Letters archive

While I appreciate that Peter Aldhous's article was primarily concerned with the immediate health questions raised by the process of fracking, or cracking rock to extract natural gas from shale beds (28 January, p 8) , its effects on climate change cannot be ignored since that, too, is likely to be bad for our health. …

Having been on call or rotating shifts for almost 40 years, I was interested in your Instant Expert on sleep, particularly the section on sleep cycles, to see how my coping mechanisms match current thinking (4 February) . I learned a long time ago that if you cannot have a whole night's sleep, then having …

You report that file-sharing site The Pirate Bay has started to offer "physibles" – digital objects that can be realised on 3D printers (4 February, p 22) . The article says that while copyright and patents can protect music and inventions, there is very little protection for solid objects. This is not the case in …

I read with interest the interview with Isak Gerson, leader of the world's newest religion "Kopimism", which believes the act of copying information is holy, (14 January, p 25) . Does this mean students can now plagiarise others in their essays under the protection of their religious belief?

I find it disturbing that a scientist would suggest introducing elephants to Australia to eat fire-prone, invasive African grasses (11 February, p 29) . Elephants are a disruptive force in any ecosystem they inhabit, and the numbers required for any real impact on invasive grasses would be huge. Getting such a project up and running …

I am only part way through your 4 February issue and already worried. First, you report the possibility of drones in civilian air space (p 20) . I dread a future blighted by them, advertising myriad things I don't want while possibly also videoing me. Then there is the story on the FBI plan to …

Computer-generated art and music may reveal much about ourselves, as your feature suggested (14 January, p 42) . Music arises from the interplay between two fundamental brain mechanisms – pattern recognition and novelty detection. Since our brains can detect patterns and novelty on many levels, music can include patterns within patterns within patterns. Consider a …

Limits to Growth co-author Dennis Meadows, stated in his letter (21 January, p 28) : "Humanity's use of energy and materials is now so far above the globe's long-term, sustainable capacity that collapse of some sort is inevitable." This reminded me of a conversation I had with American geophysicist M. King Hubbert, of the Hubbert …

Your story on antibiotic-resistant bacteria found in Antarctic seawater said that Chilean bases on the continent "have virtually no sewage treatment in place" (28 January, p 12) . As principal author of the article in Applied and Environmental Microbiology (DOI: 10.1128/AEM.07320-11) that gave rise to this report, I would like to point out that the …

Your story linking sleep disturbance and mental illness (28 January, p 12) did not mention the worrying corollary that maybe jet lag has more profound effects on mental functioning than just making us tired. The fact that many important decisions are made by people who have just stepped off an intercontinental flight is enough reason …

• In our opinion piece on flu research (28 January, p 28) we said that a major journal is holding back a sensitive paper on the plague bacterium. The paper is not on plague but on another undisclosed bacterium considered a prime bioweapons risk.