Letters archive

Your article on the benefits of not treating fever prompted a déjà vu moment for me (31 July, p 42) . In 1972, a small group of chairs of US academic paediatric departments – and me, a youngster from Canada – took part in a three-day workshop entitled "Management of fever" at the Centers for …

You report that results from the Tevatron collider rule out a Higgs boson between masses of 158 and 175 gigaelectronvolts (31 July, p 5) . It is worth remembering that while the quantum-mechanical standard model of physics provides the favourite prediction of its existence, there are alternative, apparently rigorous theoretical models that do not depend …

Hazel Muir's article on using urine as a source of urea for hydrogen production suffers from a lack of a systems approach, or, as it is now known, joined-up thinking (21 August, p 37) . Large amounts of energy are used around the world to produce nitrogen fertilisers, be they based on ammonia or urea. …

While Star Trek 's Vulcans would have enjoyed your special report on denial ( 15 May, p 35 ), we humans prefer to read stories that allow us to relate to our world, rather than raw data quantifying it. Stories, illogical or not, are more digestible than figures and graphs. Your report handles the practice …

Linda Geddes reports that the long-term use of selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) in people with depression and panic disorder actually decreases serotonin levels through an unknown mechanism, rather than increasing them as traditionally thought (24 July, p 12) . In fact, the mechanism of this apparent decrease is well known. Since the effect of …

Timothy Taylor's hypothesis that we will evolve to be less intelligent due to our reliance on technology (21 August, p 48) resonated with other New Scientist articles I have read on emotional intelligence, and "good old-fashioned artificial intelligence" – which relies on the idea that intelligence can be broken down into a series of modules. …

You report the testing of graphene as a new antibacterial agent (31 July, p 19) . I can't help but feel we should be careful about exposing our cellular structure to materials that are harmful to other organisms, especially when we are unsure of the mechanisms by which they work. We are all made of …

You report that depression decreases an individual's perception of visual contrast (17 July, p 15) . Is this a one-way link? Has anyone investigated the effect on depression of using differently coloured or polarised lenses to produce a greater contrast between the visual signals reaching the eyes?

• We incorrectly named one of the companies involved in the development of the CliniHub portable disease detector. The company is XenBio Fluidics (28 August, p 19) . • Further to the information we supplied on our Letters page about our neuromarketing study (21 August, p 26) , we held a focus group for a …