Letters to the Editor

18967

Regarding “Neandertals show ancient signs of caring,” it seems to me that rather than “pounding, chopping, or cooking tougher food” for a friend or relative, these kindly Neandertals probably just masticated a mouthful before passing it on. This is something people do all over the world. Sharon Rudahl Los Angeles, Calif.

18972

Several key ideas seem missing from “Life on the edge”: 1) the fundamental nature of overpopulation and how it combines with technology to drive mass extinction; 2) the concept of functional extinction, an example being the decimated numbers and diminished range of elephants; and 3) a reasonable extrapolation of human technology. The statement that our […]

18966

One cannot be around cats long without observing that they have intelligence and personalities nearly as complex and diverse as people do. They communicate with each other and people, both verbally and with body language. They have preferences for whom they associate with, both human and feline, and those can change. I think that complexity […]

18965

The article says that evidence of past climate variations in Antarctica may invalidate global warming as a cause for the recent demise of several ice shelves in that area. Isn’t the length of time over which the changes occurred the critical thing? If the changes are occurring over roughly the same time span as they […]

18971

In the photograph of X-ray jets and point sources in the galaxy Centaurus A, shown in “Shocks jolt jet set galaxy, X rays reveal,” many of the point sources seem to be regularly spaced along arcs. The pattern is reminiscent of an X-ray diffraction pattern from a crystal (a microscopic event mirrored here on a […]

18970

“Vaccine verity” describes several parents who refuse to get their children vaccinated, citing rumors. These people are gambling in a casino they don’t understand. Since the risk of their child developing a serious disease is still low, they will no doubt say, “See, vaccination isn’t necessary.” But parents who bet against vaccines and lost might […]

18964

Although the physiological basis and purpose of dreams may be uncertain, we need to recall that Freud was more interested in what his patients said about their dreams than in the dream content itself. Humans are inveterate interpreters. We are constantly reading our surroundings, our inner states, even our pasts and futures. Those interpretations often […]

18963

I was distressed to read that Science News thinks there are no steroid hormone receptors in insects. Granted, their reproduction is not regulated by steroids, but ecdysone, the molting hormone, is certainly a steroid. There is some evidence that juvenile hormone, the hormone that regulates development and sometimes reproduction, acts through a steroidlike-receptor pathway. Other […]

18939

I am writing in response to an article in the July 28 issue, “Having gathered moss, water drops roll.” You should have taken the time to find out that Lycopodium is not a moss. It’s true that a common name for the plant is club moss, but Lycopodium is in the division Lycophyta, sometimes called […]

18938

In grad school, I read and learned from Ernst Mayr’s Populations, Species, and Evolution (1963, 1970, Harvard University Press). I think that “Alarming butterflies and go-getter fish” extremely simplifies Mayr’s position on speciation. The article says that Mayr focuses solely on geographic separation, “allopathic speciation.” This ignores the fact that Mayr discussed a variety of […]

18937

Your story on trace amines in the brain neglected to mention the most interesting and well-studied of these, the powerful endogenous hallucinogen N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT). DMTs role in endogenous psychosis was studied intensively in the 1960s, before research with these drugs became so controversial. We recently subjected DMT to intensive study in a group of normal […]

18936

I am grateful to Science News for having achieved with your words what no doctor has managed in the past 20 years: cured my diabetes. I now find that my average blood sugar falls safely within the range 80 to 240 milligrams per deciliter cited in the article as normal. On the strength of this […]