Letters archive

The study by Gilles-Eric Séralini and colleagues at the University of Caen in France linking cancer tumours in rats with maize modified to resist the herbicide Roundup, has been judged by the European Food Safety Authority to be scientifically unsound because of inadequacies in its design, reporting and analysis (8 December, p 7) . As …

Catherine Brahic's discussion of fresh efforts to pin down when humans split from chimps (24 November, p 34) is a nice example of the contribution of quantitative genetics to understanding evolution, but there is another strand to the story of the emergence of humans – the significant qualitative difference between humans and chimpanzees. Humans have …

Marion Nestle writes that the Danish fat tax, now being dropped after a year, brought in $216 million and that "Danes will now face higher income taxes to make up for the loss of the fat tax" (24 November, p 28) . One of the reasons for the unpopularity of the fat tax was that …

The editorial and cover story in your 10 November issue (p 3 and p 34) discuss the aftermath of this year's grandest scientific finding – the discovery of a new boson, most likely the Higgs – along with a possible successor to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, we must clarify beyond doubt that the …

In his recent letter, Gavin Lawrence asked if advances in modelling bee flight had been used in the design of wind turbines (1 December, p 31) . The answer is sort of. Vertical axis turbines in gustier areas are more effective if the blade is designed to be like a small bird's wings, exploiting the …

Your article on the growing use of genetic markers to eliminate confounding factors in clinical studies, overturning some earlier epidemiological conclusions, gave me a shock: a major contributor to heart health has been eliminated overnight (24 November, p 8) . So good cholesterol has zero direct impact on coronary heart disease? What an extraordinary result …

Your online article by Michael Brooks on the UK energy bill asked if British consumers are prepared to shoulder the higher initial costs of energy from renewables ( 26 November ), and touched on some interesting aspects of decision-making theory. His view seems to be that experts broadly support further decarbonisation, even if it increases …

In your article on omniphobic materials, you credit Christoph Neinhuis and Wilhelm Barthlott with the discovery of the water-repellent properties of plant epicuticular waxes in 1997 (24 November, p 46) . Without in any way detracting from their work, I would point out that Barrie Juniper's pioneering electron microscope work on epicuticular waxes at Oxford …

In your feature on technological progress, anthropologist Dietrich Stout suggests that the march of innovation may result from copying errors, in a manner analogous to genetic mutations in evolution (29 September, p 30) . This reminds me of the programmer's saying: "It's not a bug, it's a feature." From William Hughes-Games The observation that Tasmanians' …

Superstorm Sandy emphasised that New York is a trillion-dollar sitting duck with embedded feet at the mercy of the elements (10 November, p 6) . So maybe a phased retreat from endangered areas is the way forward. A safe site must be well-planned for Nova York, to cope with the outflux. Private investment would cater …

Fifty years ago I discovered the benefit of periodic fasting (17 November, p 46) . Initially this was a way to settle my stomach, but I soon found it also cleared my head for writing and exams. For anyone thinking of fasting, it is easier if you start with a good lunch. Then you'll be …

Philosophers and theologians of a traditional kind might be interested in your article on cosmic origins (1 December, p 32) which acknowledges the universe must have had a beginning, even though we might not know when that might have been. And as all theories must have existed before this event, I should like to congratulate …

Regarding the correlation between chocolate consumption and the number of Nobel laureates per capita (3 November, p 56) , surely a country that can afford more confectionary will be able to afford facilities for potential Nobel laureate research.