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24 February 2010
From Geoffrey Crockford
Martin Robbins reports on a demonstration where over 300 activists "overdosed" by taking a whole bottle of a homeopathic remedy based on arsenic (30 January, p 22) . They aimed to show that arsenicum album homeopathic pills contain no arsenic, as you might expect given the dilution. About two years ago I analysed arsenicum album …
24 February 2010
From Giovanni Baiocchi and Jan Minx
In his article on UK carbon emissions (6 February, p 11) , Phil McKenna misinterprets our findings. The article implies that the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is deferring the publication of a report that shows UK emissions "rose by 13.5 per cent between 1992 and 2004". However, this is not …
24 February 2010
From William Schopf, University of California, Hans Hofmann, McGill University and Malcolm Walter, University of New South Wales
Nick Lane's article on the origins of oxygen on Earth misses key points when discussing the fossil record (6 February, p 36) . The article mentions 3.5-billion-year-old stromatolites in the Apex chert of Western Australia, and questions whether they are biological. The stromatolites come from only one of 12 known stromatolitic units older than 3 …
24 February 2010
From Sean Barker
In speculating that we might lose vital knowledge if civilisation were to collapse, your authors missed the very real threat that it might happen in the near future (30 January, p 36) . Most software is updated every few months, and is frequently completely rewritten, which can result in errors in reading the old programs. …
24 February 2010
From Dan Evans
Mark Buchanan suggests that there might have been a stage between the emergence of a universal genetic code and full-blown Darwinian evolution (23 January, p 34) where genomes capable of heredity and mutation first united in single organisms. Understanding this "prevolution" is important: it is a process that has not stopped just because evolution proper …
24 February 2010
From Fons Vandenberg
Clare Wilson mentions the large volume of research dedicated to the suppression of armpit odour (19 December 2009, p 54) . I have been wiping my armpits with methylated spirits ever since I discovered the odour has a bacterial source: a simple and cheap solution to the problem. The smell stays away for days in …
24 February 2010
• In our discussion of packaging overkill, it the was packaging-to-goods ratio of the empty box Geoff Robinson received that was infinite, not the goods-to-packaging ratio as we said (Feedback, 6 February) – a description that would have applied only if Geoff's present had arrived unwrapped. • In our article on rock varnish (13 February …
Issue no. 2749 published 27 February 2010
