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9 January 2019
From Jane Rawson, Footscray, Victoria, Australia
Thank you for your seven steps to save the planet ( 8 December 2018, p 31 ). I would have found it even more useful if it had contained a list of the barriers to achieving each step and how we might overcome them. Barriers to killing oil, gas and coal, for a start, include …
9 January 2019
Weird: ignore the young's need for education but take blood to keep us old folk alive Rosie Evans avoids mentioning vampires in response to a plan to use young people's blood to treat Parkinson's ( 5 January, p 6 )
9 January 2019
From Keith Hodgkinson, East Leake, Nottinghamshire, UK
Your piece on the handprints of the prehistoric artists of Gargas and Cosquer caves offered several possible explanations for the missing digits ( 8 December 2018, p 16 ). None of these reflected my experience when teaching young schoolchildren to paint their own cave animals. While painting with their right hand, several children held a …
9 January 2019
From David Muir, Edinburgh, UK
Michael Marshall discusses hypotheses on absent fingers in Stone Age cave art. Perhaps there is a simpler explanation. The ubiquitous practice of flint-knapping would have resulted in many injured and infected fingers. Rather than risk blood poisoning or gangrene, those with severely damaged digits could have amputated them with a newly knapped tool. So before …
9 January 2019
From Sam Edge, Ringwood, Hampshire, UK
You say that a hygroelectric generator based on graphene produces 1.5 volts and that this is equivalent to an AA or AAA battery ( 1 December 2018, p 20 ). But I want to know what current it delivers, and so its power in watts. The editor writes: • The experimental device produced of the …
9 January 2019
From Jeremy Cook, Barnet, Hertfordshire, UK
James Mitchell Crow gives a short description of some synthetic engineered life forms, currently being developed by Nina Pollak in Australia, that will look like juvenile jellyfish ( 8 December 2018, p 40 ). You called them "pseudo-creatures" . They will be real creatures, in the original, historical sense of the word, as they will …
16 January 2019
From James Rand,<br/>New Milton, Hampshire, UK
Graham Lawton says beavers at a site in Devon, UK, have a huge impact on flood management there by building dams that can store and slow the release of water ( 22/29 December 2018, p 10 ). But Richard Brazier, a lead scientist behind the reintroduction project that Lawton visited, says that this potential is …
16 January 2019
From Ian Smith, Bedford, UK
Rob Cannell reiterates doubts about the ecological benefits of electric vehicles (EV) because of the proportion of electricity from burning fossil fuels that currently powers them (Letters, 8 December 2018 ). But anyone who has driven an EV will regard a car powered by an internal combustion engine as positively agricultural, whether fuelled by petrol, …
16 January 2019
From Sam Vilain,<br/>Oakland, California, US
Cannell mentions the benefits of running vehicles on liquid petroleum gas (LPG). It does produce less nitrous oxide and other pollutants and is less carbon intensive than petrol/gasoline. But this gain is more than countered by the low efficiency of a small internal combustion engine (20 per cent) compared with burning fuel for electricity generation …
16 January 2019
From Allen Reynolds,<br/>Auckland, New Zealand
Chris Baraniuk reports UK police plans to use machine learning to predict criminal behaviour and offer interventions ( 1 December 2018, p 6 ). It seems that the system was trained on databases including information unrelated to court findings of guilt, such as police stops, searches and crime reports. I expect it will lead to …
