Letters to the Editor

19310

Like most environmental journalism, the article describes the problem well but not the solution. It would be useful if information about native landscaping were included in this article as an alternative to non-native species. Frank HasslerChampaign, Ill. Your interesting piece on invasive plants touched upon, but otherwise ignored, mycoherbicides for control of noxious weeds. Mycoherbicides, […]

19309

This article on the Ebola virus’ deadly glycoprotein was frightening enough, but even more terrifying to me was the fact that the researchers had genetically engineered a cold virus, one of the most easily transmitted and successful viruses on the planet, to carry the Ebola glycoprotein. I hope that modified virus never escapes the laboratory, […]

19233

Good grief, I can’t believe this is a surprise that dinosaurs were cannibals. Frogs eat frogs. Rabbits eat their young. We can go on for quite a time enumerating mammals (including people), reptiles, birds, and insects that eat their own. The surprise is finding ones that aren’t cannibals. Barbara BennettPreston, Md.

19163

Why has so much focus been placed on protecting us against the threat of a smallpox outbreak when a terrorist could choose to release a different infectious disease? Wouldn’t it be wiser to discuss ways to respond to and contain any unknown disease? More public awareness of this possibility would prevent the false sense of […]

19232

The understanding that traditional wisdom calls for detoxifying these legumes coupled with the fact that they are eaten nonetheless is indeed sad. The work of the agricultural scientists in making this staple safe to eat is vital. There is evident need for help from social science to get safe food practices accepted in the population. […]

19308

This article contains a common misconception about the greenhouse effect. It states, “The newly detected gas is chemically similar to sulfur hexafluoride–another strong absorber of solar radiation . . .” (emphasis mine). While this statement may be true, it is irrelevant to the greenhouse efficiency of a gas. The mechanism of the greenhouse effect involves […]

19307

Tyrannosaurus rex ‘s environment may have provided sufficient carrion for the giant to survive as a scavenger, and studies of its ratio of leg-muscle mass to body mass suggest that it wasn’t speedy enough to be an efficient predator. But this may be only how it ended its life. It didn’t hatch from the egg […]

19231

Your article left me wondering. If the drug could help an allergic person eat up to 24 peanuts, it really isn’t a complete cure, is it? I guess I’ll just keep on avoiding all peanut products and their derivatives. Oh, well. Bob BeckettCollegedale, Tenn.

19230

I read this article with both amazement and bemusement. The technique you describe has been in practice for decades, but without a computer. Samuel T. Orton realized that dyslexics needed to be explicitly taught letter-sound relationships, a knowledge that most of us acquire automatically. I have been in private practice as an educational therapist for […]

19229

The hominid dating puzzle is continually being pieced together due to interdisciplinary work between anthropologists and geologists. I would note, however, that radiation decays (not accumulates) at a known rate in buried minerals, per the radiation half-life law. Bruce M. RuckerBerkeley, Calif.

19228

I object to the glib use of the phrase “time reversal” in this article. Time is a sequential history of events and is not reversible. What the researchers are accomplishing is a clever resequencing of events, roughly analogous to playing a strip of movie film backwards, an event that I’m sure you will agree occurs […]

19306

Your article ends with the claim that “a color-blind person and a noncarrier have no chance of having a color-blind child.” Yet as I recall from basic biology class, color blindness is considered a prime example of a sex-linked trait, which makes the above statement untrue. Carried on the X chromosome, the trait would manifest […]