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You have recycled the old flawed reasoning why natural selection should not permit genes for longevity to exist (19 April, p 26) . According to this dogma, the pressures of natural selection should weed out genes for longevity because they confer no reproductive advantage after an organism has become too old to reproduce. Therefore (the …

I read with considerable interest the article on plasmonics (26 April, p 30) . Am I right in understanding that a telescope could work on the same principle – that is, the concentrating of light falling on a large area and having it pass through an aperture smaller than the wavelength of starlight, for instance? …

The fundamental biology in Archie Julien's letter about kidney damage is flawed (3 May, p 24) . Kidneys do not have to "filter out" additional substances such as phosphoric acid and sulphites. They merely filter in substances that are needed such as water, minerals and glucose. So people drinking soda pop are not in fact …

Several large pharmaceutical companies have been working on a contraceptive vaccine for dogs (19 April, p 19) , but to my knowledge they all abandoned it. Whichever technique you use to stimulate the response of the T-cells, you never reach 100 per cent. And while in a clinical trial a result of 98 per cent …

The appeal down the ages of throwing stuff in water as "votive offerings" may well be hard-wired, but I am uncertain that it is due to a magpie-like attraction to brilliance and shine (5 April, p 47) . My one-and-a-half-year-old twin sons have already discovered the thrill of throwing stones and other objects into water. …

Â鶹´«Ã½ readers are concerned about their email boxes being bombarded with spam, and the need for better filters (3 May, p 24) . However, they seem to have overlooked the benefits to be gained from all these spam messages. For instance, I have been accepting all offers made to me by email since the …

• In Comment & Analysis (3 May, p 23) we stated that 46 million people die each year from noncommunicable diseases. The correct figure is 33 million.

Surely if an asteroid is a porous pile of rubble (and hence not easily deflected by a nuclear explosion) it is likely to burn up and disintegrate as it enters the Earth's upper atmosphere. In such an event the Earth's environment will surely be affected, but not in the way of a direct impact. Earth …

Women have a wider field of vision than men. I can see quite well out of the corner of my eye, whereas my husband needs to turn his head to see objects at such wide angles. This is quite noticeable when he's driving and, take it from me, can be dangerous at times. This may …

You publish details of my patent application for a TV "reality game show" format, where contestants compete to win a baby, without offering any hint of the truth behind the application (Feedback, 26 April) . Two years ago I published a novel on the Internet, called Nobody's Child, about just such a reality show. I …

Your article about avoiding asteroid impacts seems to largely ignore timescales (19 April, p 36) . The time between discovery of even a fairly big new asteroid and an impact could be as little as a few years. From that one would have to subtract both preparation and intercept times, leaving precious little time for …

I was irritated by the article on girls needing wider computer screens to navigate in virtual environments (19 April, p 16) . While I think it is entirely likely that women do perform better with wider screens, it is highly unlikely that this has the evolutionary origins you describe. The notion that "Male hunter-gatherers roamed …

The Royal Society is accused of not being firm enough when it argues that the risks to health from internal exposures to depleted uranium are uncertain. According to Sean Foley (3 May, p 24) , we should simply accept the recent report from a new group calling itself the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), …