Editor's pick: How to give creatures of the night a break
You report concerns that skyglow – light spilling from cities into rural habitats at night – may affect wildlife (2 March, p 8). You mention solutions: turning off street lights in the small hours of the morning as well as limiting the brightness of signs and ensuring that the light is directed only where it is wanted. These are sensible ideas. But rather than just turning street lights off on a timer, why not turn them off if nobody is using them?
Sensors could spot moving objects big enough to be a pedestrian or cyclist in residential areas and turn on the lights nearest them. This could include advertising and security lighting. The very bright lights on major roads snaking across the country could be turned on ahead of vehicles and off behind them, saving energy.
Might we also be able to tune the output of the lights to frequencies that are absorbed or scattered by the atmosphere, to prevent most of the light reaching sensitive wildlife areas away from urban centres? Or could research reveal frequencies that have a lower impact on ecosystems?
No room for idling on easy climate wins (1)
Graham Lawton lists 18 easy wins in combating climate change, such as more wind turbines (23 February, p 40). I would like to suggest some more.
We could stop feeding livestock with human food crops and instead use crop residues, natural vegetation and spent brewery grain with methane-reducing feed additives. We could grow fewer non-food cash crops. We could fly and drive far less. In addition, we could test geoengineering, such as methods to simulate the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions, in case other approaches fail.
These ideas and those in the article all require significant time, effort and money. Many will have impacts on consumer choice, convenience and the opportunity to make quick profits, for example by flattening rainforests and over-fishing. We also need to realise that crops that ensure a secure supply may change and their cultivation should trump that of less secure produce, even if demand for the latter is higher. An economic system that boils down to “make more money, buy more stuff” doesn’t help either.
No room for idling on easy climate wins (2)
I am surprised your article on easy climate change fixes didn’t mention vehicles standing with their engines idling. It irks me to see cars running in summer just for air conditioning comfort, or in winter just for heat.
No room for idling on easy climate wins (3)
The eighth item in your list of ways to cut carbon emissions is about “more efficient gadgets”, including improving the energy efficiency of electric toilet seats. I would have thought not fitting them with an electric motor, and operating them by hand, would cut energy use significantly.
First class post 鈥� 16 March 2019
Amazing band name: transient anus, or warty comb jelly 鈥� either would do
Vanessa Peters with this reaction to the news that Mnemiopsis leidyi has an anus that comes and goes (9 March, p 8)
Striking kids have a point and need a vote
Those children protesting on the streets about the lack of progress in mitigating global warming are closer to making a difference than many people think (Leader, 23 February). The UK is seeing the start of a political realignment, just as the US is seeing a shift to the left, and these are driven mainly by young people.
Whatever the reason, this is an opportunity for a coalition of like-minded politicians to create policies that are projected through a climate change lens. High on any new manifesto should be a promise to reduce the voting age in the UK to 16 and to speed up the move towards making climate change reduction a government's guiding principle.
It may sound idealistic to many adults (I am a grandfather), but not to those who skipped school to protest. It is their future, after all. They are aching for a chance to vote to save the world. Let us help them in any way we can.
Let the train take the strain from the climate
Eric Kvaalen says that the 10,000 Swedes who have forsworn air travel may be getting it wrong, because travelling by car to the same destinations can use more fuel (Letters, 16 February). He may be technically correct in some cases, more likely for long-haul flights. But fuel use isn't the main issue, global warming is. The science is still uncertain, however, the best estimate is that aviation emissions cause 2.7 times as much warming as those at ground level.
The comparison may be beside the point, because Swedes have a third option, as do most of us: follow the example of compatriot and environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg, and go by train.
Why are we still wedded to an outdated term?
You report research comparing the strength of the grip of married and single people (2 February, p 20). As someone who has happily avoided the conservative and historically religious structure of marriage, but has been in a committed relationship for over 20 years, I wonder where de facto couples stand in this type of research.
Surely it would be more scientific to select only on whether people are in a couple or not, rather than reflecting the religious or political views of the couples. It is time to compare “couples” with “singles” and to expand research beyond heterosexual marriage.
Science should avoid unhelpful and conservative labels and use classifications that promote and reflect a more equal society.
The editor writes:
• The examined large existing data sets: the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and the US Health and Retirement Study. The former takes data from the . However, it isn't clear whether these collect data on “cohabiting” as well as on participants' legal status.
What we found out about calorie compensation
Teal Burrell reports a finding that people who exercise regularly lose little weight because they reduce energy expenditure when they aren't exercising (19 January, p 30). This is consistent with studies that colleagues and I conducted on energy expenditure and body composition in mice 30 to 40 years ago.
We studied compounds that increased energy expenditure. Normal mice compensated by reducing energy use between doses of the compound, just like the exercisers described in the article. Without compensating, the mice would run out of fat.
You will not necessarily lose weight if the calories you expend in exercise exceed those in what you consume, because exercise increases muscle and reduces fat. A gram of body fat contains at least 7 kilocalories, which convert into 2 to 5 grams of muscle. So some people put on weight when they begin moderate exercise.
Bearing the cost of bearing a child
I was taken aback by Natalie Smith's insistence that surrogate mothers shouldn't be paid (5 January, p 20). It should actually be one of the highest-paying jobs there is.
That is because a woman is sacrificing her body and risking her health in order to help create a family for those who can't. Further, her earning capacity will be restricted during the term of the pregnancy.
As someone who plans to use surrogacy, I would prefer to pay a surrogate, as I think it is only fair. With all the attention that is given to how women's work is undervalued, I am amazed this side of the argument hasn't been better recognised. I agree that agencies and lawyers shouldn't make a profit from surrogacy, but surrogates themselves should be paid for their service.
Brutal methods of preventing tooth decay
Debora MacKenzie reports on gum disease as a possible contributory factor in Alzheimer's disease (2 February, p 6). My mother-in-law is as sharp as a pin, although her short-term memory is fading. She is 96.
When she was in her teens it was decided to remove all her teeth. On what grounds we don't know and she is still too traumatised to remember. Saving the cost of future dental care may have had a part to play. That a dentist was prepared to remove healthy teeth from someone may indicate that this practice wasn't uncommon, at least in the 1930s.
Since the age of perhaps 17, she has worn dentures. She hasn't cleaned her teeth in her mouth in almost 80 years. If this practice may have reduced gum disease, might it be a line of research to look for signs of Alzheimer's, post-mortem, in people who kept or lost their teeth at that early age?
I will defend to the death proper attribution
You say a 21st-century Voltaire might think: “I disapprove of what you eat, but I will defend to the death your right to eat it.” (Leader, 16 February). Maybe, but the line this is based on first appears in (1906) by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, written under the pseudonym of S. G. Tallentyre, and is intended as a summary of Voltaire's beliefs.
The future sounds a lot like the past
Public transport vehicles, running on specially defined routes in South Korea since 2010, pick up electrical power as they run (16 February, p 22). What a good idea. Could we not call them “trolley-buses”?
Maybe don't help those who want to hide
It might have been better for you not to have told us that AI can potentially identify hotel chains, even maybe individual hotels, from photos of children taken by traffickers (16 February, p 7). I'm not sure how many traffickers read 快猫短视频, but if they do, they will surely now take steps to thwart the identification.