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Donna Lu is right to raise concerns about privacy in the security industry ( 29 June, p 14 ). She went to the IFSEC security conference in London: such exhibitions are where the new and shiny reign. A colleague of mine also attended IFSEC and carried out a straw poll of vendors on the internal …

A recent article mentions that the US Navy may wish to convince enemy forces that, for example, a Honda Civic car is a tank, or vice versa ( 29 June, p 9 ). To me, this sounds like an ideal excuse for any player with malign intent to blow up absolutely anything they want. They …

Chelsea Whyte mentions that many people resented the disruption that the Extinction Rebellion protests created because they "felt the inconvenience didn't justify the cause" ( 22 June, p 20 ). I think this sums up the global attitude to action on climate change. Maybe people need to be reminded of the inconveniences that global warming …

So people are more likely to return a wallet with about £70 in it than about £10 ( 29 June, p 17 ). I fear this is more easily explained by considerations other than altruism and moral probity. When my brother returned a wallet he found containing £100, which was a fabulous sum to a …

I agree with Caroline Criado-Perez that women are often not included in clinical trials and obviously have different reactions from men ( 15 June, p 23 ). Furthermore, most drugs are tested only on those under 70 who have just one medical condition. Many drugs for diabetes and heart conditions, for example, are taken together, …

• The striatum is a collection of brain structures, including the basal ganglia, and the primary motor cortex is nearer the front than we showed it ( 29 June, p 38 ).  

John Fewster is concerned that the Breakthrough Starshot swarm of microprobes could be viewed as a hostile act by inhabitants of the Alpha Centauri system it is aiming for, as their kinetic energy is equivalent to half a kiloton of TNT explosive (Letters, 1 June ). Routinely, Earth is hit by bolides with energy equivalent …

Ruby Prosser Scully highlights the growth of robotic surgery and questions whether it achieves better outcomes ( 15 June, p 20 ). Many factors may contribute to this growth, including profit from offering "space-age treatment" and the temptation of toys for the boys. But assessing the outcome of surgery based solely on the skill of …

Sam Wong writes that our intelligence was possibly enabled by the invention of cooking ( 22 June, p 34 ). But to say that we invented cooking is to suggest that someone once sat down and thought: "I could set some stones up in a ring... then rub a couple of sticks together" – and …

The RoboBee X-wing is an amazing piece of engineering ( 6 July, p 16 ). But is it bird and bat-proof? More importantly, are birds and bats it-proof?