Letters to the Editor
- Humans
Letters from the May 5, 2007, issue of Science News
Mere kats? “Science behind the Soap Opera” (SN: 3/3/07, p. 138) shows that meerkats bear an uncanny resemblance to human beings. We, too, have an innate sense of responsibility for our group and individually commit acts of unspeakable violence. John HagerhorstFrederick, Md. Just a dram “Natural-Born Addicts: Brain differences may herald drug addiction” (SN: 3/3/07, […]
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19827
I was surprised that the findings on the brain’s processing of information and discerning of relationships would come as a surprise. I have long been aware of, and have even come to count on, the fact that a surprising degree of insight and clarity often comes in the morning after having fallen asleep the night […]
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19826
No mention was made in this article of the possibility that, being so close to its star and having a 13-day orbital period, the planet would keep the same surface to the star. Having one side baked by unrelenting sunlight and the other side frozen would leave only a narrow ring between eternal day and […]
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19825
The NASA researchers baffled in this article by the hexagonal shape in Saturn’s soupy atmosphere at its northern pole should read “As waters part, polygons appear” (SN: 6/3/06, p. 348). It is worth investigating whether there is a similar phenomenon—I still suspect some sort of standing sine wave effect—at work in both cases. Ellery FrahmMinneapolis, […]
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19824
The lines on the cave ceilings remind me very much of what a large pot of finger paint looks like after children extract what they want to draw with. I could easily see my children (especially when younger) drawing on their own faces and bodies all kinds of designs using the colored clay. Dan WoitulewiczDetroit, […]
- Humans
Letters from the April 28, 2007, issue of Science News
Long ago gas Finding CO2 levels that are 2,500 times higher in 5,000-year-old fulgurites than in modern samples, scientists have speculated that the extra CO2 resulted from vaporization of organic material by lightning (“Stroke of Good Fortune: A wealth of data from petrified lightning,” SN: 2/17/07, p. 101). Could some of this gas reflect elevated […]
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19823
Your article posits that every 64 million years a mass die-off occurs due to increased cosmic rays. When will the cosmic rays again be at their maximum? Robert RichardsMetairie, La. The article failed to mention when the next cosmic-ray bath is due. Now, I’m worried that it might be so imminent that Science News didn’t […]
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19822
In this article, an association is found between young offenders being tried as adults and increased criminal offenses later. The implication is made that one thing causes the other. Perhaps a better interpretation of the data would be that, because not every young offender is treated as an adult, the system is good at picking […]
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19821
The title of this article exemplifies the problem. By law, the official and preferred system of measurement for all U.S. activities is SI, or the modern metric system. We too often forget that a gram of prevention is worth three kilograms of cure. Education reform at all levels needs to model and teach SI units. […]
- Humans
Letters from the April 21, 2007, issue of Science News
How the West isn’t one The author of “Why So Dry? Ocean temperatures alone don’t explain droughts” (SN: 2/10/07, p. 84), seems to feel, like most other writers do, that “the western United States” properly covers all geographical bases. Believe me, the Pacific Northwest is anything but dry. One other point about geography: Weather phenomena, […]
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19820
The existence of ancient proteins is no surprise. Evidence of remnants of durable, skeleton-associated proteins such as collagen are not uncommon in the fossil record long before Tyrannosaurus rex. For example, remains of bivalve ligaments are known from the mid-Ordovician, over 400 million years ago. Other durable but pliable organic materials, such as protist resting […]
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19819
I was interested to read in this article that running portable generators caused carbon monoxide poisoning, presumably by improper fuel burning. A good solution to this problem is to use a generator that is designed for much lower emissions. I use my Toyota Prius as an emergency generator that can power my house! It can […]
