Letters archive

You report a study by Helen Fisher and others linking air pollution from vehicle exhausts with teenage psychosis ( 6 April, p 25 ). You say that it isn't clear how air pollution might be linked to psychotic experiences. The children studied were born in 1994 and 1995. The fuel additive tetraethyl lead was banned …

Adam Vaughan is right to note that the correlation between exposure to air pollution and teenage psychosis isn't proof of causation. One smoking gun, though, is that air pollution is consistently worst in areas where poverty is concentrated, with all the social and psychological stresses it entails. It is extraordinary that the study found that …

Gilead Amit reports plans to send gram-scale craft to Proxima Centauri ( 13 April, p 32 ). Expecting that these could get a signal back to us is fantasy. The amount of power a 1-gram payload could generate can't be more than a few watts. For comparison, the New Horizons spacecraft uses a 15-watt transmitter …

• The sculpture of human figures in the intertidal zone is by Antony Gormley ( 20 April, p 34 ). • Rhoetosaurus brownie may sound delicious, but the name of the giant dinosaur is Rhoetosaurus brownei ( 27 April, p 9 ). • Galactic brain: Breakthrough Starshot plans to go no further than our closest …

David Flint suggests that what is missing from efforts to reduce climate change is panic (Letters , 20 April ). But panic is rarely helpful. It leads to short-term thinking and stopgap measures that can be counterproductive in the long run. Restriction and abstinence are knee-jerk reactions that aren't long-term solutions. If they slow growth, …

You mention the limitations of the drive-assist feature in Tesla cars ( 6 April, p 6 ). My biggest concern is that the company calls it an autopilot . This will inevitably give people an incorrect impression of its capabilities. If someone is concentrating on reading, for example, then it would take them several seconds …

Colin Garner makes some good points regarding the need to educate doctors about prescribing antibiotics ( 20 April, p 24 ). But he does us microbiologists a disservice by stating that medical doctors culture bacterial samples to identify infections. Microbiologists are the ones who do that. We can troubleshoot when doctors unwittingly choose the wrong …

Graham Cox raises the issue of how people whose perception of colour is different to the average for the population can be poorly served ergonomically (Letters , 13 April ). This isn't limited to colour blindness. I have astigmatism. I lived with it uncorrected for many years, until my near sight deteriorated enough to require …

Mark Harris asks us to imagine a trader in London wanting to access data from New York: if it were routed via SpaceX's planned constellation of satellites, it might reach her in 45 milliseconds. ( 4 May, p 44 ) If that kind of speed were needed, the trader would be neither a "she" nor …

• Strictly speaking, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared measles to be eliminated in the US ( 20 April, p 22 ). • It is bacteria associated with fungi and other organisms that do nitrogen fixation ( 27 April, p 8 ).