Letters to the Editor

19008

Typically, prescriptions come from pharmacies with warnings of harmful interactions with other drugs. However, in this article, pediatricians from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia report a dearth of information about safety or effectiveness of the stimulant Ritalin for kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder also being given nonstimulant psychoactive drugs. In southeastern Virginia, a pediatric psychologist found […]

19007

Immersive visualization environments such as CAVES can’t function without graphics supercomputers. Your article omitted the unifying factor behind all of its examples: the supercomputing power that made these environments possible. SGI is the company that provides the computer power behind the installations cited in the article. Chodi McReynolds, SGIMountain View, Calif.

19063

This article assumes that changes in the way the brain handles verbal responses are due to an inevitable “physical maturation.” I wonder to what extent these brain changes (and many others) are a side effect of literacy and what exactly are the trade-offs for learning how to read and write. This study could be made […]

19062

In this article, it struck me that the helicopter lander’s blades might be helped considerably by their undersides’ being dimpled like a golf ball. Those dimples supply significant lift during a ball’s flight. The helicopter wings would seem to benefit in the same way. I suspect that the dimples near the outer radius might be […]

19006

Linguistic cladistics? Based on vocabulary? Linguistic froth, such as loan words from other languages, frequently becomes a source of heated debate. The deep structures of language that can provide a relatively stable field for analysis are more subtle. These include verb-substantive-object order, verbs of giving or receiving, noun declensions, and the like. But even these […]

19005

Your article reports that, after infancy, humans have trouble recognizing facial differences between members of other species. Many of us commonly observe that people of other races than ourselves “all look alike” to us. Could this stem from lack of early exposure to others? Anecdotally, my wife, raised in a multiracial environment, has far less […]

19004

This article reported surprise in some at the power of placebos to improve depression. From a psychological perspective, the antidote to depression involves increasing experiences of nurturance and hope in a person anticipating a future that’s empty and depleting. What’s a placebo but food that a depressed person hopes will fix things? Could it possibly […]

19061

In this article it was speculated that calorie restriction reduces the production of free radicals. We have found that food deprivation almost doubles concentrations of melatonin in various parts of the gastrointestinal system. Melatonin, a very potent scavenger of free radicals, has increased the lifespan of mice in several studies. It could be that the […]

19060

I agree that depression and smoking go together for a variety of physiological reasons, and it’s clear that people use nicotine to self-medicate. But your article’s title is unfortunate since we are treating people at our facility for nicotine-patch and nicotine-gum addiction. Our facility deals continuously with well-meaning attempts to respond to addiction, anxiety, and […]

19003

This article says, “While tornadoes are most common on the Great Plains and throughout the Mississippi River valley, they can occur almost anywhere in the United States.” Are tornadoes unique or more common in North America than elsewhere? Ruth HousmanNewton Center, Mass. Tornadoes have been spotted on every continent except Antarctica, says Harold Brooks of […]

19002

This article implies that the universe has a beginning and maybe an end. That seems to be a leap. I think we should not limit our thinking to a universe that was created at some point by a Big Bang or a Supreme Being. The facts in the article point to an event (maybe the […]

19059

Ian Gotlib doesn’t disprove “clinical lore” that depressed individuals often cry. People who are depressed typically become preoccupied with their faults and shortcomings and less interested in the world, much less compassionate for others. That the study described finds that some people who are depressed do not cry in response to another’s sad situation doesn’t […]