Letters archive

Penny Sarchet discusses what causes allergies ( 11 August, p 29 ). In an earlier article on the non-specific effects of vaccines, Michael Brooks writes that some may protect against allergies, while others encourage them ( 17 August 2013, p 38 ). Nigel Curtis of the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne and the University of Melbourne, …

I was pleased to see the variety of speakers depicted in your ad for New Scientist Live (25 August). It is great to see the scientific community become more inclusive and thereby enriched and inspirational. However, I am disturbed by the cartoon accompanying Ian Angus's comment on population ( 25 August, p 22 ). All …

Michael Marshall reports that a team from the China University of Geosciences in Beijing has found evidence of the 11-year solar sunspot cycle in Precambrian sedimentary rocks of south China ( 18 August, p 6 ). More than 50 years ago, Roger Anderson observed not only the 11-year cycle, but also resonances at 5.5 and …

Michael Brooks introduces us to the search for a particle that combines an axion and a flavon – an axiflavon – or a combination of this plus a Higgs, or some more convoluted combination ( 18 August, p 28 ). This reminded me of reading in New Scientist in the mid-1960s of the search for …

Bob Holmes describes the importance of yeast to the flavour of alcoholic drinks ( 18 August, p 32 ). This brings to mind a weekly event in the laboratory of the brewery in Edinburgh where I began my career in the 1960s. The company owned several breweries throughout the UK, which all produced the same …

Rowan Hooper was disappointed by talks at the International Dream Conference ( 14 July, p 10 ). I share his sceptical opinion of parapsychology. But isn't it just as dangerous to dismiss hypotheses simply because they are difficult or impossible to prove via the scientific method? Say someone has anecdotal dream-related experiences that cannot be …

Joshua Howgego writes that the money in commercial bank accounts, which makes up roughly 97 per cent of the money used in the economy, is either created by interest on loans made by that institution, or by you when you make a deposit ( 25 August, p 36 ). Perhaps surprisingly, this is wrong. As …

Howgego discusses the risks of a cashless society . Another very significant aspect is a possible discriminatory effect. There seems to be a convenient assumption by both governments and commercial players that everyone is capable of using electronic devices and can understand what assets they have in remote ledgers. This ignores ageing, intellectual or physical …

You report that people paired with mean, negative robots performed a task faster and better than those working alongside kind, positive ones ( 25 August, p 16 ). There is at least one other interpretation. I used to get tasks done more efficiently when around negative colleagues because I would be in their presence for …

John Sherlock doubts the capacity of the Totten glacier in Antarctica to raise sea levels by more than 3 metres and you respond that its catchment area is more than 500,000 square kilometres (Letters, 1 September ). But the world's oceans cover 350 million square kilometres. I calculate that unless the average thickness of this …