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I was dismayed that, as author of The Threat to Reason , your contributor Dan Hind names politician Dick Taverne as a defender against the powers of darkness (19 January, p 46) . I have just listened to Taverne on BBC Radio 4 declaring that anyone who refuses to be browbeaten or hoodwinked into eating …

While Zeeya Merali provides a most interesting article on "unparticles" (26 January, p 32) , many physicists will be taken aback by the statement that Howard Georgi "pioneered supersymmetry, a theory he proposed in 1981 with Savas Dimopoulos at Stanford University". Most particle physicists agree that the theory of supersymmetry was originally proposed in the …

I sometimes wonder whether I'm the only pro-life, religious reader of Â鶹´«Ã½ . Your latest bit of silliness is a rant courtesy of philosopher A. C. Grayling in his Mindfields column (22/29 December 2007, p 76) . I wish that those arguing against the pro-life position would at least understand what we are saying …

Mathematicians may have tackled the problem of deciding whether to wait for a bus or to walk (26 January, p 18) but in Nottingham, among other places, it has been solved by computer science and engineering. At each stop an electronic display lists the estimated arrival time of buses on each route serving the stop.

You report, without comment, Virgin's proposals for space tourism (2 February, p 21) . What are the anticipated emissions of carbon dioxide per passenger per 5 minutes of space experience?

I enjoyed your fine article on the idea that dirt and infections could ward off cancer (12 January, p 34) . It reminded me of the 1983 novel Cancer Ward Alert ( Uzbuna na odjelu za rak ) by Neven Orhel, a Croatian medical doctor. Claimed to be purely fictional, it deals with the idea …

Please, please, please! What are the garishly coloured bacteria illustrating "Well-informed bugs stay ahead of the pack" (19 January, p 10) ? • The illustration showed a scanning electron micrograph of Escherichia coli treated with antibiotic, in which the images of individual bacteria had been given arbitrary colours.

• The UK Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment found no excess cancers within 25 kilometres of nuclear plants. Because of an editing mistake, our story "Nuke-plant leukaemia link?" (9 February, p 6) conveyed exactly the opposite. • The reference for the paper by Craig Wheeler and colleagues on the shape of …

You quote stem cell researcher Lyle Armstrong as being "very disturbed that the Catholic bishops claim the bill will allow us to create half-human, half-animal embryos" (online news, 25 January) . But it is clear that the human fertilisation and embryology bill before the UK parliament will allow the crossing of human and non-human gametes …

I was surprised that Mark Anderson, discussing rain production (26 January, p 44) , made no mention of the role of electrical charge in cloud and rain formation. Surely, one of the main factors in fog persistence is the mutually repellent nature of the fog particles due to static charge, and this must apply in …

I have spent almost 30 years in the field of engineering, honing my rational thinking. As someone who also happens to be agnostic, I've frequently been puzzled and frustrated by the public's preference for the apparent non-sense of religion over rationality. Dan Hind's observations (19 January, p 46) regarding the threats to rational thought by …

In his article "The big sleep" (22/29 December 2007, p 62) , Graham Lawton mentions various theories for the awkward-seeming posture apparent in many dinosaur fossils. Perhaps the neck bend was not so difficult for dinosaurs after all. Presumably this interpretation was the inspiration for Chinese artists who sometimes represented living dragons in similar postures. …

Working for many years as a senior product development chemist for a major international corporation, I always took off my white lab coat whenever I attended board meetings. My bosses used to question this. I always responded that the commercial managers regarded the white coat as a badge of low office and that I preferred …

I was very interested in the ideas presented in Jim Giles's discussion of the possible genetic roots of political preference (2 February, p 28) and its even-handed consideration of what is obviously a contentious concept. The real problem for me, however, is the way this is being framed by predominantly American researchers, and their use …

How could Alan Jones write an entire page on the skills shortage in the sciences (26 January, p 23) without a single appearance of the word "salary"? From Roger Calvert, Associate Dean, Education, Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics, University of Southampton Alan Jones calls for universities to produce more high-quality bioscience graduates and his …