Letters to the Editor
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19626
It seems to me irresponsible even to float the idea, as neurologist David M. Holtzman does in this article, of chemically suppressing idle thought and daydreaming in people. Who can claim a basis for clinical discrimination of “bad” idle thought and daydreaming from the “idle thought” of intuitive problem solving and poetic imagination? More of […]
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19625
This article brought a strange conundrum to mind. If Paleolithic man was in Australia 40,000 years ago, why were the aboriginal people still living in the Stone Age when the first Europeans arrived? There were advanced cultures in the Americas by 100 B.C.E., whose ancestors had arrived by 12,000 to 15,000 years ago. Norbert EdwardsBuffalo, […]
- Humans
Letters from the December 24 & 31, 2005, issue of Science News
Bends, the truth I very much enjoyed “Cool Birds” (SN: 10/22/05, p. 266). What struck me, however, was a passage that mentioned the “bird’s resistance to the bends” and the researchers’ alleged inability to explain that. As a scuba diver, I know that the bends, or decompression sickness, is caused by breathing compressed air underwater. […]
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19624
Presumably, you were attempting to be funny in this article, but the bias was too obvious, straight out of the anti–intelligent design talking points. Instead of ridicule, could we get a spirited exchange from the best minds on both sides? David F. CoppedgeNewhall, Calif. While I’m extremely skeptical of the claims that some intelligent design […]
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19623
This fine piece about invasive sea squirts states that the critters maintain an unappetizing surface pH of 2. Does this make these mats harmful to touch? Andrew J. DolsonRichmond, Va. Robert Whitlatch of the University of Connecticut, who grows Didemnum in the lab, says it’s fine to handle for short periods of time, “though I […]
- Humans
Letters from the December 17, 2005, issue of Science News
C plus Ewan Cameron, who in 1971 began to collaborate with Linus Pauling on vitamin C and cancer, typically initiated patients with 10 grams per day of vitamin C given intravenously for about 2 weeks, followed by an oral dosage continued indefinitely. The two Mayo Clinic trials referred to in “Vitamin C may treat cancer […]
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19622
I’m pleased that images are now available to prove that self-control over pain works. Actually, I and many other moms could have helped the researchers. During childbirth, we simply focused on various breathing techniques and discovered that the pain became manageable or disappeared. I’ve continued to use these breathing techniques in the dentist’s chair for […]
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19621
This article raises the question of how oxygen levels have changed over the past 2 centuries, when carbon dioxide has been increasing. John MillsDecatur, Ala. There is a problem in this interesting article. The graph of oxygen content versus time doesn’t agree with the text. Specific example: “About 255 million years ago … the oxygen […]
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19620
While it is extraordinary that an unprotected insect larva survives gut passage, it is not the first demonstration that insects may be carried inside of birds. The larvae of phytophagous wasps living inside the seeds of the multiflora rose pass unharmed through the guts of mockingbirds. C.A. NalepaRaleigh, N.C.
- Humans
Gerald F. Tape (1915–2005)
Gerald Tape, who served on the Science Service Board of Trustees for more than 30 years, died Nov. 20.
- Humans
Letters from the December 10, 2005, issue of Science News
Big Bang bashing The recent discovery of “mature” galaxies at distances corresponding to the remote cosmic past (“Crisis in the Cosmos? Galaxy formation theory is in peril,” SN: 10/8/05, p. 235) threatens more than galaxy-formation theory. It threatens to shatter the increasingly fragile Big Bang paradigm by showing that the composition of the cosmos is […]
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19619
The lack of the linguistic device “recursion” in the Pirahã language might be more subtle than investigator Dan Everett suspects. I’ve heard examples of the sentence given as recursion—”When I finish eating, I want to speak to you”—rendered as a run-on sentence by speakers new to English and by lifelong speakers as well: “I finish […]
