text: Pain-free test
  You report on experiments to spot breast cancer by ultrasonic emissions (This Week, 16 January, p 9) . Such a replacement for mammograms would be welcome. The Journal of the American Medical Association measured pain levels in 116 women during mammography. They found that 91 per cent felt pain and 15 per cent felt intense …
  Don't blame the heat
  From Paul Reiter, Centers for Disease Control
  "Human disease is emerging as one of the most . . . distressing indicators of climate change," claims a box in your article on the weather in 1998 ("Can't stand the heat", 19 December 1998, p 33) . I am concerned with the inaccuracy of this box. You write: "As temperatures rise, mosquito-borne yellow fever …
  From Nigel Corlett, The Institute for Occupational Ergonomics, University of Nottingham
  Lila Guterman's injunction, "whatever you do, don't sit down", is a bit extreme ("The only good chair", 19 December 1998, p 76 and Letters, 16 January, p 52) . But her report of Galen Cranz's argument that ergonomists should have dealt with the problem but haven't puts me on the defensive. Not only is there …
  From Allan Styles
  Surely you could have illustrated your item on how fidgeting reduces fat more sensibly (This Week, 16 January, p 6) . Naturally, you wanted to show a thin girl. But did you have to choose one who is smoking? Or was this picture a product placement by Marlboro? Or was the idea that we should …
  From Alan Macnow, Japan Whaling Association
  The Japanese research vessels have not "missed half the whaling season following a fire on the fleet's main ship" on 19 November, as your report contends (This Week, 16 January, p 5) . At most, they missed about a third. Two of the research vessels headed back to the Antarctic on 22 December, followed by …
  Hard-up ETs
  So gamma-ray bursters might have wiped out alien civilisations, explaining why they have not visited us (This Week, 23 January, p 16) . This can be added to a growing list of reasons why we have not yet been visited by aliens, which include the idea that interstellar travel is impossible, that other civilisations don't …
  I read with interest your article on dark matter ("Space Oddity", 16 January, p 24) . Not long ago, I published a paper in Astronomical and Astrophysical Transactions (vol 16, p 37), entitled "Is the missing mass really missing?". This paper proposes a very elegant solution to the missing mass problem. I argue that slight …
  From Roger Watters
  Concerning the relative therapeutic efficacy of heroin and stout (Letters, 19 December 1998, p 103) , there is no doubt in my mind. When I lived in London, from 1963 to 1966, there was a dear old fellow who, in a West Country burr, exhorted all who watched commercial television to partake of Mackeson stout …
  Junk of all junk
  From Troy Wray
  After an extremely nail-biting experience lasting a good couple of hours recently, I could at last smile. No, my wife hadn't given birth. I had taken the plunge and installed Microsoft's "Internet Explorer 5 beta". On firing up the new e-mail client, Outlook 5, I was interested in one of its new features—a junk mail …
  I find the Editor's comment on my letter (Letters, 16 January, p 52) out of touch with diabetes monitoring over the past 10 years or so. To suggest that blood glucose testing is only required in severe diabetes is contrary to what most diabeticians (in this hospital certainly) think. Diabetes is diabetes and may become …
  Floral modesty
  From F. C. T. Moore, University of Hong Kong
  Your article on competition among flowers ("Flower power!", 9 January, p 22) implies that sociobotany is a new development. In fact, Linnaeus's Systema Naturae (Stockholm, 1740) produced a precursor with his "sexual system", which had an elaborate typology of plants based on the disposition of their reproductive parts. It used the analogy of human sexual …
  Rocking rocketeers
  From Alan Smale and Padi Boyd, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
  We were flattered that your reporter came all the way to Washington DC just to catch a performance by our rocking and scientifically literate a cappella group, the Chromatics (Feedback, 9 January, p 96) . Teachers, planetarium staff and other worthies among your readers might be interested in our educational project, "AstroCappella", especially as we …
  Putrefying pizza
  I enjoyed the item about Ötzi delicacies (Feedback, 16 January) . It reminded me of an occasion about 25 years ago when I visited an Etruscan cemetery near Rome. The list of fare at the local cafe included "Pizza Necropolitana"—flavoured with mummy dust perhaps?
  Santa dynamics
  From Douglas Porter
  I was propounding the theory that Santa Claus is a quantum entity and thus delivers presents simultaneously to as many children as necessary something over a year ago, so the theory has either spread via the bush telegraph or it was just an idea whose time had come (Letters, 16 January, p 53) . There …
  From Ian Wordsworth
  Surely Sean Smeltzer realises that Santa simply steps outside our time continuum. Every child in the world is then visited, even if it takes Santa 10 years of his own time. He then steps back into our time continuum and sits in our local store for my children to visit. I don't know why Smeltzer …
  I have asked my mother to provide proof that Father Christmas does not exist. Naturally, no proof has been forthcoming, as my colleagues at school had suspected. We all know that Father Christmas must exist—after all, who eats the mince pies and drinks the brandy? However, I have long since given up trying to explain …
  The article on groundwater contamination by de-icing fluids (This Week, 9 January, p 7) stated that Devon Cancilla of Western Washington University in Bellingham found tolyltriazoles in water under an airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In fact, Cancilla worked at another, unnamed airport. The Milwaukee study was by Steven Corsi of the US Geological Survey, who …
  I read with interest the Christmas competition about blunders of the modern world (Feedback, 19 December 1998) . How about a competition for predicting the killer consumer product of the next millennium? I do of course have my own idea to kick it off. As an IT professional, I watch with utter dismay as central …