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I have been a forensic scientist for many years and the report by Linda Geddes on forensic sciences in England and Wales was of great interest ( 28 April, p 22 ). However, the mild tone of the article understates how very bad the situation is. The reasons are many, but funding is at the …

As an environmental educator and scuba diver, I have sadly watched the gradual demise of the once-Great Barrier Reef. It seems to me that the notes of optimism in your Leader on the state of the reef are unfortunately misplaced ( 21 April, p 5 ). Warming seas will knock off most of the reef, …

Purify seawater until you cannot tell it from fresh water: a #TuringTest for water Kate Adamala responds to a desalination method inspired by mathematician Alan Turing's only paper on chemistry ( 12 May, p 6 )

Michael Brooks seeks a new angle on time ( 21 April, p 28 ). Is it not possible that the way our consciousness perceives and experiences time gives rise to the illusion of time as a continuous flow? The past consists of events, memories of which exist in the brain, and our consciousness has access …

It cannot be often that Â鶹´«Ã½ states a problem in one report and offers a solution a few pages later. You published a lovely article on physicist Marin Alexe finding that tiny dents improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells ( 28 April, p 9 ). It quotes another physicist, P. Craig Taylor, as saying …

You report research on whether late meetings are less useful ( 21 April, p 19 ). The direction of causality could just as easily be reversed. A large proportion of meetings are bad: unnecessary, badly run or both. People are happy to attend good meetings and reluctant to attend bad ones. They are more likely …

I share Jim Alexander's concern about recent proclamations that antidepressants really do work and should be used more often (Letters, 7 April ). Guidelines from NICE, the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, suggest the use of antidepressants should be a last resort for those aged under 18. Yet the number of children …

You report that cave bears "dominated Europe during the last ice age" ( 31 March, p 10 ). Does this refer to the glacial period between the Eemian and the Holocene, about 120,000 to 11,500 years ago ? If so, you have to find a new term for the period of roughly 3 million years …

I was horrified by the image that you used to illustrate your piece on the workings of a dog's mind ( 7 April, p 12 ). The dog pictured is brachycephalic : it has been bred for an exaggeratedly broad, short skull with bulging eyes. Such dogs may suffer all their lives from serious respiratory …

Recently I have come across many assertions about "military-grade" novichok nerve agents (though not in Â鶹´«Ã½ ). These leave me wondering what other grades there are – domestic grade? The editor writes: • We suspect that, beyond adding spice to copy, the term is meant to distinguish "military" from "paramilitary" grade, the presumably inferior …