Scientific American - USA (2020-10)

10 Scientific American, October 2020

LETTERS

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ESTABLISHED 1845

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN CUSTOM MEDIA

EDITORIAL Gareth Cook, Katherine Harmon Courage, Lydia Denworth,

Ferris Jabr, Anna Kuchment, Robin Lloyd, Melinda Wenner Moyer,

George Musser, Ricki L. Rusting, Dava Sobel, Claudia Wallis

ART Edward Bell, Zoë Christie, Lawrence R. Gendron, Nick Higgins, Katie Peek, Beatrix Mahd Soltani

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Laura Helmuth

A R T

ART DIRECTOR Jason Mischka SENIOR GRAPHICS EDITOR Jen Christiansen

PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR Monica Bradley ART DIRECTOR, ONLINE Ryan Reid

ASSOCIATE GRAPHICS EDITOR Amanda Montañez ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR Liz Tormes

COPY AND PRODUCTION

SENIOR COPY EDITORS Daniel C. Schlenoff, Aaron Shattuck, Angelique Rondeau

MANAGING PRODUCTION EDITOR Richard Hunt PREPRESS AND QUALITY MANAGER Silvia De Santis

CONTRIBUTORS

MANAGING EDITOR Curtis Brainard COPY DIRECTOR Maria-Christina Keller CREATIVE DIRECTOR Michael Mrak

E D I T O R I A L

CHIEF FEATURES EDITOR Seth Fletcher CHIEF NEWS EDITOR Dean Visser CHIEF OPINION EDITOR Michael D. Lemonick

FEATURES

SENIOR EDITOR, SUSTAINABILITY Mark Fischetti

SENIOR EDITOR, CHEMISTRY / POLICY / BIOLOGY Josh Fischman

SENIOR EDITOR, SPACE / PHYSICS Clara Moskowitz

SENIOR EDITOR, SCIENCE AND SOCIETY Madhusree Mukerjee

SENIOR EDITOR, TECHNOLOGY / MIND Jen Schwartz

SENIOR EDITOR, EVOLUTION / ECOLOGY Kate Wong

NEWS

SENIOR EDITOR, MIND / BRAIN Gary Stix

SENIOR EDITOR, SPACE / PHYSICS Lee Billings

ASSOCIATE EDITOR, TECHNOLOGY Sophie Bushwick

ASSOCIATE EDITOR, SUSTAINABILITY Andrea Thompson

ASSOCIATE EDITOR, HEALTH AND MEDICINE Tanya Lewis

ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR Sarah Lewin Frasier

MULTIMEDIA

SENIOR EDITOR, MULTIMEDIA Jeffery DelViscio

SENIOR EDITOR, AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT Sunya Bhutta

SENIOR EDITOR, MULTIMEDIA Steve Mirsky

SENIOR EDITOR, COLLECTIONS Andrea Gawrylewski

EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR Ericka Skirpan EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT SUPERVISOR Maya Harty

EDITORS EMERITI Mariette DiChristina, John Rennie

MANAGING EDITOR Cliff Ransom CREATIVE DIRECTOR Wojtek Urbanek

MULTIMEDIA EDITOR Kris Fatsy MULTIMEDIA EDITOR Ben Gershman

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PRESIDENT

Dean Sanderson

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PRINT PRODUCTION

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fi movie Fantastic Voyage, in which a group

is shrunk and placed into a scientist’s body.

In the film, a miniaturized Raquel Welch

injures some of the scientist’s cells, caus-

ing multiple antibodies to attack her.

Robert A. Lee Brewster, N.Y.

SCHMIDT REPLIES: The answer to Lee’s

perceptive question is that the number

of human cells expressing SARS-CoV-2’s

spike protein is very small, and their lo-

cation is limited to sites close to where a

given vaccine is administered. Those cells

could potentially be killed by the immune

reaction to the spike protein. But they are

so few in number that there would be no

adverse effects if they were eliminated.

PLANE ERROR

“Landing on the Right Foot,” by Leslie

Nemo [Advances], discusses problems

caused by two different types of “feet”

used in measurements: the international

foot and the U.S. survey foot. It cites an en-

gineer’s account of a building that was

constructed near a landing strip and had

to lose its top floor at the last minute to

avoid obscuring planes’ glide path because

of that discrepancy.

But the article says the ratio between

the two types is only 0.999998. With that

calculation, the difference would only

come to a small fraction of an inch for a

mile-high building.

Albert D. Mason via e-mail

THE EDITORS REPLY: A handful of letters
requested more information about how
such a small difference in the length of the
foot could lead to a building needing to be
a floor shorter. A structure’s location is
designated in coordinates, which are typi-
cally rendered in meters and then convert-
ed to feet—and these values can be in the
millions. At such high numbers, the other-
wise minuscule differences between U.S.
survey and international feet add up. In
this case, surveyors and designers from
different companies used different ver-
sions of the foot, resulting in the building
being built two feet farther south than in-
tended. This result meant the top of the
building intersected with planes’ east-west
flight paths to a nearby airport. Had ev-
erything gone to plan, the flight path would
have sat just south of the building.

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