Letters archive

You report that Canaletto's drawings of Venice have helped establish how far water levels in the city have risen since his time (20 October, p 10) . Polish architects also found out how useful Canaletto's accuracy could be when attempting to rebuild a beautiful part of old Warsaw after it was completely destroyed during the …

The article about "lost twins" has quite an emotional impact (20 October, p 38) —but what about the approximately 10 9 (sperm multiplied by ova) potential twins that fail to make it to fertilisation each time someone is conceived? Or do they all have reality in one of Martin Rees's multiverses?

I'm surprised that the missing row 13 on a Go airliner prompted Michael Quail to write in (Feedback, 20 October) . It's common airline practice— not so much corporate triskaidekaphobia as an awareness that many passengers try to avoid the number. When Terminal 4 was built at London's Heathrow airport, not only did the architects …

A recent experience with the airline British European proved rather more awkward than Quail's, when I was allocated seat 17A on a recent flight from Leeds to Belfast. Unfortunately the seating stopped altogether at row 14, proving once again that to err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.

The earthquake in the British Midlands on 29 October highlights yet another problem with moving the clocks backwards and forwards every six months. This procedure must put an enormous strain on the rotation of the Earth every time it is performed, and the tremor forces us to ask whether it is worth the risk for …

In the article "Red-hot legacy" (27 October, p 11) the graphic showed the Yenisei River flowing through Russia into the "Atlantic Ocean". It should, or course, have read "Arctic Ocean". Also, in Eugene Blank's letter (27 October) about diagnosing prostate cancer, Ian Tannock's article on the topic was referenced as being in The Lancet, May …

Detecting the Casimir force at submicron scales in the 1990s was hugely important in establishing a continuum between atomic and macroscopic scales. It was also important in demonstrating that the "vacuum" is full of zero-point fields. But it is unlikely that the force could account for the aggregation of dust grains in space (20 October, …

Reading your article about arable farming in the desert (27 October, p 44) felt like déjà vu. With all due respect to the farmers, this does look amazingly like good old British standard mixed farming—modified to suit the environment, of course. What a pity that all those development "experts" back in the sixties didn't export …

Timothy Stamps's comments about HIV and Zimbabwe's trend towards zero population growth are curious at best (20 October, p 50) . Catholicism has never stopped the incursion of AIDS. AIDS is chiefly a disease of heterosexuals, and for much of the 10-year period Stamps cites, the African countries concerned did not admit they had a …

Joe Costello writes: "The urgent challenge to science is to enter into a dialogue that affirms its social relevance, and acknowledges that adherence to 'irrational beliefs' may ultimately lead to bold new horizons." (27 October, p 59) . I disagree. Science is a methodology for inquiry, not a proselytising religion. If "the public" is increasingly …

The farcical events surrounding the collapse of a major study on BSE will do little to improve public confidence in science's ability to answer people's concerns (27 October, p 14) . It is ridiculous that such a fundamental error of sample identification can have occurred in the 21st century, particularly to those of us in …

The results of the proposed experiments to inject brain samples from infected animals into mice as a diagnostic method for BSE, scrapie or vCJD would be of little relevance unless suitable controls were carried out, namely the injection of equivalent material from unaffected animals. And if there are many strains of scrapie, then pooled and …

The news that there may be no connection between BSE and vCJD is hugely welcome, and if confirmed would be an enormous relief to those of us who spent time in Britain during the late 1980s and early 1990s. But I'm particularly interested in Venters's opinion that sheep scrapie never jumped the species barrier into …

My granddaughter informs me that it is in fact easy to differentiate between cows and sheep, by listening to the noise they make. The cows generally emit a "moo" sound while the sheep produce a "baa".

To follow up the article on your website about irradiating mail to kill anthrax ( www.newscientist. com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991468 ), last week a widely circulated e-mail claimed that you can kill the spores in mail by ironing your letters. Regardless of whether or not this might in fact disperse the spores into the air, is it really …

Finding dinosaurs on a Noah's Ark jigsaw certainly does raise "interesting biological and theological questions" (Feedback, 27 October) , but these are not exactly new. The most likely explanation is that the jigsaw is a creationist product. The dinosaurs depicted are probably sauropods, as these are the closest match to the description of Behemoth in …

I disagree with Gary King's claim in your article about a "conflict index" that "the only sponsors of international terrorism are failed states" (27 October, p 10) . What about Israel's terrorism of the Palestinians, Iran's sponsorship of Hamas, and US sponsorship of the Contras in Nicaragua and the mujahedin in Afghanistan?