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Readers may be tempted by advertisements in the next few weeks to send
off for a beautifully boxed, hand-crafted replica golden eagle egg in the
interests of conservation. For about £220, Emerald Collectables of
Romsey, Hampshire, will sell you a set of replica birds’ eggs, said to be
so accurate that only experts can tell them from the real thing.

‘Over the next ten months, the fifty-strong collection will feature
Britain’s favourite birds, in a series with wide appeal to bird enthusiasts
for its lifelike accuracy, to families for its fascinating educational value,
and simply for the vital role that Emerald Collectables expect it to play
in protecting birds and their habitats,’ runs its advertisement.

But the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds warns that the collection
could have disastrous effects for wild birds. If collecting replica eggs
becomes popular, collecting the real thing will as well. The RSPB has firm
evidence that nearly 40 nests of birds of prey have been raided already
this year.

Emerald Collectables is offering to pay magazines that run its special
offer package £5 for every reader who signs up for the collection.

* * *

How’s this for a candidate for Feedback’s ‘Fashionable Science Coincidence
of the Year’ prize? The daily AIDS news summary from the Centers for Disease
Control in the US reports that ‘Water-soluble buckminsterfullerene may prove
to be an effective component of drug treatments for HIV-1 and HIV-2.’

One group of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco,
reports that a soluble derivative of the near-spherical ‘buckyball’ molecule
of 60 carbon atoms blocks the operation of a protein-splitting enzyme produced
by HIV. Another group at Emory University in Atlanta finds that buckyballs
behave similarly to substances which block a different enzyme, reverse transcriptase,
which converts the virus’s RNA into DNA.

Spoilsports point out that almost every substance – including boring
old soap – blocks some function or other of HIV in the test tube. But buckyballs
and HIV happen to be the most ‘in’ subjects of research at the moment,
so these findings have received an inordinate amount of attention.

For a sure-fire citation winner, Feedback invites readers to draw up
an explanation of this buckyball activity which depends on the mathematics
of chaos and on the superstring theory of subatomic matter.

* * *

Recycling can be a nice little earner if you approach it with a sufficiently
entrepreneurial attitude. The recycling magazine Warmer Bulletin reports
that the Dutch magazine publishers’ organisation NOTU is up in arms against
the supermarket chain Hoogvliet, accusing it of swindle. With a view to
being environmentally friendly, Hoogvliet launched the idea of refunding
customers 50 per cent of the cover price of magazines returned in good condition
by a set date.

According to NOTU, Hoogvliet then resells the magazines to other customers
– at full price. Neat, isn’t it?

* * *

MIke Malin, principal investigator of NASA’s Mars Observer camera, estimates
in a plaintive public statement that he spends a quarter of his time ‘trying
to prepare thoughtful answers to (often abusive) letters from people who
analyse every word in every sentence in every paragraph in every letter
I have written. . . they see hidden meaning everywhere’.

Who are these demanding correspondents? They are devotees of the ‘there’s
a Face on Mars’ books. Malin patiently explains to anyone who’ll listen
why, even if the Mars Observer had worked perfectly, it would be impossible
to redirect it to zoom in on the alleged face feature – which the devotees
believe to be a gigantic sculpted message to us from aliens.

At least two people at NASA headquarters spend a similar amount of time
on queries from Congress about the alleged face. These, Malin points out,
NASA is legally obliged to answer.

* * *

It’s official. The European Commission is not responsible for condoms.
Specifically, says Christiane Scrivener, the only woman among the 17 Commissioners,
the Commission cannot legislate their length, circumference, strength or
taste. (It is not clear whether she is referring to aesthetics or savour
here.)

At the same time, officials confirm that to circulate freely within
the Community, condoms must meet its minimum standards of quality. Sounds
like a contradiction? Maybe so.

Feedback suspects that what all this is really about is a bid to end
the political embarrassment that surfaced when the Commission first tried
to set a standard for condoms – and it transpired that Italy’s standard
size was somewhat smaller than everyone else’s. . .

* * *

Now, for the hi-fi buff who has everything and is still not satisfied,
comes the world’s first electrical connecting cable that contains no metal.
After nearly twenty years of research, the Dutch company of Van den Hul
has concluded that metal wires, however pure, limit sound quality. The electrical
signal is somehow degraded when it passes from one metal crystal to the
next.

So Van den Hul is now selling short lengths of cable that are made of
pure carbon fibres. They connect a record player or CD player to an amplifier.
Banishing metal, the company pledges, ‘brings about quite remarkable sonic
²ú±ð²Ô±ð´Ú¾±³Ù²õ’.

Doubtless anyone who pays the £180 which the 1-metre connectors
cost will hear the difference. But Feedback is obliged to point out that
there is still an awful lot of metal inside the hi-fi units which the cables
connect. This creates the intriguing prospect of hi-fi buffs now tearing
apart their amplifiers, trying to replace all those nasty metal wires, circuit
boards and components with bits of carbon.

Even if they end up with a hi-fi system that produces no sound whatsoever,
all is not lost. Van den Hul says the new cables are ‘strong enough to pull
a car’