Eric Kvaalen Les Essarts-le-Roi, France
The Sea of Japan has almost no tides, but I suppose they are still detectable. This sea doesn’t have a natural oscillation period related to any lunar or solar period, and is fairly cut off from the ocean, which explains why the tides are small.
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Stephen Rowe Shepperton, Middlesex, UK
In my early career, I worked in the ship division of the UK’s National Physical Laboratory. The facilities included a massive indoor towing tank (sadly long since demolished to make way for a superstore). This tank was 400 metres long, almost 8 metres deep and contained more than 45 million litres of water.
Roger Leitch Bath, UK
Some years ago my dog, Lola, had a litter of puppies, and my son has one of them, Ivy. When we are out with both dogs, if we tell Ivy off, Lola will “tell her off” too, trying to grab her by the scruff of the neck and shake her – a common way dogs discipline pups. This isn’t easy because the dogs are about the same size.
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Bryn Glover Ripon, North Yorkshire, UK
It is true that some animals eat their offspring or mate with them, as discussed previously. But how does this lead to the conclusion that they haven’t recognised them as their own? The inference may be true in human morality terms, but why should we assume that such behaviour is universal in animal life?
19 May 2021
Irina Baturina/Alamy Stock Photo
Why is it easier to copy a picture of an apple than to draw the apple itself? Wouldn’t the image on my retina be the same whichever one I looked at?
Nina Dougall
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As an artist and art teacher, I am always dumbfounded by the differences in how individuals perceive something. Within a class of 20 students, there will be 20 interpretations of how to portray an object.
What you portray is determined by your observational powers, degree of perfectionism, natural ability, training, culture, age and personality.
Then there is the factor of the artist’s mood. There is always something of the personality of the artist in the moment that they are capturing in their art. This is what makes the difference between a mere reproduction and a “work of art” a topic of endless discussion in the art world.
19 May 2021
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What is the minimum population needed to sustain me in a comfortable life in the US, in terms of the people who create and maintain infrastructure, goods and services? The combinatorial explosion of dependencies boggles my mind: for instance, I enjoy
New Scientist, so its journalists and all their dependencies would have to be added in too. And so on…
John Davnall Radcliffe, Greater Manchester, UK
In a 2008
New Scientist interview, environmental activist David Suzuki discussed how the maximum population our planet could sustain with “Western” lifestyles could be as low as 200 million. Could this number provide the goods and services necessary?
Health | Leader 19 May 2021
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IN THE long term, the future is looking bright. Several coronavirus vaccines are proving far more effective than we dared hope, and while some aren’t as effective against new variants, most do still work.
In the short term, however, things may get worse before they get better. Despite many countries, including the UK, starting to return to “normality” with the relaxing of restrictions, we now have another dangerous new variant – B.1.617.2, first detected in India – to contend with. It might be even better at spreading than the B.1.1.7 variant from the UK.