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13 October 2010
From Susie Watts, Co-Habitat
Rosaleen Duffy claims the tragic drowning of 23 illegally trafficked cockle-pickers in Morecambe bay, north-west England, "revealed some stark realities about the international wildlife trade – how it is driven by wealth not poverty" (11 September, p 28) . This problem has existed for decades. Since the 1970s, each surge in the main wildlife markets …
13 October 2010
From Krista Nelson
So Google will soon be returning search results before you have finished typing the query, based on what is most likely, and the Yahoo search engine wants to take your sex and age into account (18 September, p 19) . Your previous online behaviour, including social networking, might even be used to tailor search results. …
13 October 2010
From Bob Gibson
In your article on the optical illusion used by male bowerbirds to get a mate, you write that researcher John Endler noticed that "ornaments were carefully laid out, with objects becoming bigger the further they were from the bower" (18 September, p 16) . Could this statement be incorrect? In the theatre we also use …
13 October 2010
From Dagmar Hanold, School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, University of Adelaide
In her article on the premature death of eucalyptus trees, Wendy Zuckerman cites a paper claiming that the eucalypt tree disease Mundulla Yellows (MY) is caused by environmental factors (11 September, p 44) . However, my colleagues and I published a paper in an earlier issue of the same journal which shows that MY is …
13 October 2010
From Valerio Cugia
As a painter, I was interested to read Jessica Griggs's article on optical tricks used by artists ( 18 September, p 34 ). However, I was surprised to learn that a study of 90,000 people in the UK found that they preferred impressionist paintings over some other forms of art. The explanation reported in the …
13 October 2010
From Mike Weale, Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics, King's College London
I fully agree with David Eagleman (25 September, p 34) that true science should really occupy the probabilistic, evidentially consistent middle ground between God and atheism, and indeed between false certainties everywhere. But why does he have to label this sort of thinking "possibilian"? What's wrong with "Bayesian"? It is equivalent, older, beautifully quantifies the …
13 October 2010
From David Dunthorn
Your recent article on "The voice of reason" was of particular interest to my wife and me (4 September, p 30) . My wife does not have the inner voice that everyone is supposed to have. The closest she comes is sometimes muttering quietly to herself as she works at a task, but the fairly …
13 October 2010
• We incorrectly stated that New Orleans was fortified by cement levees (4 September, p 6) . In fact, the levees are made of concrete, of which cement is a component. • The carbon-capturing algae facility on the Hawaiian island of Maui is being built by HR BioPetroleum, not by Cellana as we incorrectly stated …
Issue no. 2782 published 16 October 2010
