Letters archive

Stroud, Gloucestershire The preparatory negotiations for this year's Climate Change Convention in Kyoto appear to consider only half the problem of rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide ( "Chill winds at the summit", 1 March, p 12 ). It is essential to include both sources and sinks of CO 2 when attempting to establish the …

Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia You argue that brain imaging such as PET scans should be used for diagnosing medical conditions, not in defending criminal actions ( Editorial, 22 March, p 3 ). Would that were so in Britain in respect to children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a disproportionate number of whom will end up …

by e-mail You state that: "Neuroscientists have a hard enough time working out how the brain creates the mental illusion of visual perception, let alone the illusion of moral judgment and free will." I don't want to be unfair to neuroscientists, who must on average have as much common sense as anyone else, but it …

Aberdeen Three years ago you ran a story and an editorial on my work on the driver's optical illusion that causes children to be killed or injured in road accidents (This Week, 18 June 1994, p 4 and Comment, p 3). This work had wide coverage. What should have followed was research and development by …

Corpus Christi, Texas Kurt Kleiner quotes American bureaucrats who must have smoked too much of what they think others shouldn't touch ( "Turn on, tune in, get well", 15 March, p 14 ). Health secretary Donna Shalala's statement that "our teenage drug problem is for the most part a marijuana problem" is an outright distortion. …

San Mateo, California The conclusions of the panel of experts convened at the request of the National Institutes of Health were amazingly frank and accurate, given the political dynamite with which they were dealing. The opinion that whatever evaluation of safety and efficacy marijuana is subjected to, it will have the added burden of proving …

by e-mail I was fascinated by the account of Vilayanur Ramachandran and William Hirstein's work on people with Capgras syndrome (New Scientist, Science, 22 March, p 19 ). My mother, in the last two years of her life, suffered from something almost identical except that the linkage she lost was to places, not family. She …

Sheffield All sorts of flower bulbs were part of the regular diet of the ancient Romans ( Letters, 15 March, p 51 , and Feedback, same issue). They seem to have been particularly partial to gladiolus and asphodel, which they baked in the ashes of a fire, as we would cook onions at a barbecue. …

London and Washington DC It has come to our attention that some sources are misconstruing Bob Holmes's article on mahogany to imply that we advocate logging mahogany to save the forest ( This Week, 22 February, p 10 ). This is not the case. Our report focused on what is done with forests after mahogany …

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Michael Judge discusses the creation of a stronger, stiffer, lighter alloy made from metals reinforced with microscopic wires of another metal ( "It takes two", 8 March, p 36 ). The process for creating the new alloy may be a breakthrough, but a similar alloy has been around for hundreds of years. The …

Rennes, France Born and bred in Bath, and a geologist to boot, I was shocked to hear Sue Bowler refer to the building stone as "Bath's golden sandstone" ( Review, 22 March, p 47 ). William Smith (father of English geology and erstwhile resident of Bath) must be revolving in his calcareous bedrock.