Letters archive

Michael Marshall's look at the Mediterranean diet made one key observation I wish he had expanded on. He described how one scientist said different regions of the world may have their own optimum diet. This is what longevity researcher Dan Buettner found in his study of so-called blue zones, where there are high levels of …

As a psychologist and a mother who struggled in the early months of my babies' lives in the isolation of suburban Australia, I found Tina Knezevic's article on postnatal anxiety very interesting ( 6 January, p 40 ). While research into the biological causes of this will continue to make progress, I agree that the …

You point out that electricity shortages will probably develop during peak periods in areas of North America, in part due to the lack of new transmission lines to connect new sources of renewable power to population centres. There are similar concerns in Australia ( 6 January, p 13 ). However, little has been written about …

I was interested to read about some potential consequences should dark matter consist of "mirror matter". However, if this exists as a mirror duplicate of all particles and the electromagnetic, weak and strong forces, I question why gravity would be the same for mirror matter as for conventional matter, which it would have to be …

The beginning of a new epoch has often been defined as when, in a continually deposited sequence of sedimentary rock, an assemblage of animals largely disappears, allowing a new assemblage to evolve, usually evidenced by fossils. The implication is that some catastrophic event wiped out much of the older group ( 30 December 2023, p …

Hannah Ritchie highlights the progress made in developing and deploying new energy sources and more efficient machines, but while such headway is welcome, every silver lining has a cloud ( 30 December 2023, p 34 ). Most of the graphs published with the story are of carbon dioxide per person, but what matters is total …

I suggest we start stating global average temperature rises in millikelvin instead of degrees Celsius, in which case we would refer to our strictest global warming target as a 1500 mK rise. This sounds more serious than 1.5°C, so might persuade far more people to take serious notice of, and act more quickly on, the …

You report that people with a severe covid-19 infection are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia, suggesting that covid-19 heightens the risk of this condition ( 13 January, p 16 ). Alternatively, could people with undiagnosed early schizophrenia be more likely to catch covid-19, perhaps due to some characteristic behaviours?

Cheaper goods in local shops, and so on, is only tinkering at the edges of the problem of excessive car use. Modern urban areas are designed, and modern life is run, with the expectation of access to motor vehicles. Perhaps motorists should pay the real costs of having a car (building infrastructure and the environmental …

The possibility of North American electricity shortages, partly as the rollout of renewables fails to keep pace with demand, highlights what is probably the biggest stumbling block to a zero-carbon future. It is clear we have very little chance of replacing every fossil joule with a renewable joule. Therefore, we have no choice but to …