Letters to the Editor
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19561
Your article made the minimization of aflatoxins in peanuts sound beneficial until the recommendation to treat the ground beneath the peanut pallets with insecticides. This will induce harm to the soil wildlife on which African farmers and villagers are dependent and to any nearby water sources. It will also add a toxic substance to the […]
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19560
Your article refers to the Earth’s magnetic field only at very long wavelengths. In over 70 years’ exposure to science, I have never heard of our magnetic field having wavelengths. Please elaborate. Kenneth E. StoneCherryvale, Kan. Looking at Earth’s magnetic field at long wavelengths is analogous to looking at a picture in low resolution, says […]
- Humans
Letters from the June 11, 2005, issue of Science News
Dim prospects To a layman like me, it seems almost impossible that light reflected from a body that lies “much farther from the star than Pluto does from the sun” could be seen from Earth at a distance of 450 light years, when Pluto, only 6 light hours away, reflects so little light to Earth […]
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19559
It was interesting to read of processing mundane noise to produce an ultrasound image of the geology of Los Angeles. A big question in the state is the deep structure of San Francisco Bay. Clearly, the bay and the valleys extending to its northwest and southeast form a rift valley. But it’s difficult to observe […]
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19558
This article seems determined to impose (not very) modern cultural views on data that do not support them. Females would have benefited from a male “bringing home food”?! To the best of our knowledge Australopithecus afarensis was a foraging species, members of all ages and both sexes eating what they found as they found it. […]
- Humans
Letters from the June 4, 2005, issue of Science News
Stem winder “Full Stem Ahead” (SN: 4/2/05, p. 218) showed several reasons why stem cell research is a good thing: Stem cells from embryos might cure cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and many other diseases. But the article should have included the fact that stem cells may help with transplanting organs. Stem cells may […]
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19557
This article reads as if there is something to be alarmed about. By selectively catching large fish, we have reduced “the mean size [of food fish to] one-fifth of what it was.” This is not cause for alarm. It is cause for a decision: What do we want, small fish or large fish? Humans are […]
- Humans
Letters from the May 28, 2005, issue of Science News
Hunger pangs I was interested to read about factors influencing the “hunger hormone’s”—ghrelin’s—effectiveness (“Still Hungry?” SN: 4/2/05, p. 216). One factor not considered but seemingly very significant is physical activity. I suggest that it is more useful to understand and encourage the positive effects of physical activity on overall well-being than to develop new drugs […]
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19556
There is information that when we imagine things, we activate some of the same brain mechanisms as when we experience them physically. It would be interesting to know whether imagining the scent of a food that one likes “lights up the brain” as actually smelling that food does. Seems like a reasonable description of what […]
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19555
Maybe there was a belch of hydrogen sulfide involved in the Permian extinctions. However, did it leave some geological trace, as did the vast Siberian outpourings of magma, both on land and in the sea, over the course of a million years during the period? Stan SkirvinScottsdale, Ariz. The ocean venting proposed by Lee Kump’s […]
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19554
This article features yet another study making summary statements on what is obviously inadequate sampling. Most of the language families from California to Alaska have not been represented in any DNA studies. Those of us who study cultures on the northwest coast of America see the enormous complexities of cultures in this area. Outdated and […]
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19553
This article should also point out that only a very thick atmosphere could have allowed the surface temperature to be high while the radiation output from the sun was only 70 percent that at the present. J. Thomas BaylorAustin, Texas Theorists agree that the atmosphere of Mars was thicker when the planet was wetter. They’re […]
