Letters to the Editor
-
19521
Your article appears to suggest that healing of old people could be promoted by young people’s blood. Perhaps there is something to the Dracula story after all. Young people give blood for money. Anything known about the effect of transfusions on old people? Bill HawkinsMinneapolis, Minn. The mice in this experiment exchanged far more blood […]
- Humans
Letters from the February 26, 2005, issue of Science News
Let’s move it, people When I read of the Hubble Space Telescope–repair controversy (“People, Not Robots: Panel favors shuttle mission to Hubble,” SN: 12/18&25/04, p. 388; “Lean Times: Proposed budget keeps science spending slim,” SN: 2/12/05, p. 102), this question comes to mind: Why can’t an unmanned, powered vehicle latch on to Hubble and fly […]
-
19520
Early in our history, U.S. citizens ate bushmeat. We hunted deer, bear, squirrel, rabbit, possum, turkey, pheasant, armadillo, and other wild game. We hunted because it was easier to hunt than to earn the money necessary to buy meat. We diminished our supply of wild game. Africans are simply doing what we used to do. […]
-
19519
Another hypothesis for the polish on the Stone Age corundum ax head is that the Stone Age people never had absolutely pure corundum, which indeed would have required diamond to polish. It is possible that these people used one grade of corundum to make the ax head and a slightly harder grade to polish it. […]
- Humans
Letters from the February 19, 2005, issue of Science News
Negative thinking The article “Sweet Glow: Nanotube sensor brightens path to glucose detection” (SN: 1/1/05, p. 3) mentions “ferricyanide, an electron-hungry molecule.” This puzzled me no end. Aren’t ferricyanide molecules, unlike their ions, electrically neutral? I’m trying to visualize ravenous molecules gobbling up innocent electrons. Ernest NussbaumBethesda, Md. Ferricyanide is indeed an ion, with a […]
-
19518
This article mentions several possible triggers for migraines, with a patent foramen ovale being one. There is also the change-in-weather trigger, from which I suffer. All the symptoms mentioned in the article could cause a fairly sudden change in blood pressure. A weather-related change in barometric pressure might have the same effect. I wonder if […]
-
19517
This article overlooks an immeasurable long-term cost of whole-body computed tomography scans: the potential cancers induced by high-dose radiation. Aggressive marketing of CT scans without full disclosure of the risk is unethical and should be illegal. Nancy EvansSan Francisco, Calif.
- Humans
Letters from the February 12, 2005, issue of Science News
Short end of the chromosome Since “women with chronically ill children generally reported more stress” and since “there was a very striking connection between stress and telomere length” (“Stressed to Death: Mental tension ages cells,” SN: 12/4/04, p. 355), isn’t it probable that there is a strong connection between telomere length and becoming the parent […]
-
19516
When I read of the Hubble Space Telescope–repair controversy (“People, Not Robots: Panel favors shuttle mission to Hubble,” SN: 12/18&25/04, p. 388; and this article), this question comes to mind: Why can’t an unmanned, powered vehicle latch on to Hubble and fly it to the International Space Station, where it could be repaired by the […]
-
19515
On reading about the interesting research on droplets in this article, I noticed that the two droplets shown in the photos at the moment of first contact have different shapes. In air at normal pressure, the droplet has the characteristic hamburger-bun shape. In contrast, the droplet at reduced pressure is spherical, or nearly so. Can […]
-
19514
The work relating differences in intelligence scores to the “honing of spatial sensibilities” in Chinese readers sounds worthy of continued study. J. Philippe Rushton’s studies, on the other hand, sound fallacious. His claim that Chinese children adopted by U.S. parents also tend to score higher ignores the fact that such families tend overwhelmingly to be […]
-
19513
Many years ago, I heard about one clever wind-energy–storage system. A fellow in Pennsylvania purchased a surplus railroad tank car and buried it on his farm. A nearby windmill-powered compressor pumped air into the tank, which could store an enormous amount of compressed air. The fellow used it to power air tools in his carpenter […]
