Letters archive

Last year, Peter Aldhous reported concerns that the time between submission and acceptance of scientific papers on research into induced pluripotent stem cells differed depending on where the authors were from, with those from the US being accepted quicker than those from elsewhere (12 June 2010, p 12) . In his sample of 148 papers …

Achim Steiner's call for conservationists to broaden their outlook on biodiversity (16 April, p 28) is welcome, but overlooks one of the most important areas in which "the tension between agricultural development and conservation" needs to be resolved. Agriculture is heavily reliant upon the roughly 95 per cent of species that are largely ignored. Microbes …

The article on the limits of human knowledge (7 May, p 34) stated that scientific endeavours are all the more amazing given that our brains "evolved for survival on the African savannah, not to ponder life, the universe and everything". I would argue that the two are not that different, it is just a matter …

As a farmer I welcome the prospect of new varieties of wheat that can fix their own nitrogen from the air rather than using fertiliser (7 May, p 8) , but I think they would do little to reduce nitrate pollution. The nitrogen captured by bacteria in a plant's roots would be spread throughout the …

Every year or so, New Scientist has a laugh at the expense of television programme subtitlers (Feedback, 23 April) . Live subtitles are generated in one of two ways. Stenographers use a keyboard-like machine, "playing chords" to produce words as they are being said. They have many thousands of key combinations for words and names …

Does the end of the uncertainty principle (30 April, p 28) mean that we can look forward to a real-life Star Trek transporter being built soon, now the Heisenberg compensators are no longer needed?

Paul Marks's review of the book Inflight Science mentioned that airline tea tastes so appalling because water boils at too low a temperature to make a decent brew ( 9 April, p 51 ). Intuitively unconvinced, I made three cups of black tea: cup A at 99°C, cup B at 92°C, and cup C at …

The introduction to your special report on happiness said the UK was to become "the first nation in the world to officially record the happiness of its citizens" (16 April, p 46) . In fact, some countries have gone much further in linking scientific assessments of happiness with policy than the UK's mere statistical exercise. …

Fred Pearce explored environmental academic Norman Myers's much criticised 1995 prediction of 50 million climate change refugees by 2010 (30 April, p 6) . Despite stating that "no one has counted them", the article still suggests that, in the absence of more recent efforts to establish the figures, Myers's rough projection should not be rejected. …

I noted with interest "The optimist manifesto" (16 April, p 52) which states that relentless optimists are "...less likely to get cardiovascular disease or to catch flu, and are at less risk of dying from any cause". I am quite excited by this apparent discovery of the secret of eternal life.

I read the tribute to the late "radioactive" artist James Acord with great interest (30 April, p 48) . It encouraged me to reread the excellent novel The Book Of Ash by James Flint (Penguin Books, 2005), which was inspired by the artist. Both Acord and Flint have taken the debate about the nuclear industry …

In "Drowning, surfing and surviving" (2 April, p 30) , James Gleick talks of a sense of drowning in a sea of information. As one born into the information age, I find that instead of suffering from information overload I am more prone to information withdrawal. Being removed from access to the internet can at …

Why invoke far-fetched superconducting effects to explain why trains take longer to reach their destination in summer than in winter (Feedback, 9 April) ? Surely every schoolchild knows the real reason, first noted in the days of steam, that higher temperatures cause the rails to expand, meaning the train has a greater distance to travel …

• Our description of the DHJ theorem was confused (7 May, p 10) . It should have stated: "Imagine colouring in squares in a grid. What percentage can you colour before you are forced to make a straight line along a row, column or diagonal? The DHJ theorem says the percentage decreases in cubic grids, …