10 August 2019 | New Scientist | 27from lakes in the Rukwa region
(2 July 2016, p 7). Consistent with
our geological model, the seeps
contained up to 10 per cent
helium with 90 per cent nitrogen.
Concentrations of helium can be
as low as 0.3 per cent in US gases
and 0.05 per cent in Qatari gases.
We have identified areas on other
continents where we could start
to look for helium.
Government support will be
needed to provide the framework
for exploration and commercial
investment. So far, UK agencies
have been unwilling to provide
this, yet the UK hosts a huge
and at-risk helium industry.
Don’t repeat the climate
deniers’ ice age myth
6 July, p 38
From Jon Stern,
San Mateo, California, US
Graham Lawton helps perpetuate
a common climate denier myth by
saying that in the 1970s scientists
were worried that we were about
to plunge into another full-blown
icy spell. But a literature review
finds that, even then, global
warming dominated scientists’
thinking as one of the most
important forces shaping
climate (doi.org/bfz64r).
The editor writes:
It would probably have been better
to say “a few scientists”.
How convection works
outside of textbooks
29 June, p 34
From Keith Ross,
Villembits, France
Michael Brooks writes that
hot liquid iron rises towards the
exterior of Earth’s outer core, then
cools, becomes more dense and
descends. This implies, as do most
textbooks, that hot stuff somehow
rises spontaneously. It is gravity
pulling harder on the denser
material that starts things off,
with the hot material, despite
being attracted to the centre of
Earth by gravity, being pushed up.Neither finding shows
that seals are conscious
13 July, p 16
From Ben Haller,
Ithaca, New York, US
The ability of seals to recall
what they have just done and
repeat it on command doesn’t
suggest awareness or mean they
have “a degree of consciousness”.
My computer can remember what
it does and undo and redo those
actions. But that is no reason to
think it is conscious. Seals may or
may not be conscious – we don’t
know and finding out will be hard.
You have also reported that
seals show physiological changes
up to 45 seconds before they dive
and that this suggests their dive
response is under conscious
control (29 June, p 17). But a study
of humans choosing between two
buttons to press indicated that a
neural signal can be detected up to
7 seconds before they consciously
make a choice (19 April 2008, p 14).
Why couldn’t the seals’ pre-dive
response be unconscious too?
Perhaps it would be wise to
leave consciousness out of it
until we find a way to measure it.An extended chain of the
most complex objects
Leader, 22 June
From Guy Cox, St Albans,
New South Wales, Australia
You say that the human brain is
the most complex object in the
known universe. But it is part
of the human body, which is an
object, and so must be the most
complex. But humans are parts
of societies, which could be
called “objects”, and... ❚20 years ago, New Scientist
was celebrating a genetically
engineered solution to hungerRICE was on the menu in
our 14 August 1999 issue –
specifically, the problems with
the staple food crop of half
the world. “Rice contains the
least iron of any cereal grain.
In addition, it is rich in a
compound called phytate,
which can prevent the uptake
of up to 98 per cent of iron
from other dietary sources by binding to it in the gut,”
wrote our correspondent Bob Holmes.
The result was widespread anaemia in rice-
dependent areas. “You will not find any illness
worldwide which is so widely distributed,” Ingo Potrykus,
a plant scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich, told Holmes, reporting from the
International Botanical Congress in St Louis, Missouri.
That wasn’t the only problem. “Rice also lacks vitamin
A, leading to blindness and reduced disease resistance
in about 400 million children worldwide,” Holmes said.
Potrykus had solutions. His team had genetically
engineered rice strains to contain genes for an enzyme
that destroys phytate, for an iron-storage compound
called ferritin and for a protein containing the amino
acid cysteine, which helps the gut absorb iron. Alongside
Peter Beyer at the University of Freiburg in Germany, he
had also inserted three genes promoting the production
of beta-carotene, which makes vitamin A in the body.
“The result,” Holmes wrote, “is ‘golden rice’ – yellow
grains that contain enough beta-carotene to supply
all of a person’s vitamin A needs.”
The researchers had modified short-grain rice
and breeders still had to cross the genes into the
more common staple long-grain varieties. But, Holmes
confidently predicted, “that, together with field trials
of the new varieties, should take about three years”.
That proved optimistic. Golden rice became a
totem of resistance to genetically modified food. Why
not cure deficiencies by instead ensuring that people in
developing countries have a balanced diet with plenty
of greens, critics such as the activist Vandana Shiva
argued. Golden rice was, she wrote in 2000, “a very
effective strategy for corporate takeover of rice
production, using the public sector as a Trojan horse”.
Environmental groups such as Greenpeace have also
remained implacably opposed. It was only in 2018 that
golden rice received its first approvals – ironically, in the
relatively well-fed nations of Australia, New Zealand,
Canada and the US. Simon IngsTo find more from the archives, visit
newscientist.com/old-scientistViews From the archives
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