Letters to the Editor

19278

The article states that “trichromacy originally evolved for picking out the most nutritious leaves.” I teach high school students to avoid this kind of statement in regard to evolution. The trait arose by accident (nicely explained in the article) and then became more abundant in the population because it conferred an advantage on the organisms […]

19277

In the era before global positioning system (GPS) instruments, determining longitude was difficult since it required a fairly accurate clock, in addition to a sextant. I was under the impression that one of the clocks Lewis and Clark used was Jupiter’s moon Io, which would have made them pretty sophisticated navigators. Michael D. DelanoBrooklyn, N.Y. […]

19345

The article states that a loss of 100,000 cubic kilometers of ice would result in a half-meter rise in sea level. That means that if the 32 million km3 polar ice pack melts, sea levels will rise 160 meters. But I have always heard a figure of around 50 feet. Being on a small island […]

19276

Your article makes a common error. Whereas chicken pox is caused by one virus, a “cold” is a set of symptoms that can be caused by more than 200 distinct viruses. A better example for short-term immunity might have been pertussis or tetanus. Jennifer L. Bankers-FulbrightMayo ClinicRochester, Minn.

19344

My attention was immediately drawn to this article. You see, in the late 1970s, as a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, I developed a snake-tethering technique with the assistance of one of the campus veterinarians, Scott E. McDonald. The article falsely attributes rattlesnake leashing to others. David F. HennessySacramento, Calif. Yes, David […]

19275

The reporting of the activity surrounding the tragic loss of Columbia continues to anger me. Columbia was lost because of program ignorance of a flight condition that should not have been permitted to exist or continue. It is a cruel and self-serving action to criticize a wonderful piece of engineering because its operators have been […]

19274

I suggest that we view the results described in this article as indicating that humans frequently act like monkeys, not vice versa. Further, what is being measured as fairness may better be seen as the basis for envy and greed. It is not surprising that monkeys have the ability to display these tendencies, but they […]

19343

What would sessile organisms do with information provided by the light from “their meals?” Just because spicules on a sea sponge transmit photons doesn’t mean that that’s their function. David ConteyBoulder, Colo. Each Euplectella sponge houses a pair of bioluminescent shrimp. The researchers speculate that the spicules transmit the shrimps’ light into the sponge’s surroundings. […]

19342

In your article on experimental hints of a new subatomic particle, three values are quoted for a particular charge-parity violation, all with error bar. Given the large uncertainties in two of these, the three are undistinguishable. Yet you claim that they “don’t agree.” Does no one look at error bars any more? R.A. WilliamsLos Alamos, […]

18897

It’s very appealing to think that a noninvasive test could pick up the earliest signs of cancers or cardiovascular disease. Despite passionate testimonials of how whole-body CT scanning “saved my life,” we don’t know what the tumors found really would have done. We don’t know that these patients’ lives were improved, much less saved. In […]

19349

The heading of this article should have been “The body generates a feeling of the brain.” The whole idea of Antonio R. Damasio’s theory is that bodily reactions precede brain awareness or a person’s awareness of a specific emotion. William Fudge Dania, Fla. Damasio’s theory is that the brain interprets bodily reactions linked to emotions […]

19348

Is it within the realm of feasibility that electrons possess an underlying quarklike structure in the manner of protons and neutrons? The hypothesis that electrons can be subdivided into smaller particles termed “electrinos” offers an ideal experimental opportunity to test this concept. Each contingent of such particles could be subjected to repeated expansions into ever […]