Letters archive

Your contribution on a condom boom and a concomitant shortage of latex (Technology, 24 March) is guilty of some wild exaggerations. First, the price for natural rubber latex is no longer 'phenomenal': after a price boom about 18 months ago, prices have returned to normal and are probably somewhat less than small farmers in Southeast …

The question of photons travelling 'faster than light' (Science, 7 April) is surely just a matter of terminology. The value which we call c, the absolute limit to observed speed, is the speed at which any particle with zero rest-mass (such as a photon) would travel in 'free space'. We are all familiar with situations …

I read 'A random walk in arithmetic', 24 March, with interest even though I am a mathematical tyro. I was puzzled by the conclusion. Why should God be limited to whole numbers? Why should he be accused of playing dice when the arithmetical constraints placed upon him are man-made? The proposition seemed to be returning …

Jim Lesurf in 'The rise and fall of negative resistance' (31 March) states that some workers working with superconducting oscillatory circuits have found that such oscillation 'persists indefinitely without getting any smaller'. Heaviside, in his Electromagnetic Papers, took the contrary view, that resistanceless circuits were not necessarily loss-free, and indeed, in oscillatory circuits, loss was …

The article 'Famine before the floods?' (31 March) presents a very narrow view of the world's food situation. It fails to note many factors which probably are more significant than those identified in the article. Perhaps the most important influence on the food supply over the next 10 to 20 years will be the current …

The letter on women in science from Steve Beackon of AEA Technology (24 March) made me groan in despair. The whole exercise of trying to integrate women into what used to be thought of as men's work is part of trying to get men to comprehend that women are equal human beings and therefore have …

Ursula Mittwoch is to be congratulated on her thought-provoking and clearly reasoned assessment of the present-day animal politics impasse ('Animal rights; human wrongs', Forum, 3 March). The centre party suggested by Mittwoch in fact came into being prior to the passage of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 with the alliance formed by the British …

I should like to add the following comments to Tam Dalyell's Thistle Diary (31 March) on attendances at the National Museum of Science & Industry. The method of counting visitors in the free admission period resulted in a significant exaggeration of numbers. This is a characteristic of many free admission museums. Although there was an …