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I was somewhat concerned when I considered more fully the implications of wearing a very strong magnet in your underpants, as reported by Feedback (2 February) . The report suggests that products suitable for females will be developed shortly. Consider what could happen if a magnetically-enhanced male encounters a magnetically-enhanced female, quite apart from giving …

Paul Davies asks about the physics of lucid dreams (2 February, p 18) . I did once become aware of falling from a tall building – at a uniform rate, not accelerating. When I hit the ground I simply carried on falling through the planet. So the tale about dying if you don't wake up …

Paul Davies has the right word, "respected" when he asks about how closely dreams conform to our expectations concerning "the laws of physics" (2 February, p 18) . In hundreds of experiments in lucid dreams, investigating this topic has been one of my main concerns. The results of some of these are documented in Conscious …

Jim Giles's point makes a valid point that because immunisation has succeeded in many countries and parents do not see the illnesses prevented, it is often difficult to persuade parents that their children still need to be protected their children (26 January, p 37) . Comparisons of figures for deaths and disabilities from vaccine preventable …

There is another paradigm to use when thinking about traffic congestion in cities, beyond that of accessibility by vehicle dealt with by A. C. Grayling (12 January, p 48) . In the frame of global warming, our response must be to reduce the volume of traffic. There will be more results than reduced traffic congestion: …

Canada sends a dangerous message, as you say, to other nuclear nations when it is prepared to undermine its own nuclear watchdog and compromise the protection of its workers and the public in order to keep one of its reactors open ( 26 January, p 5 and p 6 ). There is another aspect to …

There seems little doubt that religious communities are more likely to listen when people from within their own communities have something important to say, as with the Clergy Letter project (2 February, p 16) . Though creationism is thankfully less of a problem in Europe, Michael Zimmerman may be interested to know that there have …

Chris Mason suggests (26 January, p 24) that I overlooked the fact that induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells frequently produce tumours in the animals that receive the transplants, while I was arguing that women should not be subjected to the health risks of donating eggs for cloning therapy when iPS cells offer an alternative (8 …

Nobody has contributed more to the understanding in the west of Al-Qaeda than Marc Sageman, but his proposed solutions (2 February, p 46) would do little to stem the movement. He ignores research into social dynamics and favours the "bunch of guys" hypothesis: chums get together, talk, and decide to blow something up. He tells …

It appears the debate on "autism" has become far too personal in the dispute between people with autism and the website Autism Speaks (2 February, p 9) . As the mother of a 7-year-old boy with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), it is infuriating that this squabbling is blocking advances that might help individuals with …

Alan Jones may welcome a closer link between business and higher education (26 January, p 23) , but I have serious reservations about the outcome. Governments are all too happy to relinquish some responsibilities, including the financial – so industry and business call the tune and dictate the agenda: a recipe for disaster, as they …