Editor's pick: Health apps need to be a regulated public good
I was encouraged to read that the National Health Service in England is taking the need to develop IT-based healthcare seriously (24 August, p 9). Clare Wilson’s report rightly pointed out the need for companies developing IT with therapeutic or diagnostic aims to consider evidence-based development as paramount to patient safety and effectiveness.
But the greatest danger isn’t that companies selling “health” apps that they claim are diagnostic or therapeutic fail to understand the need to develop evidence-based and peer-reviewed products. It is that the market actively discourages the time and trouble this takes. It encourages strategies that focus on maximising short-term profit with little or no regard for peer review or high standards of evidence about effectiveness. Understanding isn’t enough: we need regulation.
This is anathema to the market-led thinking that dominates the development of “health” apps. Nearly all of these rely on individual purchase, so if they work, they run the risk of exacerbating existing health inequalities or creating new ones. The NHS can develop effective, universal IT-based medicine that is in every way as good as, if not better than, many commercial products. But while market-led thinking dominates development, it is fighting with one hand tied behind its back.
We need to understand the reasons for the Brexit vote (1)
Opening 快猫短视频 is like stepping into a stream of cool fresh air, free of tendentious partisan advocacy and suffused by a balanced, evidence-based view of the world 鈥� an example being Andre Geim’s expression of regret over Brexit and its likely effect on scientific enquiry (24 August, p 23).
We need to understand the reasons for the Brexit vote (2)
In the interests of science and the country, Geim proposes, the UK must implement the result of the referendum and leave the EU. But leading hard-line Brexiteers follow a political and economic philosophy that aims to reduce the role of a societal state in myriad ways: lower standards for food and products, less support by the state for the disadvantaged and reduced employment rights.
After the referendum, I became involved with the European Movement, of which the former Conservative prime minister Winston Churchill was a founding member. I spent time on the streets engaging with the public about Brexit.
The level of ignorance about the EU, the reasons why it was set up, its operations and benefits and the peace that has existed since 1945 was staggering.
This points to a decades-long failure by the EU to counter the propaganda. Since the Brexit referendum, the mood on the streets has changed. Many have freely acknowledged that they never understood the full implications of their decision to vote to leave and have changed their minds. The real reasons behind the Brexit situation need to be understood.
Sexual orientation is somewhere on a continuum
Andrew Barron’s perceptive view of the simplistic idea that only two types of sexual orientation exist is supported by large data sets that I have been accumulating since 2006 (17 August, p 23). In 2012, I published a study of 17,785 participants from 48 countries that supports the assertion by biologist that sexual orientation lies smoothly on a continuum (Journal of Homosexuality, ).
I plan to publish next year a study with more than 600,000 participants from 219 countries and territories that further supports Kinsey’s assertion. It also shows that the magnitude of the mismatch between the sexual orientation label one adopts and one’s actual sexual inclinations is a good predictor of the distress one feels about one’s sexuality.
The unnecessary carbon footprint of your kitchen
As Wiebina Heesterman notes, kitchen appliances generate nearly seven times as many emissions as food transport (Letters, 24 August).
Cooking in a microwave or on the hob takes much less energy than heating a conventional oven, but instructions on ready meals and in recipes usually specify the oven, which is unnecessary for curries and casseroles. Fish almost always comes with instructions to cook in an oven, with no alternative given.
Traditionally, the oven was used once or twice a week, for a main course and batches of baking, to save fuel. Surely avoiding oven use when practical would save time, money and emissions.
It is time to consider an ammonia energy economy
Scott McNeil raises concerns (Letters, 3 August) about producing batteries for electric vehicles and welcomes the discussion of hydrogen power (8 June, p 20). It is some years since you have covered the potential for an ammonia-based fuel economy.
Ammonia can be compressed and stored much more easily than hydrogen. We already have some infrastructure for producing and transporting it, due to its use in fertiliser production. It can be a direct substitute for natural gas in domestic boilers. It can be produced using electricity from intermittent renewable sources, storing energy without batteries, and be used in fuel cells or internal combustion engines. It seems to be a technology that is ripe for implementation.
