Letters archive

Penny Sarchet describes eight coping methods for climate stress ( 26 October, p 12 ). I'm surprised she omitted the one adopted by our political leaders, namely to insert your fingers firmly into your ears and loudly recite "la, la, la". The concept of icebergs hasn't escaped our leadership, but the main UK political parties …

It is definitely no bad thing that we are becoming stressed about climate change . Perhaps it is better for children to be terrified now, and active, than for them to live to experience a dystopia when it is too late to alter it. My generation faced a present in which 30,000 thermonuclear warheads awaited …

Alice Klein reported on domestic violence and some ways to tackle it ( 19 October, p 20 ). Another important approach to dealing with domestic and similar violence is empowerment self-defence training for women. In addition to giving women the skills to handle abusers, this has been shown to help people heal from trauma caused …

You say that we have been unable to explain how our brains create conscious experience (Leader, 21 September ). Do we know that our brains create conscious experience? What if the brain is merely the organ through which conscious experience manifests?

In the 16 December 2017 issue we ran a diagram accompanying a story on stereotyping that, without appropriate context about the research it was drawn from, actually perpetuated the harmful stereotypes it was meant to debunk. Unacceptably, it listed "Jews" among groups that could be considered "high status competitors". When this appeared in print, our …

Rats have been taught the complex skill of driving a tiny car to collect a food reward at their destination, Alice Klein tells us ( 2 November, p 12 ). Monitoring the rats' levels of hormones associated with stress showed that they were relaxed: online you report that they were less stressed than rats that …

Brendan Foster describes renewed interest in the luminiferous aether ( 2 November, p 32 ). For all its shortcomings, the aether was one of the most productive scientific ideas of all time. Many conceived of it as being electromagnetic as well: it allowed James Clerk Maxwell to deduce that light was an electromagnetic phenomenon. The …

Debora MacKenzie reports that measles massively damages the immune system ( 9 November, p 15 ). In 1960, before vaccination was available, I had two weeks off school with measles. On the first day back, I came home covered in chickenpox. For decades I have suspected that there was some relationship. Thanks to New Scientist …

Reviewing the Moving to Mars exhibition, Simon Ings offers some welcome balance to dreams of long-term space exploration ( 26 October, p 30 ). I would add some ethical issues. Adventurous adults may make informed, rational decisions about leaving Earth permanently. But if this isn't to be temporary, there must be plans for them to …

I am pleased by the progress in planning new homes that Vaughan outlines. But the suggestion that a space can be "airtight, but still well-ventilated" is confusing. Should air trapped in an airtight home be recirculated? How would moisture escape? Dehumidifiers need electricity and moisture-absorptive materials have to be recharged (more electricity consumption) or replaced …