Letters archive

Marcos Buckeridge supports the use of biofuels as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuel, stating that because sugar cane does not grow in Amazonian climate conditions its plantations have no impact on pristine forests (23 May, p 26) . However, he does not consider the indirect impact of biofuels on the forest. Since biofuels were …

Jim Giles's report on the Conficker worm (13 June, p 36) reminded me that I have always thought antivirus software, and indeed Microsoft Windows, shares many of the characteristics of a computer virus. After all, it distributes and updates itself on a population of PCs. That the vector of distribution is retail outlets is merely …

Sharon Moalem's article on female ejaculation raises many questions (30 May, p 31) . Moalem wonders whether the female prostate ever performed an antibacterial or any other useful function, but if it had it is unlikely to have become vestigial. The fact that the female prostate varies so much in size and shape, and is …

James Le Fanu is disconcerted by the similarity between his genes and those of a nematode worm or a fruit fly (23 May, p 45) . He is perplexed when the simplest mental process activates many areas of the brain. He doesn't understand how myriad sensory impulses are integrated into his "single coherent stream of …

Perry Bebbington asserts that old technology will inevitably be thrown away rather than repaired, but we still need to salvage components to reduce landfill (13 June, p 25) . Houses, furniture, kitchenware, everyday clothes, tools, leisure equipment and books can all be durable, repairable and reusable. My 100-year-old bread knife is better than kitchen knives …

I was very interested in your articles on how advances in neuroscience may reduce confusion and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers, and help create future armies of super-soldiers ( 9 May, p 40 , and 23 May, p 6 ). However, soldiers in modern armies are already subjected to extensive conditioning. After the second …

In his article on Barack Obama's new era of intellectualism, Chris Mooney derides what he sees as a long-standing antipathy towards intellectuals in the US (9 May, p 22) . However, what he actually observes is a justified dislike of the arrogance of pseudo-intellectualism. To see Obama's new cabinet member Steven Chu, with his Nobel …

When discussing the rongo-rongo script of Easter Island, Andrew Robinson states that the direction of reading is unusual, though not unique, with lines being read from alternating sides of the tablet (30 May, p 24) . Given the awkwardness of this reading style for an individual, and the fact that "rongo-rongo" means "chants" in the …

I was intrigued to see (30 May, p 7) that "Tafforeau and colleagues recently showed that Neanderthals grow up only slightly faster than humans and are now studying other hominins". Is there any chance of these Neanderthal researchers sharing their findings with us?

• The experimental reruns involved in the discovery of element 112 occurred three years earlier than we stated, in 2000 (20 June, p 10) . Also, we confused celsius with kelvin when giving its boiling point. It is in fact around 80 °C not "around 300 °C" as we said.