The mystery of the twins of Kodinhi continues
I was interested to read Clare Wilson's report on the number of twins in Kodinhi in India (4 May, p 15). She quotes Tim Spector at King's College London, who suggests that a possible explanation could be better medical care increasing the chances of twins surviving. But what is causing the increase in twin births in the first place?
As I recounted in Twins and the Family, in Nigeria in the early 1900s, the eating of a particular yam was found to greatly increase the rate of twins. You note that previous research on Kodinhi ruled out an unusual diet or water source as causes.
Older women are more likely to have twins and it would be interesting to know the ages of the mothers. Are women remaining fertile for longer in this village, for example? There are many unanswered questions.
A modest proposal to detect life on Jupiter itself
Leah Crane and Richard Webb allude to the possibility of life in the subsurface seas of the Jovian moon Europa (25 May, p 34). I enjoyed the article but ask: what about Jupiter itself?
It has an internal energy source and plenty of the right ingredients for life. Perhaps its rich variety of hues has a biological origin? If life can adapt from an aquatic to a terrestrial mode on Earth, why not to an aerosol lifestyle too?
Wherever life originally arose, in our solar system or elsewhere, there is ample evidence of major impacts allowing redistribution of life forms. A clear signature of life is chirality: “handedness” of molecules such as amino acids, sugars, RNA and DNA. Could any of the instruments on the Juno probe detect this?
Internet is risky for more than long-distance surgery
Responding to Yvaine Ye's report on the use of 5G mobile technology in remote surgery, Sam Edge raises an important point about transmission delays in the land-based part of the network (Letters, 8 June). This is of wider significance than for remote surgery alone.
Any communications using the Internet Protocol (IP) to govern the routing of packets of data across networks, including 5G mobile, have serious weaknesses when high-priority or emergency communication is required. These network protocols were never designed to support such requirements, and the analysis of their failure modes is currently inadequate. One example is a call to an emergency number.
The average probability of a call failing completely is low, but by no means zero. This issue is far less thoroughly managed and understood in IP networks than it is over existing fixed-line telephone networks. Another example is the plan to move the UK's emergency services communications network from the current AirWave system to an overlay of the 4G network. This overbudget scheme has been delayed and I know of no published document setting out a safety case for it.
The UK communications industry aims to make voice and data transmission “copperless” by 2025. So this issue needs serious attention.
Some of the risks inherent inIP-based infrastructure are being addressed, but the focus is largely on improved average reliability. Given the complexity of the software and hardware, together with multiple layers of different suppliers, this can't provide assurance for any individual user or deliver a fail-safe system.
Language development for children needn't be costly
Robert Plomin tells Clare Wilson that there are good intervention programmes for improving children's language, but they are intensive and expensive, while the cheap, easy ones don't work (25 May, p 39). It isn't always true that successful schemes are expensive.
I am involved with effective, research-based for parents in New Zealand that many children benefit from. The Early Ready Together and Reading Together schemes offer three or four short workshops that provide parents with additional understanding and strategies for supporting children's language and literacy development at home. They draw on school and community libraries, alongside the expertise and goodwill of early-childhood educators and primary school teachers who volunteer their time to act as workshop leaders, so there is no cost to families.
The benefits of absorbing your drugs in your mouth
You report that 64.9 per cent of drugs tested were broken down by at least one strain of gut bacteria (8 June, p 12). To minimise this, drugs shouldn't enter the gut directly. Some can be absorbed from the mouth, either under the tongue or through the buccal (cheek) mucosa. Many of these aren't, however, licensed to be given in this way.
This is a pity because oral absorption can be observed and is often equal to or greater than the assumed absorption from the gut. Also, drugs absorbed from the stomach and small intestine have to pass through the liver and may be inactivated there, while the route via the mouth membranes avoids this.
Drugs such as nitroglycerin for angina are given orally precisely because they provide rapid absorption and avoid the liver.
Against all considerations of logic or cost-effectiveness, drinkers often gulp down their drug, alcohol, gaining only a brief exposure to the taste. Liver inactivation of alcohol could reduce their exposure, which may or may not be desirable.
Plotting a route through the galaxy is the easy bit
You have to admire NASA's confidence in running a competition to figure out how to settle the galaxy (8 June, p 15). This presumes we will create a spaceship that can keep humans alive for millions of years in interstellar space. We have yet to master living sustainably off the resources of an entire planet.
Even assuming this spacecraft had sustainable hydrogen fusion reactors to keep it warm enough to sustain life, those won't last forever. A million years' worth of hydrogen fuel is quite a lot: fusion energy scientists, please advise how much would be needed. The consumption of non-recyclable resources in flight, even small ones such as dental fillings, would be enormous over the timescale envisaged, and replenishing resources in interstellar space would be unlikely, to say the least.
The ability to recycle equipment or to deal with the inevitable dust from objects wearing out over a few thousand years is currently beyond us. In addition, people would want to have something to do, but you can forget creativity away from a computer screen – there wouldn't be the resources to waste. Humans would also have evolved significantly, too. Would they even recognise each other after the first 10 million years? The route problem that the competition tackles is the easy bit.
My two-thirds of a century of interstellar belief
In reference to your feature on space exploration, the cover of your 18 May issue asks “Are you ready for lift-off?” (18 May, p 36). I first read science fiction in 1945, and I was hooked.
At the ripe old age of 7, I wasn't just ready for lift-off, I believed in it. Now, at 81, I may not see an extrasolar system landing, but I will go to my grave still believing.
For the record 鈥� 29 June 2019
鈥� David Marsh at the University of G枚ttingen, Germany, and his collaborator Dave Ronan at AI Music produced the dark matter simulations used in Aura Satz’s sound installation (15 June, p 31).
鈥� Rick Ostfeld works at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York (1 June, p 13).
鈥� The piezo buzzer in our theremin should be connected to the 0 pin of the micro:bit circuit board (How to be a Maker, 15 June).