Editor's pick – Face recognition's faults will bring death from afar (1)
The US military is developing a face-recognition device that could be accurate from a kilometre away (22 February, p 13). The idea seems to be to use this on drones, which will presumably act when detecting a person of interest.
A separate for such a system, from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, allowed a false match rate of one in 1000 people. This may sound impressive, but if a drone with this technology is flying past a village of 1000 or so people, it will almost certainly pick one of them in error as a target.
Editor's pick – Face recognition's faults will bring death from afar (2)
Long-distance, drone-mounted face-recognition systems should surely cause consternation. You have previously reported the inherent errors of this technology, particularly when dealing with faces that don’t belong to white men (17 February 2018, p 5). Those tests , presumably taken by firmly fixed static cameras that were no more than a few metres from their subjects. Amnesty International is right to be alarmed about the implications of such devices.
Smartphones can be tools against tuberculosis too
I am impressed and intrigued by the skill of your picture desk in selecting eye-catching images: this is nicely demonstrated by the one printed with your article on mobile phone data and mental health (1 February, p 12). It shows a person on their phone in front of a vehicle bearing the National Health Service logo. The vehicle is the mobile X-ray unit of University College London Hospitals: I am part of its tuberculosis management group. Find&Treat brings diagnosis of this disease to vulnerable communities.
The picture is particularly apt as Find&Treat has pioneered the use of mobile phones for supervising antitubercular treatment. In , patients are supported through a mobile phone app as they follow the demanding regimen for treatment of tuberculosis.
TB remains a global health emergency: novel approaches such as this are needed to meet this challenge. Readers may wish to learn more by joining us for on 24 March.
More consequences of giving pigs human genes
Jessica Hamzelou addresses the ethical dilemmas around beings with a mix of human and other genes, their grade of humanity and how we treat them (22 February, p 18). These quandaries extend to the disposal of, for example, pig-human tissue. If such tissue isn’t deemed “substantially human”, then what disposal mechanisms should be employed?
How would you feel about such meat entering the food chain? Would that depend on the percentage of human genetic material? This is before we get to the stage of considering an adult chimera’s right to live 鈥� or whether a chimera with “morally significant” characteristics, such as self-consciousness, should be offered therapy for its identity crisis. If we can’t decide on a life form’s value to humanity, perhaps we shouldn’t put ourselves into that quandary in the first place.
We promote best practice certificates for aquaculture
You discuss the prospect of lab-made shrimp, saying it would be an improvement over shrimp farming and that aquaculture has sustainability problems (Leader, 22 February).
Aquaculture aligns with the majority of the 17 United Nations’ . It is highly resource-efficient, especially compared with terrestrial animal production.
It makes a significant socio-economic contribution in coastal and rural communities where financial opportunities tend to be limited, and produces a rich source of protein, essential fats, vitamins and minerals.
There is a worldwide effort to ensure that the proper methods are applied through third-party certification programmes like the set of .
Keeping hieroglyphics would cement privilege
Your article on the invention of the alphabet was fascinating (8 February, p 34). I suggest a further possible reason for its delayed uptake.
For scribes, intellectuals and government officials, knowledge of hieroglyphs assisted them in maintaining their positions of power and influence in society. They would rightly fear and oppose the promotion of a simple alphabet that could make a large fraction of the population literate.
Apparently this did happen in Korea at a much later date. In around 1440, to develop a simple alphabet that could be quickly learned and used universally. The scribes and intellectuals who used Chinese characters tried to oppose this as a threat to their privileged positions. The king insisted, and the rest is history.
Eat like your ancestors, but not with their microbiome
There are issues with the fad for eating like our ancestors, as James Wong reports (22 February, p 24). Another potential problem is with gut bacteria.
You can try to recreate a 16th-century diet, but how different were the microbiomes of people then? As with any diet, you also need to consider how much of a shock to our systems a drastic and sudden change in food may be.
Don't dismiss nuclear power out of hand
Paul Dorfman and others argue it is dangerous to say nuclear power is necessary to prevent climate change, in part because we can’t build enough stations to achieve a carbon-neutral global energy system in time (Letters, 29 February). I am not convinced we should ignore the idea that nuclear power can help meet our need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The UK is projected to lose around 9 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2035. There are plans to build about the same amount of new capacity over this period. In addition, there is the chance 鈥� I put it no stronger than that 鈥� that the small modular reactor programme, led by Rolls Royce, is successful in providing small nuclear stations that generate up to 440 megawatts each. The modular design helps construction: it should take around 4 years to build each reactor. It is a bit early to discard the possibility of nuclear power as part of our generation mix.
Some concrete dietary advice at last, perhaps
Will Kemp says that when he was a vegan and working as a builder’s labourer, his main source of calcium was sesame seed paste (Letters, 15 February). He may well have ingested small quantities of cement, concrete and plaster. Could these, in fact, have been his main sources of calcium?
Why would anyone be simulating our universe?
Donna Lu discusses the possibility that we are denizens of a computer simulation (1 February, p 42). We know that humans run simulations for distinct purposes, such as to build skills and to try to forecast phenomena. So why would “our” simulation world be run? Could we be an experiment designed to learn the nature of reality for the “next level up”?
For the record 鈥� 14 March 2020
鈥� It is in fact hard to overestimate how odd the swan-like aquatic dinosaur Halszkaraptor escuilliei is (15 February, p 40).