Letters archive

Linda Geddes reports that mice can inherit a fear response via epigenetic changes – chemical changes to the DNA that can turn genes on and off (7 December, p 10) . Exposure of the father or grandfather to an odour and an electric shock resulted in offspring that were more jumpy in the presence of …

I am perplexed. We were all toilet trained and taught our mother tongue, and so were generations of our ancestors, yet we still have to teach our children so many skills. Where did we go wrong? Were we not punished enough for failure to learn? Should we bring back the birch and strong smells? It …

I find John Crowhurst's letter proposing Australia's outback as a dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste offensive (30 November, p 33) . It is arrogant to ignore the original inhabitants of this land, who continue to live there. We really don't want this country used as a dumping ground for any form of waste, …

David Whitebread and Sue Bingham argue against accepting children into formal schooling at young ages as if children make up a single entity (16 November, p 28) . Nothing could be further from the truth. Some children can read books aimed at 7 to 8-year-olds at the age of 3. Some will never learn to …

Your analysis of talk of a slowdown in global warming (7 December, p 34) misses what seems an obvious factor – the latent heat of fusion of melting ice. It takes about 40 times as much energy to warm water from -0.5 °C to 0.5 °C as it does to go from 1 °C to …

As I bought my copy of New Scientist with the front cover asking: "Is it time to stop worrying about climate change?", a typhoon Haiyan appeal envelope from the British Red Cross fell out. The answer, in short, is no. London, UK

I suspect the discomfort that most people feel at the notion that they are "just" their physical brain is due to an insufficient respect for matter (30 November, p 30) . Physicists know that matter isn't the lumpen stuff we usually take it for. The closer you look at matter the more it dissolves before …

An important point was missed when discussing cycling safety in London and the Netherlands (30 November, p 14) . As more people cycle, there is an increased likelihood that those who drive cars are also cyclists. In the Netherlands there is a small core of drivers who never ride a bike, and a small number …

Keith Hudson's letter talks about a "keeping up with the Joneses" attitude among individuals as being beneficial at the group level as it boosts economies (7 December, p 32) . But what about considering the influence of "powering down with the Joneses" to help fix the climate? Just challenge the neighbours: "We use far less …

The material at the centre of a neutron star isn't stable except under star-mass gravity – it decays into everyday matter as some of the electrons and protons separate out. But now lower energy strange-quark matter is hypothesised to form in a collapsing neutron star (7 December, p 42) . If it is indeed lower …

Jessica Griggs revealed an inconvenient truth about conservationists in her look at the role synthetic biology could play in that field (7 December, p 46) : they were "wary of synthetic biology being used as a convenient quick fix" in place of the harder task of changing people's behaviour. A convenient quick fix? As opposed, …

Your article on the addition of waste brewery grain to the brick-making process and the advantages this brought was very interesting (30 November, p 23) . I was involved in a similar trial several years ago using steam-sterilised cellulose fibre from municipal waste as an additive. This also improved the strength and thermal efficiency of …

I agree with the letter from Ken Steele, that the Gaia hypothesis isn't outdated (7 December, p 32) . However, rather than having "humanity cancer" I would say Gaia has a parasitic infection. And so the question we need to ask is will the parasite destroy its host, and itself in the process, or will …

Julien Glazier refers to Fergus Gibb's idea of packaging the hottest nuclear waste into tungsten capsules and letting them melt their way down through the Earth's crust (7 December, p 32) . Surely if our hottest nuclear waste was really as (thermally) hot as that, and would remain so for a protracted period, we wouldn't …

If Alfred Russel Wallace and Patrick Matthew both deserve credit for the theory of evolution alongside Charles Darwin (23 November, p 34) , what about the Baghdadi scholar al-Jahiz? In the 9th century, 1000 years before Darwin, al-Jahiz wrote in his vast Book of Animals : "Animals that survive to breed can pass on their …

• In the article on the pace of global warming, we reversed the wind directions during El Niño and La Niña episodes (7 December, p 34) . During La Niña the winds are easterly, and vice versa.