Letters to the Editor
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Letters
Cartilage risk I enjoyed Nathan Seppa’s article “Cartilage creation,” (SN: 8/11/12, p. 22) about attempts to generate new cartilage from somatic stem cells. He writes that cartilage evolved “in ancestors who lived shorter lives, carried less body weight and roamed an unpaved world.” Implications: The risk of osteoarthritis increases with age, body weight and impact […]
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Letters
Sun’s speed unclear Sun’s speed unclear In “Sun’s shock wave goes missing” (SN: 6/16/12, p. 17), Nadia Drake reports the speed of the sun through space at 83,500 kilometers per hour, or roughly 11,000 km/h slower than previously thought. Yet in the same issue (“At home in the universe,” p. 22), Alexandra Witze reports the […]
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Letters
Higgs affects inertia, not gravity In the articles on the Higgs field in the July 28 issue, the Higgs boson was described as giving rise to the mass and therefore the inertia of particles, and the articles said the Higgs causes particles to “resist motion.” Newton’s first law states that inertia or mass is the […]
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Letters
Galactic collisions explained Perhaps you can explain why Andromeda and the Milky Way are going to collide “Milky Way will be hit head-on,” (SN: 7/14/12, p. 10). Galaxies, as is always written, are rushing away from each other at ever-increasing speeds. How do things collide when there is never anything to collide with? Either galaxies are […]
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Letters
Shopping standards shift with age In “When good moods go decisively bad” (SN: 6/16/12, p. 10), researchers assume that their 70-year-old study participants would be as interested as their 20-something counterparts in finding up to 40 prices on 60 products in an Internet shopping exercise. When the septuagenarians fail to choose the cheapest product, the […]
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Letters
Redesigning flu mortality In “Designer flu” (SN: 6/2/12, p. 20), researcher Michael Osterholmis quoted as saying that even if the actual kill rate of H5N1 is 20 times lower than the current estimate of 59 percent, H5N1 would still have a mortality rate that “far exceeds” that of the 1918 flu. Wikipedia gives a 1918 […]
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Letters
Dark matter inspiration On reading Tom Siegfried’s editorial “Dark matter nothing to fear, if it’s there or not” (SN: 5/19/12, p. 2):As into the universe I did stare I met a particle that wasn’t there It wasn’t there again today Oh, I wish it would go away.Tom Derderian, Winthrop, Mass. Reality bits Regarding “Bits of […]
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Letters
Information as substrate In a recent article (“Enriched with information,” SN: 3/10/12, p. 22), you point out that some researchers consider consciousness to be a form of information. In another (“Bits of reality,” SN: 4/7/12, p. 26), you mention that increasing numbers of physicists are coming to regard information as the basic “stuff” from which […]
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Letters
Visions spark debate In “Visions for all” (SN: 4/7/12, p. 22), researchers found that functioning people who “hallucinated” God were high on the “absorption” scale and that 4 percent of people studied reported hallucinations. This reminded me that 4 percent of the population is grade V hypnotizable. All of these superhypnotizable people rate very high […]
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Letters
Happy 90th, Science News My father has generously given a subscription of Science News to me since I was small. In the ’60s I received a package in the mail each month containing science experiment materials and directions. So cool! We celebrated Dad’s 90th birthday in April. He was an aeronautic engineer; I’m an architect. […]
