Editor's pick: You can get a second wind in your 70s (1)
Kayt Sukel reports that cognitive skills decline after the age of 45 (26 January, p 30). But other skills develop: the ability to be reflective and, given an open mind, to see the bigger picture.
I am still employed. My show I have never been more creative ever since I hit 65. As a social scientist, I can now cross disciplinary boundaries more easily because I am older.
Yes, I don't have the same speed of memory recall and sometimes have a senior moment, but I have learned not to be anxious about it, so lecturing is no problem. To be fair to “young” academics, I don't sit on academic committees, nor manage others.
Keep healthy, have an open mind, maintain your curiosity and you will be getting your second breath in your 70s and beyond.
Editor's pick: You can get a second wind in your 70s (2)
Sukel offers lots of interesting ideas about keeping your brain in tip-top nick, but with an obvious omission. Read 快猫短视频 every week. (It had better be true.)
Alzheimer's disease and good and bad dental care (1)
Debora MacKenzie reports a connection between Alzheimer's and gum disease (2 February, p 6). Have researchers studied the incidence of Alzheimer's disease in dentists and dental hygienists, exploring the assumption that they take better care of their teeth and gums?
Alzheimer's disease and good and bad dental care (2)
In Australia, we have a national health scheme (NHS) that functions tolerably, but excludes most diseases of the mouth, teeth and gums. We are pretty much on our own and required to pay in full for private dental work, although private health insurance can somewhat defray the high cost. People for whom such insurance is too expensive simply can't afford to go to a dentist.
There are patchy dental schemes run by individual states, but all have long waiting times. For people on low incomes, who number in the millions, the situation is catastrophic.
The outcome is continued high rates of gum disease, tooth decay and associated conditions. And now it appears that poor oral health leads to dementia. Is it a coincidence that Australia has what has been called an epidemic of dementia in the elderly?
The reason oral care wasn't included in the NHS was purely political. When introducing it some 35 years ago, the then government was vehemently opposed by two key groups: the doctors' associations and that of dentists. It chose to fight only the doctors. Dental costs soared.
First class post 鈥� 23 February 2019
People say ‘new physics’ but these laws have always been there – we just detect them
Katie Martz about the struggle to find hints for new theories in the welter of data at CERN (16 February, p 36)
Fathers too can help their daughters' careers
Valerie Jamieson asks why there are so few women in physics (10 November 2018, p 32). Parents are a child's first educators and role models. I wonder whether we underestimate the part that fathers play in their daughters' choice of careers, and their view on sexism and stereotypes.
When our daughter, who was aged 5 at the time, suggested to her father that she couldn't be an engineer because she was a girl, my husband, who is a farmer, had no hesitation in putting things straight. And yes, she is now a chemical engineer.
He has played a crucial role in her development as a capable, confident and happy individual. She has also been very fortunate to have had positive male and female role models at primary and high school, university and now in the workplace.
I wonder if girls make their career choices much earlier than their mid-teens, and remain comfortable with them. A sound science education in primary school, which arouses and engages a student's interest and is relevant to their situation, can keep careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics at the forefront of the decision-making process, for both sexes.
More hard questions on the nature of life (1)
The attempt by Paul Davies to answer the question of what life is was fascinating (2 February, p 28). Davies discusses the changes that may have occurred in complex chemical processes that ultimately resulted in their developing into something that was describable as life.
I am interested in the opposite end of the process: death. What precisely is the difference between a complex collection of chemicals a microsecond before and a microsecond after the point of the “death” of an organism, be it a bacterium or a human?
Those who believe in a spirit or life force may have no difficulty offering an explanation, although whether it would apply equally to humans and bacteria may be problematic for them.
More hard questions on the nature of life (2)
Davies proposes that the laws of nature change over time. Doesn't this raise the question of whether there are “meta-laws”, invariant in space-time, to which his suggested changeable laws are subject? Maybe we just haven't yet discovered some of the ultimate laws of nature.
Some peoples cut fingers as a mark of mourning
Archaeologist Mark Collard suggests that cave art in Europe may demonstrate that people cut off fingers (8 December 2018, p 16). Some indigenous groups in Canada cut off a finger joint as a sign of mourning at the death of a loved one.
For example, one Sister Thomas of Canterbury wrote to her family in eastern Canada from Fort Vermilion in Alberta on 15 February 1910: “Besides about 60 children living with us, we now have three poor women who have no other home. The eldest of them is about 50, she belongs to the Beaver tribe. When she was a pagan, she cut her fingers to the first joint at the death of each child. She lost seven children; you should see the hands of this poor grandmother.”
The space elevator: six weeks of big sparks (1)
Kelly Oakes describes suffering a hundred thousand kilometres of off-key lift music while riding a space elevator (12 January, p 42). At 100 kilometres per hour, that would take 42 days. This competes against a few minutes in a rocket.
The space elevator: six weeks of big sparks (2)
Space elevators would pass through the upper atmosphere, which is by lightning flashes all over the world. Since the only materials strong enough to build one are carbon nanotubes and graphene, which conduct, is there not a possibility of shorting the upper atmosphere to ground through the cable? Lightning flashes would easily jump any insulating breaks.
A space elevator would also require defence, probably by fighter jets based on an aircraft carrier. What would happen if civilian aircraft strayed into the no-fly zone?
The Something Must Be Done About Drones Bill
Chris Stokel-Walker asks why we can't stop drones causing airport chaos (19 January, p 10). He mentions University of Dayton researchers firing a 1-kilogram commercial drone into a plane wing. The by saying that serious wing damage to a small aircraft was shown to occur only at 400 kilometres per hour. Aircraft of the type whose wing was tested cannot fly this fast, let alone land at that speed.
To my knowledge, no results of any tests have been published for more realistic collision scenarios.
The last quote in the article is certainly true, though. The only sure way to prevent actual drone attacks by bad actors is to prevent them acquiring the technology in the first place. Good luck with that. Sadly, the facts won't stop governments making life difficult for recreational and commercial drone users with onerous, ineffective and unnecessary legislation in order to be seen to be “doing something”.
Improve crime prediction by changing the factors
You report a police force using evidence-based investigation tools (12 January, p 7). These prioritise the investigation of crimes using a solvability algorithm based on eight factors.
I would be interested to know how many of those factors are “managed” or under the control of local authorities – as is, for example, the presence of CCTV. The trial could be extended to evaluate the provision of missing manageable factors, based on the number of crimes that would have been “potentially solvable” if they had been present. This could be more financially effective than having to behave in a generally reactive manner.
What does it take to make a fatberg?
Kelly Oakes explained that forming a fatberg involves oils being saponified (26 January, p 22). That is, they combine with calcium to create hard, water-insoluble, soap-like deposits. So are fatbergs found only in areas with calcium-rich “hard” water?
The editor writes:
• There are supplies of calcium even without hard water, such as concrete sewer pipes, mortar between bricks, and milk and other food sources. It is possible that hard water helps, though.
Satellite dishes point only roughly south
Ian Simmons says satellite dishes in the northern hemisphere point south (Letters, 12 January). The direction in which a dish points depends upon the location of the dish and of the particular satellite from which it receives a signal. This can be significantly different from due south.
For the record 鈥� 23 February 2019
• Casey Lindberg now researches workplace design at HKS architects in Texas (12 January, p 36).