Letters archive

You provide an excellent overview of the current scientific evidence on gluten and the complex world of the gut microbiome ( 15 September, p 32 ). I was, however, puzzled by Peter Whorwell's amazement at "how many vegetables people are eating these days". Dietary guidelines in the UK recommend a daily intake of at least …

I'd like to have my mind read; maybe they can make sense of the jumbled mess in there Constance M is less alarmed than many about the prospect of technology that could read minds ( 29 September, p 28 )

Pascal Boyer assembles a convincing array of observations on how the general population doesn't understand the economy – or, at least, on how it doesn't share the same understanding as the economists he is familiar with ( 22 September, p 40 ). But behavioural economics has fairly comprehensively killed the idea that we behave anything …

Your article on folk economics states that the "wealth pie" being finite is a flawed idea. This is far from self-evident. We have one planet, and we don't account for negative wealth such as forest loss or damage from climate change. Another of the "flawed ideas" discussed is that sellers can fix prices. But corporations …

You say again that a particle can be "in two places at once" ( 15 September, p 8 ). This is a statement made by an organism that has a theory of the microscopic, which it tries to interpret with the cognitive systems that it has evolved to allow it to survive at a macroscopic …

. You say the interference pattern may be interpreted as evidence that particles have been in two places at once. But the pattern is also evidence that they have not been "seen" – in quantum jargon, observed – in either place. That would certainly have extinguished the pattern.

Congratulations to Enid Smith for blowing the whistle on washing machines that accept only cold water (Letters, 8 September ). We live off-grid, running on solar power, and our only water supply is what falls on our roof. When we went to buy a washing machine, the only one with a sufficiently low power consumption …

Smith writes that she was unable to find a washing machine that took warm water from the domestic system. The fact that washing machines need high-pressure water used to mean there was no option but to connect them to the cold water supply. Many houses now have high-pressure hot water systems. If her solar panels …

Alastair Brotchie laments the loss of his theatrical job to digital technology (Letters, 8 September ). I sympathise with him and others whose livelihoods are replaced by automation and who are excluded from the benefits it brings; but I am optimistic for the future. Humankind has continually found ways of making tasks easier to save …

• Thirsty work: the power consumption of Neal Tai-Shung Chung's desalination plant is 1 kilowatt-hour per cubic metre of water ( 8 September, p 32 ). • Heavy. The quasar called OJ 287 has the mass of 18 billion suns ( 22 September, p 35 ). • The female physicist we pictured at New Scientist …