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The Food of Love: Your formula for successful breastfeeding), Street, Somerset, UK Nobody wants babies to go hungry, but Wilson's contribution to "unscientific debate" on the issue of whether formula milk should be made available at food banks shouldn't go unanswered. She massively oversimplifies a complex issue when she mentions the charity Feed's statement on …

Your leader and the associated feature "Spillover" ( p 41 ) appear to lay the blame for the pandemic primarily on our destruction of biodiversity and encroachment on fragile ecosystems Leader, 6 March . Yet for most of human evolutionary history, people have lived within such ecosystems in small groups as hunter-gathers and would surely …

We agree with your article on the problem of pathogens spilling over from animals to humans as we encroach on nature. There is another big factor influencing zoonotic disease emergence, though: the intensification of food animal production. Escalating demand for animal protein means the density of livestock systems is increasingly high. Consequences include pollution, monoculture …

You reported research that found 2.3-litre plastic bottles are the least harmful to the planet 6 March, p 23 . But why advocate an optimum size at all? We shouldn't create loopholes for the production of harmful plastic products. The best way to prevent harm is to reduce use of plastic bottles and switch to …

I read Julian Barbour's article on the possibility of time flowing backwards with great interest, as I have recently been wrestling with the same questions (from the point of view of philosophy rather than physics) 6 March, p 46 . However, it raised questions that weren't addressed. If time, like space, is expanding from the …

I have been wracking my brains to think of something requiring the amount of power provided by a Dyson sphere 30 January, p 44 . On considering recent news articles, however, the answer finally dawned on me: an alien mega civilisation that has based its entire monetary system on a bitcoin-like blockchain.

Here is a tip for Clare Wilson to keep the slugs at bay 27 February, p 49 . My wife grows crop after crop of pristine green beans. Her secret is to pack pieces of hand-spun fleece yarn around the bean stems. This has successfully deterred the gastropods from adding her Phaseolus vulgaris to their …

In our report on life found underground ( 27 February, p 14 ), we should have said the deepest previously known life was microscopic nematode worms. It is the sun's increasing energy that will warm Earth in the far future ( 6 March, p 12 ).

A unicycle is a mode of transport 10 April, p 36 . So, too, was the space shuttle. However, their similarities are dwarfed by their differences. The same applies to intelligence and its sibling consciousness when comparing animals with humans. That there is variation in terms of problem-solving capability within animal populations doesn't make them …

Your article "Clever creatures" reviewed research highlighting the intelligence of a range of animals. In the same edition, "Love meat tender" ( p 51 ) advises readers on how marinades enhance the taste of meat – perhaps even the flesh of those clever, video game-playing pigs referenced in the first piece. So, on the one …