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9 October 2019
From Anthony Trewavas, Penicuik, Midlothian, UK
Ann Wills mentions a study that compared consumption of organic food with cancer rates in a sample of nearly 70,000 people (Letters, 14 September ). She doesn't mention a much larger UK study of 625,000 women ( British Journal of Cancer , doi.org/gb9qwj ). This compared those who only ever ate organic food with those …
9 October 2019
From Mike and Linda Hutchinson, Pamber Heath, Hampshire, UK
We read with interest your snippet reporting that sleep loss is worse for young people's mental health than social media ( 24 August, p 17 ). Taking into account sleep, physical activity and cyberbullying, the effect of frequent social media use in causing unhappiness and anxiety was found to be insignificant. We suggest a story …
9 October 2019
From Doug Clark, Edinburgh, UK
Leah Crane says that because an estimate by physicist Maximiliano Isi of the mass and spin of a black hole is based on the no-hair theorem, which holds that no information about a black hole beyond its mass, spin and electrical charge is visible beyond its event horizon, this suggests that the theorem is correct …
16 October 2019
From Robert Willis, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Chris Stokel-Walker's overview of the increasing threat of ransomware missed a major cause of the ramp-up in attacks ( 13 July, p 9 ). Small and medium firms, at least in the US, are outsourcing data operations to small outfits. The likes of small medical or dental offices may forgo the major cloud storage companies …
16 October 2019
From Hugh McAdams, Glasgow, UK
You report on CityTrees – moss walls from Berlin-based firm Green City Solutions ( 24 August, p 6 ). Glasgow installed two on busy streets in 2017. I calculate that they removed less than 0.02 per cent of the city's pollutants each year. They have now disappeared. As Scully notes, researchers at the Netherlands Organisation …
16 October 2019
From Sandy Henderson, Dunblane, Stirling, UK
Chelsea Whyte reports that wind-tunnel experiments onbar-headed geese show their blood cools in low-oxygen conditions, simulating those they face crossing the Himalayas ( 14 September, p 14 ). Cooler blood can carry more oxygen. Did the researchers recreate the low pressure and temperature that the birds would encounter 7000 metres up? At low pressure, it …
16 October 2019
From Arne Maus, Nesoddtangen, Norway
I agree with Ola Rosling that we should base our views on facts, but I see problems with the statistics he presents ( 7 September, p 46) . One graph shows the risk of dying in a plane crash as one per 10 billion passenger miles. No flights are 1 mile long and most of …
16 October 2019
• The photograph we used to illustrate our report on climate change increasing the risk of heavy rainfall and storm surges in coastal areas was of Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, UK, which has flooded but is around 90 metres above sea level and a 70-kilometre walk from the coast (28 September, p 18).
16 October 2019
From From Ben Walsh, London, UK
I was interested in the various responses to the question of how long any traces of human civilisation would last beyond our species' sudden and catastrophic demise (Almost the Last Word, 14 September ). If extraterrestrials were heading to Earth, wouldn't they encounter our array of orbital satellites before getting anywhere near the surface? If …
16 October 2019
From Judith Hanna, London, UK
Hillary Shaw suggests that aliens might find "fossil tunnels" in Earth's crust and that some of this persists from 4.4 billion years ago. The geology that is that ancient isn't intact crust, but three sub-millimetre zircon crystals found embedded in 3.3 billion-year-old sediments in the Jack Hills in Western Australia. So I doubt that tunnels …
