Letters archive

Your look at tapping multiple senses to enhance enjoyment of food seemed to be describing undiagnosed synaesthesia – a crossing of the senses (22/29 December 2012, p 60) . Perhaps, rather than being either synaesthetes or "normals", we all exist on a scale of greater or lesser synaesthesia. And for most people this synaesthesia could …

I am grateful to Catherine Brahic for confirming my belief that animation is deeply embedded in the human psyche. Her wonderful article describes some of the ingenious methods that our ancestors came up with to create a sense of movement in cave art and artefacts (22/29 December 2012, p 44) . Animation predated the cinema, …

Bob Holmes explores ways of avoiding a scalding while carrying a hot drink (22/29 December 2012, p 65) . I am sure the answer to this appeared in New Scientist about 25 years ago. The solution, at least for African women carrying pots of water, is to float a coconut shell in the liquid. This …

Feedback, and correspondent Bryn Glover, need to go back to their roots (22/29 December) . The word "astronomy" has nothing to do with naming, but everything to do with nomos – law, order, arrangement. But I agree that "astrology" might be a better word for what astronomers do.

Your article on logician George Boolos's hardest logic puzzle ever and related problems (22/29 December 2012, p 50) reminded me of the truth teller/liar problem set by science writer Martin Gardner in 1959. Readers had to find the correct road to a village by asking one question of a liar or truth teller, knowing the …

Your look at the influence of the enteric nervous system notes that a lot of the information the gut sends to the brain affects well-being, but not in a conscious way (15 December 2012, p 38) . Perhaps the subconscious " gut instincts" and "gut reactions" that we experience may involve not just us, but …

Your report on detecting longer wavelengths of red light with a modified human visual protein (15 December 2012, p 19) suggests a way for us to see auras. If some people naturally have mutated versions of such proteins that are stimulated by infrared radiation, then the phenomenon would be possible. The editor writes: • We …

Jeremy Howard of Kaggle, a website that hosts problem-solving competitions, champions data science over experts for solving predictive problems in many disciplines (1 December 2012, p 28) . This struck a chord, as I have found that expert knowledge can get in the way when trying to solve cutting-edge problems. But before we decide to …

The "electric universe" described in Greg Shanahan's letter (22/29 December 2012, p 41) is a misconception supported with naive analogies to laboratory plasma effects, and refuted by the vast majority of astronomers. He mentions physicist Anthony Peratt as a proponent. But Peratt accepts the standard model for thermonuclear stars and has disavowed the idea of …

Why do so many languages coexist in some parts of the world (8 December 2012, p 38) ? Most languages, like many species, become extinct, making the history of language, especially how it dies out, a bit of a sketchy affair. However, I believe when states form they squeeze out small languages. Regions of the …

You reported research online showing how the mosquito avoids infection by the malaria parasite as it passes through its body ( 11 December 2012, newscientist.com ), with talk of bioengineering its immune system to prevent transmission altogether. If this can be made to work in mosquitoes and leads to a series of attacks on other …

You told the tale of research during the second world war on ships made of ice under the guise of Project Habbakuk (22/29 December 2012, p 63) . I suspect it was a cover for wider work. When at the National Physical Laboratory in the late 1960s, a colleague showed me a film labelled Project …

How ironic that coffee should become a victim of global warming, considering that its export worldwide is one of the causes (5 January, p 33) . The mass transportation of products across the planet has a huge carbon footprint, and is a major contributor to climate change.

• In the map to accompany our look at how to protect New York from storm flooding (5 January, p 6) we wrongly labelled the Bayonne and Jersey City area as Manhattan.