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Paul Dorfman, University College London Energy Institute , UK; Tom Burke, E3G ; Steve Thomas, University of Greenwich, UK ; Jonathan Porritt, environmental campaigner ; and David Lowry, Institute for Resource and Security Studies , Cambridge, Massachusetts, US Reporting the decline of nuclear power generation, you quote Michael Shellenberger's view that nuclear power is necessary …

Colin Barras reports that official scribes seem not to have taken up a phonetic alphabet ( 8 February, p 34 ). The reason for this may be that dialect speakers may not recognise the phonetic writing of speakers of other dialects. The greater the empire you administer, the more serious this problem is. China kept …

Systems with one symbol per word can, in principle, be used without knowing the language for which they were originally developed. This enables all the members of a community, whatever language they speak, to use the same written script, as in China today. Something like this is happening now. Digital messages are used by speakers …

You report that legal action could be used to stop Starlink satellites affecting telescope images ( 8 February, p 14 ). Two dead satellites – the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, launched in 1983, and GGSE-4, an experimental US Air Force satellite launched in 1967 – had a near miss in late January. This emphasises the need …

• An AI trained at Stanford University in California can predict who is most likely to respond to an antidepressant from measurements of brain activity (15 February, p 19).

Your article on the invention of the alphabet brings to mind a modern conundrum. Why do we still teach the Latin alphabet as "A, B, C, D..."? This series isn't particularly useful. We could consider changing the teaching order to "Q, W, E, R, T, Y..." This at least has relevance for children learning to …

Clare Wilson says that educating people about sexual health is more important than policing their language to prevent them referring to the vulva as the vagina ( 11 January, p 30 ). Yet that is akin to calling the lips the throat. Such errors can lead to serious misunderstandings. One of my patients was convinced …

People are intrigued by the Canadian frogs that freeze in winter and thaw out in summer (Letters, 11 January ). Are they alive or not? It sounds like a deep philosophical question, but it isn't. "Life" is a collective noun for things that are living. Things transition from being dead to alive all the time. …

You report that arm heaters that keep hands warm without gloves are being developed by the US Army ( 18 January, p 14 ). Let me assure the researchers that there is a large non-military community to whom this invention would be of incalculable benefit: musicians. At any outdoor gig in cool weather – or …

Paul Leek says dark matter and dark energy are "imaginary constructs" and links them with the big bang theory (Letters, 8 February ). It is my understanding that dark matter is postulated because galaxies are observed to be spinning too fast for the gravity of the observable matter, as required by Einstein's theory of general …