Letters archive

I would like to thank Tony Jones for his very nice review (6 August) of my book Fatal Words: Communication Clashes and Aircraft Crashes. However, by focusing entirely on my description of the problem and my suggestions for short and long-term technological solutions, he misses the main scientific point of the book. Language is an …

"A thousand years ago, a squirrel could cross England from the Severn through the Midlands to the Wash without setting foot on the ground" ("Greening the heart of England", 24 September). This ancient chestnut, probably propagated by some early advocate of state forestry, is odd coming from Fred Pearce, whose articles I respect highly. Much …

It would be interesting to know whether the data for frosts in April (Inside Science, 17 September) are actual or hypothetical numbers [They are real - Ed]; but first there is a misprint on Fig 2; the green columns should be labelled "Geometric Distribution model". Secondly: The histograms of the frosts in April look to …

It is unlikely that the health benefits from Prohibition in the US were as dramatic as David Concar and Laura Spinney claim ("The highs and lows of prohibition", 1 October). Their figures show a sharp fall in deaths from cirrhosis of the liver three years before the new legislation came into force in 1920, matched …

Feedback speculates as to how the Manufacturing Science and Finance trade union will accommodate chaplains in its structure. Adequate precedents have been set by the civil service unions, and the Whitley councils that determine pay and conditions in government departments and the NHS. Scientists in the public sector have always been grouped with those who …

I've long been a reader of New Scientist, which has supplied me with many fine ideas, including the clues that led to the core notion behind my novel, Blood Music. Now I see industry and information designers may be taking another page from science fiction. "Is this the end of abstract thought?" by Marek Kohn …

The staff at The Guy's & St Thomas' Clinical PET Centre read "Hard sell for particle physics?" (24 September) with interest but were disappointed that the centre was not mentioned as one of the two main PET centres in Britain. To the best of our knowledge Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge has not yet taken delivery …

The runner beans in my Hertfordshire garden always grow round their canes in the sequence east, north, west, south. This creates a right-hand-thread helix (anticlockwise if viewed from above) and is the reverse of the Sun's movement in the sky. Right-hand threads are also formed by greater bindweed, contrary to Derrick Grover's observation (Feedback, 17 …

Pigeons may carry "only" the avian form of tuberculosis (Feedback, 1 October) but among illnesses associated with inhaling their dried droppings are aspergillosis, histoplasmosis and ironically, "bird fanciers' lung". A warning about these was issued to construction workers a few years ago by the medical advisor to the Health and Safety Executive. His name was …

I was very interested in Tara Patel's article (This Week, 24 September) on the possible causes of Napoleon's death. In 1946, as a boy on the way home from school, I met a very old man sitting in the Sun outside a Home which had been, not too long before, the local workhouse. He claimed …

Correction: An incomplete internet address was given for the Community R&D Information Service (CORDIS) at the end of a news item entitled "Europe's research `gold mine' is opened up" (This Week, 24 September). The full address is: cordis-helpdesk@dcfilx.das.net

Write to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist, King's Reach Tower, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LS, or fax to 0171 261 6464. Please include a daytime telephone number, and cite the date of the articles mentioned. We reserve the right to edit longer letters. Your letters may also be published in New Scientist newsletters.

Robin Harbour, in his "Is the pen still mightier than the sword?" (Forum, 3 September), raises the important problem of possible sabotage of electronically stored data. When almost all personal, scientific, historical and cultural data are stored in erasable and easily modifiable form, there is a serious threat of losing them all in case of …

F.G. Grisley asks if it is true that coal-fired power stations emit five times more radioactivity than is allowed from nuclear power stations (Letters, 24 September). The answer is no. Correctly operating nuclear power stations emit little radioactivity. But when they reach the end of their lives their radioactive cores remain. These radioactive remains must …

I read with dismay your report concerning the attitude of British cancer scientists towards patenting the genes that trigger breast cancer (This Week, 24 September). The fact is that, without a patent, industry is not interested; without industry, no product is produced; if no product is produced no patients will be treated or tested and …

Whatever the validity of the capture of six Mediterranean monk seals (Monachus monachus) for a captive breeding programme, am I alone in becoming increasingly irritated that issues of conservation and animal welfare are dogged by the continuing use of emotive rhetoric rather than science (This Week, 24 September)? The Geneva-based Bellerive group does little for …

Your article on the "Internet posse" which will "run junk e-mail out of town" (This Week, 1 October) raised some worrying points. The last thing the Internet needs is people deciding what can and cannot be said. The Internet has no real rules about what people post or where, just a set of informal constraints …