Letters archive

The idea of UK National Lottery ticket numbers that mathematically guarantee a win of some kind every time you play perked my interest. But on second thoughts, the numbers given in the article would be the very ones I would avoid as, in the extremely unlikely event of any of the tickets matching the jackpot, …

Amid record-breaking warmth in parts of the world, including a rise in sea temperatures, I revisited a discussion with my husband from a few years ago – we are both retired scientists. Why not use thermodynamic systems to get heat from the seas to generate electricity and heat local homes? This could provide significant cooling …

"A shot of reality" painted a necessary picture of the problem of short-term weight-loss solutions. However, the link between being overweight and serious negative health outcomes remains questionable. Relatively recent evidence suggests there is no difference in mortality risk until either end of the BMI scale, with people in the "overweight" category having the healthiest …

Your report on the problem of raw sewage discharges into rivers during heavy rain indicates one solution is to "green" paved areas in towns to cut runoff. Across the road from me, yet another garden is being paved for car parking. There are few front gardens left on many roads, which is a huge loss …

Dan Levitt writes about the issue of cognitive bias in science. Certainly, most researchers have a problem with this that can adversely affect their work. Most would admit, perhaps with embarrassment and annoyance, that they missed something in the belief that "it couldn't work" ( 5 August, p 21 ). However, the problem is endemic …

I have to disagree with Levitt on one point. In my field, cell biology, he claims that the interior of the cell, the cytoplasm, was believed to be just a "biochemical bog" a century ago. But chloroplasts, organelles that carry out photosynthesis in plant cells, were discovered far earlier than that. Mitochondria, the so-called powerhouses …

You report the latest instance of hope in the efforts to develop nuclear fusion as a viable power source for our societies, in this case involving a set-up in which more energy emerged from a fusion reactor in the US than was put into it, so-called ignition ( 12 August, p 13 ). You say …

Cooling turtle nests with a bit of cold seawater, in order to shift the temperature-dependent sex ratio of the resulting hatchlings, is an intriguingly simple solution to the misalignment of this system due to climate change ( 29 July, p 16 ). However, there is a risk to this strategy that isn't mentioned: it would …

When it comes to climate change, our roofs are considered part of the problem and part of the solution. My house is topped with Welsh slate, which I estimate absorbs more than 80 per cent of incident solar radiation. On a sunny day, it heats up dramatically and, of course, re-radiates the absorbed energy at …

Georgina Skipper is quite right, herring gulls are the intellectual equals of corvids in many respects. I observed them on Margate beach in the UK dropping crustaceans and molluscs to access the contents well before carrion crows hit the news for similar activity. The persistence of the gulls was remarkable ( Letters, 12 August ). …