Classifying dementia may help find treatments
It is true that cancer kills far more people in the UK than dementia, as Clare Wilson reports (17 August, p 10). But the many different types of cancer can be readily identified. Dementia is much less clearly defined and it has many side effects, such as falls and pneumonia. Researchers at University College London and the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative have reclassified dementia into subtypes and stages (Nature Communications, ). This could lead to drugs that failed earlier pharmaceutical trials being shown to work for some subtypes.
Surely giraffes' necks must confer some advantage
Simon Ings reviews Daniel Milo’s , which argues that, in the absence of proof of a specific evolutionary advantage, giraffes’ long necks should be considered the fruit of chance (20 July, p 28). But since they clearly have major disadvantages, if they had no significant advantage they would have been bred out.
Milo dismisses competition with other browsers, saying their nearest competitor is 2 metres shorter. The nearest competitor to a giraffe is another giraffe.
There is a study on the effects of organic food
We need to look at an organic diet and compare the health outcomes in groups of people who consume organic foods with those who don’t, suggests Aroha Mahoney (Letters, 3 August). There is a study that monitored the diet and health of nearly 70,000 people for seven years. It found 25 per cent lower rates of cancer diagnosis among those eating large amounts of organic food (JAMA Internal Medicine, ).
I am thrilled by artificial islands' potential uses
My first reaction on seeing your report on artificial islands for wind farms at sea was dismay at the potential for environmental damage (20 July, p 10). On second thought, they have exciting potential.
Such islands could host wave energy harvesting devices, using the same infrastructure to get energy to the mainland, and could also bear solar panels. Could they be used to farm salt-marsh plants such as samphire, purslane, seakale and sea beet, some of which command high prices? Encouraging seaweeds to grow around their margins could protect from erosion, as well as supplying another crop.
This could also provide nurseries for fish. Offshore oil rigs, often seen as pollution sources, show greatly enhanced productivity compared with the open sea.
Prospecting for minerals from the remains of leaves
I read your article on gold prospecting using tree leaves with interest (17 August, p 12). One way to improve detection might be to analyse the shallow soil where leaves fall and rot each year, concentrating the metals locally over time.
As an undergraduate in the 1970s, I saw this on the Downs, a park in Bristol. Trees there take up naturally occurring uranium into their leaves. Using a radiation detector, I mapped elliptical halos on the ground beneath each tree; their long axes were parallel to the prevailing wind. These persisted where trees had been removed or blown down.
People saw tree stumps being kept alive earlier
Ruby Prosser Scully reports that tree stumps are being kept alive by nearby trees (3 August, p 18). In 2000, Peter Thomas wrote in that grafts between roots of individuals of the same species are common in both hardwoods and conifers. There are cases where stumps have been kept alive via root grafts for a decade or two.
Peacock feathers put in their proper place
You say peacocks have elaborate tail feathers to impress peahens (10 August, p 14). The iridescent feathers that make up the bird's train and fan out to impress mates are the upper tail coverts. The male peacock's actual tail is dull and is raised to support the train. It is much shorter than the tails of other members of the Phasianidae family.
Is a slow magnetic pole flip really less worrying?
I don’t understand why Ruby Prosser Scully thinks that the erratic behaviour of the magnetic poles is less worrying than once thought, because any flip will take longer than previously imagined (17 August, p17). Surely any flip would leave Earth unprotected from solar wind, and the longer the flip takes, the longer the danger period will be.
The editor writes:
It is less worrying because the researchers suggest it may happen more gradually than previously thought, so there will be time to adapt over thousands of years. That could include devising protections against solar wind.
For the record 鈥� 14 September 2019
鈥� The eruption that caused a mini ice age in the 6th century AD was somewhere in the northern hemisphere (31 August, p 14).
鈥� Waggle room: male drone bees have only one set of chromosomes (17 August, p 38).
鈥� Ouch. Many gallstones are composed of cholesterol and crystals of calcium compounds (24 August, p 17).
鈥� Glowing reference: coral absorbs short-wavelength light and re-emits it at a safer, longer wavelength (24 August, p 8).