Letters from the October 20, 2007, issue of Science News
By Science News
Well, read
Margit L. Bleecker appears to have discovered that those who score highly on reading tests also score highly on tests of memory, attention, and concentration (“How reading may protect the brain,” SN: 8/18/07, p. 110). I don’t find that highly surprising.
Ivan Mann
Hoover, Ala.
How it happened stance
“Alien Pizza, Anyone?” (SN: 8/18/07, p. 107) reviews efforts to explain why certain biological molecules tend to be all right-handed (e.g., sugars) or left-handed (e.g., amino acids). An explanation might lie in the evolution of enzymes involved in their synthesis. For example, the fact that some organisms produce predominantly d-alanine could be explained by random mutations for the opposite enzyme rather than a modification of some physical molecular-pairing mechanism.