Letters archive

No address supplied Does talking to plants help them grow ? I think I know a reasonable scientific explanation. Many people have what we call in Austria a "humid pronunciation", meaning that they produce a spray of saliva when speaking

Correction: In Technology ( 28 September, p 22 ) we said that a paper describing the revival of a frozen rat's heart would soon be appearing in Cryobiology. In fact, a paper by the team of researchers in question was rejected by the journal, and no revised version is under consideration.

Seascale, Cumbria At present all the water we abstract from our reservoirs and rivers for flushing toilets and so on is eventually discarded and discharged out to sea, obviously on the assumption that rainfall will continue to compensate for our wasteful practices. As a farmer I am required to collect all the rainwater, urine and …

Abingdon, Oxfordshire Brian Henstock's "half-size wasps" which hovered over the yellow area of his New Scientist ( Letters, 14 September, p 53 ) were undoubtedly hoverflies, true flies which often mimic bees. They are frequently seen on dandelions and similar yellow plants, so the attraction to the magazine page would seem to indicate that colour …

Address not supplied You claim in your headline that women don't start wars ( This Week, 21 September, p 13 ). To me the whole article is ridiculous. Why? Margaret Thatcher, Falklands war, 1982. Unless of course the author knows something the rest of us don't.

Pretoria, South Africa I visited the Old Greenwich Observatory about ten days ago, and if I am not mistaken, I saw a flag hanging outside the building—presumably on the meridian line—proclaiming something to the following effect: "0 degrees 0 minutes 0 seconds: The Next Millenium Starts Here". At the time I did not find anything …

Chadlington, Oxfordshire Indeed nothing in the forests is as it seems ( "Better than it looks on paper", 28 September, p 16 ). Working out what local communities really think, do and need is harder than outsiders allow. Technocrats and businessmen who produce paper for the "global economy" may think they know best what the …

Poole, Dorset The inference of the document Pulping the South as reported by Peter Knight is that trees are the only source of pulp for paper. Industrial, governmental and environmental organisations appear slow and even reluctant to recognise the value of Cannabis sativa, the hemp plant, as a truly sustainable paper resource. The plant needs …

Townsville, Queensland, Australia Further to the two letters on the Great Dinosaur Extinction ( Letters, 14 September, p 52 ), both of your correspondents suggested that the impact of an asteroid hitting the Earth could have caused a lava pulse on the opposite side of the planet, one suggestion being the Deccan Traps as the …

Histon, Cambridgeshire So John Horgan thinks scientists have nothing left to discover ( This Week, 28 September, p 12 )? Well, the function of the spinal cord may have been discovered, but the minor detail of how to repair a damaged one does seem to have eluded the many scientists working on the concept. This …

Wymondham, Norfolk With reference to Anthony Cottingham's reply ( Letters, 28 September p 63 ) to your Editorial of 24 August, his "obvious cause" is over-simplistic, although not without a grain of truth. As a head of science in the 1970s and 1980s, I changed the science curriculum of a large state boarding school from …

Leeds I read with amusement the paragraphs in Feedback ( 21 September, p 88 ) about speaker cables and sound. I have long advocated the use of thin speaker cables and have even put resistors between the amplifier and the speakers (heresy). My opinion is that the explanation of the phenomenon of cables sounding different …

Manchester Fred Pearce quotes David Lerner as stating that chlorinated solvents are not broken down in water ( "Dirty groundwater runs deep", 21 September, p 16 ). This may be the case in underground water supplies, but there are reports in the scientific literature of bacteria oxidising such solvents. This is because oxygenase enzymes, such …

Fiskerton, Nottinghamshire Vittoria D'Alessio says that a gay gene could benefit the species as a whole ( "Born to be gay", 28 September, p 32 ). However, natural selection doesn't work on the level of the species. Kinship theory is then mentioned, which is very different to species selection. Kinship is a result of natural …

Twickenham, Middlesex Unfortunately, the side-panels detracted a great deal from the main article. The panel on p 34 "Do Gay Men Make Better Brothers?" begins with a spurious quotation of homophobic hate-speak from Robert Mugabe. An attempt is made to justify its inclusion on the grounds that it represents a popular sentiment. However, it is …

Honiton, Devon The leak by Friends of the Earth of the internal World Bank document in which the bank admits that environmental impact assessments (EIAs) have "limited impact" on development projects must surely refer to one of the world's most open secrets ( In Brief, 28 September, p 13 ). The main reason that EIAs …

Needham Market, Suffolk Keith Gymer makes several points about "hackers" and "hacking", some of which are simply incorrect, and some of which are downright rude ( Letters, 5 October, p55 ). Unfortunately, Gymer seems to suffer from a mass-media-induced confusion as to what actually constitutes a hacker. The media (when first reporting the new wave …

I first learnt the rule "all engineers are male" when I applied to graduate school ( Feedback, 7 September ). I did my undergraduate work in mathematics and there were several women in my programme. I applied for graduate work in engineering at a very eminent engineering university and received my first correspondence from it …