Letters archive

Feedback wishes to grovel to Canadian and Irish readers for asserting that the world on maps.google.com "consists only of the UK and the US" (11 June). In fact, neighbours of those countries feature on the Google map as well.

Reading the article "Body double" (11 June, p 30), it occurred to me that I had already read about the idea of making a facsimile of yourself from smart nanodust. It features in Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks (Orbit, 2000), under the name "E-Dust". I love it when reality and sci-fi move in …

Your piece on race-specific prescriptions was intriguing, but raised some alarming questions for me (11 June, p 42). If new drug development and testing is broken down into categories of race, then what's to stop European-Americans from only researching diseases that predominantly affect their group, such as multiple sclerosis, or African-American scientists from seeking out …

I found the article on "kinky bypass grafts" encouraging and depressing (11 June, p 28). Encouraging because it describes how arterial shunts are being improved; depressing because the principle of fluid dynamics on which the improvement is based is at least decades old. Why is the medical profession only now discovering this principle's obvious applicability …

Gary Streeter worries that the new generation of airliners with composite airframes might be at risk from lightning strikes (11 June, p 22). Yes, lightning does present a potential hazard. I spent some years as an electromagnetic pulse test engineeer – including 1999, the year of the glider accident Streeter mentions. Modern high-performance composites tend …

In berating my book Critical Mass , Steve Fuller argues that "social physics" can never reveal the complex decision-making processes of real people (4 June, p 21). I agree, which is why I say as much several times in the book. Fuller misses my point spectacularly. Even an "interloping chemist" (physicist actually, but that is …

Your section "Animals and us" was a timely reminder of the metamorphosis taking place in our awareness of the experiences of other animals (4 June, p 42). The way animals respond flexibly and complexly to their surroundings should leave no doubt that they lead conscious, emotional lives. Unfortunately, while there has been much scientific interest …

In your article on moon dust you reveal that Apollo 11, 12, 15 and 16 experienced poor visibility while landing (28 May, p 40). But we have photos of the feet of the lander standing on the lunar surface with not a speck of dust on them. If all the dust was blown away during …

Red may or may not be the colour of winning (21 May, p 16), but as a schoolboy I was told that the British army wore red jackets at the Battle of Waterloo so that when men were wounded, their blood was not apparent to their comrades fighting around them. The hope was that they …

In your report on the disruption of the genetically modified coffee trial in French Guiana you state, "they chose French Guiana for the trial because no coffee grows there, avoiding any possibility that the GM variety could contaminate existing plants" (28 May, p 14). In the next paragraph, however, you say: "the attack on the …

Ian Hore-Lacy is absolutely right – let us match wind power and nuclear on a "level playing field", as he puts it (4 June, p 28). Let wind power be developed for 60 years; let billions of pounds of government money be spent researching it; let the world's top engineers and scientists be employed; let …