Letters to the Editor

19129

This article is surely wrong in stating that the honey badger shuns meat. It aggressively attacks snakes and small mammals, as well as invades bees’ nests for honey. Derek WallentinsenSan Pedro, Calif. I was looking at the picture of the animal’s skull and wondering how large it is. There’s no scale for reference, so I […]

19128

Perhaps much of the controversy about evolutionary psychology devolves from forgetting some basic biological definitions. The gene is the unit of inheritance, which has a complex and imprecise relationship with the mature, viable organism that has inherited it. The unit of evolution is the individual organism. Therefore, the arguments about what is more important in […]

19127

It occurs to me that the techniques described in this article could have a wide variety of applications outside the biological sciences. For example, imprinted high-temperature ceramic materials could be used as less-expensive catalysts in automobiles and factory emission-controls systems. And filters made from such materials might be used to greatly reduce the quantity of […]

19126

Chocolate as heart medicine? Not for those hearts that chocolate’s caffeine sends bumping around in their ribcages, it isn’t. How about doing another article, this time on the deleterious effects of caffeine in various medical conditions (erratic hearts being just one)? Caroline VickreyBethlehem, Pa. To be told that research is putting chocolate with tea and […]

19125

It comes as no surprise to me that the findings of the study in this article may have implications for teaching kids to read better. Historic perspective suggests that rapidly presented acoustic and visual stimuli can benefit reading instruction, as Tallal asserts. We knew this process as “flash cards” when I was in school. Michele […]

19117

This article fails to make the distinction between the synthetic hormone progestin and the naturally occurring hormone progesterone. Progestin is medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA), which is manufactured from the urine of pregnant mares. MPA is 10 to 100 times more potent in its effects on women than natural progesterone and does not produce the same reactions […]

19121

As many wives of depressed men will tell you, depressed husbands don’t just mope around. They are often angry, upset, unpredictable, and short-tempered. Kind words are often followed by angry words and periods of self-pity. The wife lives in a minefield and often finds it difficult to believe or accept positive comments. There is very […]

19120

I read with interest your article on determining the origin of emeralds by measuring oxygen isotopes. While there is great potential for legal and historical applications, I think that using this method to determine the source of gems for purely economic reasons is ludicrous. At least for myself, whether an emerald originated in Austria or […]

19116

There are unfortunate multiple misuses of the word “artificial” in describing lab-grown diamonds in this article. In gemological use, artificial means imitation or not real. In fact, the lab-grown diamonds described in your article are real, synthetic diamonds with all the properties and chemistry of natural diamonds. Fred WardBethesda, Md.

19027

Around the early 1950s, during the intermissions of the Sunday radio broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, the announcer introduced recordings of extremely complicated birdcalls. The sounds were obviously somewhat comparable to various musical instruments and marvelously complex. Perhaps one of your bird librarians might be interested in finding the source of the early […]

19115

This article comments that factors other than drought, such as disease, may have been at work in accounting for the disappearance of some Anasazi groups. If it is found that disease was a major factor, it would be unprecedented. As far as has been determined, the Anasazi didn’t experience exotic, culture-busting pathogens until Columbus made […]

19114

In this article, you state, “The first Fermat number is 22+1, or 5,” and later, “the first four Fermat numbers are prime, but [among] the rest, up to and now including the 24th, none are prime.” Almost all number theorists consider the first Fermat prime to be F0 = 220 + 1 = 3, so […]