workers feel more disposable and, often most importantly, they are cheaper. And people who think talking all day is getting real work done love them because all their victims are out in the open – and of course these people are management.
Everything is stacked against people who do real work, and higher-ups will continue ignoring all evidence, so the dysfunction will just get worse.
Open offices are hell and workers need choice (2)
A common thread runs through several of your recommendations on surviving the modern workplace. The one factor that correlates most consistently with happy and productive workers is giving them choice.
One of the most effective changes that an employer can make is to give employees more control over their environment and workspace, and discretion over how they carry out their tasks. This explains apparently contradictory results showing that both messy and tidy desks, fixed desks and hot-desking, and working from home or in the office increase productivity – when employees are allowed to choose. Sadly, few employers have embraced this reality.
Planes, trains, catapults and a whole load of crops (1)
Zunum Aero hopes its planned hybrid aircraft – partially powered by electricity – will manage 1100 kilometres on a single charge (5 January, p 32). You provide maps showing some of the journeys that could be accomplished. Most can be done by train. A French TGV train has achieved 574 kilometres per hour and average station-to-station speeds around 280 km/h are scheduled in both France and China. TGV services run between Paris and Barcelona in Spain in under 6.5 hours.
Planes, trains, catapults and a whole load of crops (2)
I understand that the section of a flight that uses most energy is take-off. Would the range of an electric plane be significantly extended by a separate external launcher, similar to those used on aircraft carriers, to accelerate it up to take-off speed?
Planes, trains, catapults and a whole load of crops (3)
Paul Marks envisages a future in which aircraft use biofuels or derive electrical energy from renewables. It is a pity that he didn't go more deeply into the numbers, which make this seem unlikely. In 2017, for example, worldwide commercial aviation used about 400 million cubic metres of fuel. A square kilometre of oilseed rape, or canola, yields about 120 cubic metres of oil per year. Assuming this produces an equivalent volume of aviation biofuel, we would need about 3.4 million square kilometres of this crop to keep aviation going at the current rate. That is about 13 times the area of the UK or a third that of the US. Meanwhile, one person in nine worldwide doesn't have enough to eat.
It's never quite too late for climate action
I agree completely with Mini Grey's call for a carbon tax and dividend (Letters, 5 January). I also share the pessimism of the letter from Blaise Bullimore that precedes it.
Consider the consequences of French president Emmanuel Macron's attempt to raise extra funds for alternative energy sources by placing a small extra levy on oil products, leaving rural motorists feeling penalised. Sustained protests on the streets were backed by representatives across the political spectrum, including many who ought to have known better. Then there is the ongoing nonsense from US president Donald Trump and the echoing of this from further south, as Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, gears up to repudiate the United Nations process to tackle climate change.
As a result, the omens for 2019 are looking decidedly bleak. But it isn't, as Bullimore fears, “game over”. Any action to mitigate warming, at any time, will be a good thing.
Pick up a penguin's poor price point please
Feedback refers to penguins being priced, for some obscure reason connected with valuing wasted water, at 8.8p (22/29 December 2018). This seems rather cheap. I helped manage the tourist destination in Australia. The tourism value of the crowd-pleasing parade of penguins that emerges from the sea each night, was about A$10,000 per penguin.
I am not sure a fox that evaded the control programme and in one night killed A$180,000 worth of penguins understood this impressive number.
Cave bears were tougher than you think
Chris Baraniuk attributes the extinction of cave bears to an inability to cope with the last glaciation (22/29 December 2018, p 60). But the species made it through the more severe around 450,000 years ago. Many climatic explanations of extinctions look at the period of demise in isolation without explaining why the species had survived even more challenging conditions in the past.
Some puzzling genetic disorder statistics
Alice Klein says that in Australia one in 20 people carries the genes for cystic fibrosis or for spinal muscular atrophy and one in 40 of those people has a partner who is also a carrier (22/29 December 2018, p 32). Those who are aware of being carriers may avoid having children with other known carriers, but these must be a tiny subset. Surely nearly one in 20 would have a partner who was also a carrier?
The editor writes:
• Those were the figures from of 12,000 people, among whom 15 were with someone who also carried one of the recessive genes. Larger studies may find otherwise.