Letters archive

Sukel offers lots of interesting ideas about keeping your brain in tip-top nick, but with an obvious omission. Read New Scientist every week. (It had better be true.)

People say 'new physics' but these laws have always been there – we just detect them Katie Martz waxes philosophical about the struggle to find hints for new theories in the welter of data at CERN ( 16 February, p 36 )

Valerie Jamieson asks why there are so few women in physics ( 10 November 2018, p 32 ). Parents are a child's first educators and role models. I wonder whether we underestimate the part that fathers play in their daughters' choice of careers, and their view on sexism and stereotypes. When our daughter, who was …

The attempt by Paul Davies to answer the question of what life is was fascinating ( 2 February, p 28 ). Davies discusses the changes that may have occurred in complex chemical processes that ultimately resulted in their developing into something that was describable as life. I am interested in the opposite end of the …

Davies proposes that the laws of nature change over time. Doesn't this raise the question of whether there are "meta-laws", invariant in space-time, to which his suggested changeable laws are subject? Maybe we just haven't yet discovered some of the ultimate laws of nature.

Archaeologist Mark Collard suggests that cave art in Europe may demonstrate that people cut off fingers ( 8 December 2018, p 16 ). Some indigenous groups in Canada cut off a finger joint as a sign of mourning at the death of a loved one. For example, one Sister Thomas of Canterbury wrote to her …

Chris Stokel-Walker asks why we can't stop drones causing airport chaos ( 19 January, p 10 ). He mentions University of Dayton researchers firing a 1-kilogram commercial drone into a plane wing. The manufacturer of the drone used responded by saying that serious wing damage to a small aircraft was shown to occur only at …

You report a police force using evidence-based investigation tools ( 12 January, p 7 ). These prioritise the investigation of crimes using a solvability algorithm based on eight factors. I would be interested to know how many of those factors are "managed" or under the control of local authorities – as is, for example, the …

Ian Simmons says satellite dishes in the northern hemisphere point south (Letters, 12 January ). The direction in which a dish points depends upon the location of the dish and of the particular satellite from which it receives a signal. This can be significantly different from due south.

• Casey Lindberg now researches workplace design at HKS architects in Texas ( 12 January, p 36 ).