Letters archive

You recommend that people who have to fly shun business class because it has higher emissions per passenger (Leader, 20 July ). This is because these seats occupy more space on the plane, on average, than those in economy. But consider a case in which you have booked economy and find at check in you …

You report the detection by satellites of a giant seaweed patch stretching from West Africa to the Gulf of Mexico ( 13 July, p 17 ). This should be seen as good news. It is taking up nutrients and fertiliser run-off from the land and turning them, with minerals that are dissolved in seawater, into …

David Werdegar asserts we have an “absolute dependency on the signs and symbols of language” (Letters, 20 July ). That is questionable: not everybody thinks in the same way. Composers clearly think in musical terms that are sometimes difficult if not impossible to verbalise. Roger Penrose, in his 1989 book The Emperor's New Mind , …

Phil Ball suggests that Mandarin speakers think of the future as down because it matches their direction of writing (Letters, 27 July ). Even if such a correlation is found across all writing systems, it could equally be that the mapping of time to space came first. Spatial mappings can arise where there is no …

I enjoyed Graham Lawton's article on the exploitation of environmental language by the far right ( 17 August, p 24 ). I take exception, though, to the idea that this has only recently emerged. Far-right politicians have often linked notions of nationhood and the environment. This was particularly evident in the 1930s, when some Nazis …

Sue Armstrong reported nearly a quarter of a century ago on the Maths Bus that toured South Africa ( 3 September 1994, p 6 ). Some of your readers were attracted to this educational project and volunteered on and supported the bus. I ask them to get in touch through New Scientist .

Alan Gordon suggests hearing aids should replicate the directionality given by the shape of the ear (Letters, 27 July ). Most manufacturers use test equipment called a Head and Torso Simulator. This can be fitted with external ears to test the idea. It ought to work. I haven't yet tried it myself, but I might …

Butch Dalrymple Smith says we should plant trees and make things out of wood to sequester carbon (Letters, 3 August ). We are already doing half the job by farming trees to make paper and chipboard. When we have finished with them we recycle or destroy them. Why not preserve the paper and chipboard as …

Leah Crane reports work on using salamander mucus to help heal wounds ( 15 June, p 19 ). This reminded me of the time my father gashed himself while working on a motorbike engine. As someone whose pharmacy training was interrupted by a spell as ground crew in the air force, he knew a remedy …

Chelsea Whyte writes of moons ejected from their orbits around exoplanets, called “ploonets”. ( 13 July, p 15 ) She mentions the slow drift in our moon's orbit and the possibility that this might be its fate. Would this make it a “protoploonet"? That is such a cool word that it deserves to be used.