Letters archive

Wade Allison produces a good argument for drastically raising the limits on the amount of radiation to which people can be safely exposed (31 July, p 24) . I am less convinced by his use of the phrase "carbon-free nuclear power". Nuclear power is certainly dependable, but the construction and decommissioning of power stations and …

In your recent article on cholesterol (17 July, p 5) , William Neal of West Virginia University is reported as suggesting that screening children for high cholesterol and treating those with elevated levels would reduce their risk of developing coronary heart disease later in life, thus preventing hundreds of premature deaths each year. Yet in …

While analysing the reactions of the 19 men you asked to look at alternative covers for New Scientist , did it occur to you that the cover they most strongly favoured bears a strong resemblance to a woman's breast (7 August, p 32) ? It even has the appearance of having a nipple. The other …

In his article about the doctor who doubts shaken baby syndrome (31 July, p 8) , Andy Coghlan states: "No independent witness has ever seen a shaken baby with such symptoms, the only evidence has come from confessions." It is important to add that confessions can be unreliable because there can be so many pressures …

Peter Aldhous reports that night-time lighting is having a disruptive effect on nocturnal animals, and suggests we dim the lights for their sake (17 July, p 8) . We might do so for our sake too. As a certified snake-catcher with a permit to relocate venomous snakes away from habitation, I frequently speak to people …

Kate Ravilious's article "Patterns of war" is correct to highlight the influence of Frederick Lanchester's ideas on military thinking (31 July, p 34) . However, it confuses a number of aspects regarding the Battle of Britain. The "big wing" strategy involving large formations of aircraft was certainly not the favoured strategy in the earlier phase …

Catherine Brahic notes in her article about the origins of cooking that the earliest confirmed archaeological evidence of fire at a site of human habitation goes back to 790,000 years ago (17 July, p 12) . But people could well have been making fire in a domestic setting much earlier. In this semi-rural area of …

In their defence of wind power, Jérôme Guillet and John Evans state: "You end up paying less for your electricity when wind power is part of the mix" (24 July, p 24) . This is simply untrue. Industrial-scale wind power is so capitally expensive per megawatt-hour generated that it would not be commercially viable, in …

When discussing the controversy over atmospheric oxygen levels during the age of the dinosaurs, Stephen Battersby asks: "Did the dinosaurs have to breathe heavily despite their efficient bird-like lungs?" (17 July, p 38) . A more interesting question is, what evolutionary imperatives resulted in the development of those efficient lungs, which were later important in …

When viewing a video of people moving around and throwing a ball, many observers fail to notice a gorilla enter the scene (26 June, p 32) . But is there a difference between watching an event in a two-dimensional video and experiencing it in real life? Did the experimenters compare people watching the video with …