Ancient spirals and squatter lizards
Yellow-spotted monitor lizards or, as we in Western Australia call them, racehorse goannas, may dig the deepest nests in the world 鈥� but they also confiscate deep nests. We have a farm south-east of Perth, and have had a couple of goannas lay claim to the rabbit burrows in our garden and under the house.
I would love Sean Doody of the University of Newcastle to pay us a visit, as I would like to know if the goannas kill and eat the rabbits, or if the two coexist. I have witnessed a large goanna chase a rabbit out of a hole, and there have been a few rabbit carcasses around the garden. The warren is huge, as our cat found out: we thought we had lost him the day he spent 13 hours navigating it. When the goannas move in, do they renovate the warren by enlarging it, or are they happy with their new digs?
Perth, Western Australia
<b>For the record</b>
鈥� We’re feeling a little crabby. The image with our story on decorator crabs actually showed a porter crab (20 June, p 18).
鈥� We suffered a menu malfunction. Many of the super-filling foods being tested in the EU SATIN project contain resistant starch (20 June, p 14). But the satiating ingredient in the fish balls is a kind of fibre.
鈥� Time isn’t always a healer. New blood donor registrations in England and North Wales have fallen by 40 per cent over the past decade (4 July, p 4).
Downsides of the Superman stance
The Superman stance was commonly observed in bars and at parties during the early days of Silicon Valley’s giddy fame. Back then, it was almost de rigueur for superconfident young male executives to gather in a circle in this stance. Some observers used a much less complimentary phrase to describe it.
St Peters, South Australia
Downsides of the Superman stance
Christopher De Leon-Horton’s letter on failing to find the “Superman stance” in antiquity (4 July) may simply reflect the limitations of sculpture. The human body is large; human ankles are small; and they present a fundamental structural weakness in a sculpture.
Hence the famous , now in the Vatican, strikes a heroic pose having just released the arrow that killed the serpent Python, with what looks like a tree stump conveniently placed to add strength to the figure. It would be hard to use such a device in a symmetrical Superman pose.
St Albans, New South Wales, Australia
Rosetta revival rebutted
鈥� Cinzia Fantinati tells us that, unlike Philae, Rosetta needs fuel to wake up from hibernation; and that it only has fuel to last until mission’s end. Philae needs Rosetta to communicate with Earth: so, sadly, no.
Rosetta revival rebutted
Having read Sean O’Neill’s interesting interview with Cinzia Fantinati (27 June, p 25) I wondered why no mention was made of the return of 67P in late 2021. Will Rosetta be irrevocably damaged as it lands on the comet at the end of its mission ? Will Philae go back into sleep mode? Can either survive the six or so years until the comet comes back toward Earth? If so, are there plans for Fantinati’s group to sustain their watch?
Glasshouses, North Yorkshire, UK
Can I mute real life now, please?
An app to mute irritating sounds in real life (27 June, p 24)? Bring it on! Over-loud background music in TV programmes and films. The parent with the screaming toddler who follows me around the supermarket. Those annoying sing-song announcements that are repeated continually in shops. Adverts. It can’t come quick enough for me.
Sheffield, UK
A black economy based on IOUs
There really is no need to worry about a cashless society (6 June, p 24, and Letters, 27 June). It will never last. As Neal Asher pointed out in his science fiction novel , someone, somewhere will, sooner or later, write an IOU.
Binningen, Switzerland
Ancient spirals and squatter lizards
I am puzzled by the query over why the entrance tunnel is spiral. I imagine it is because the offspring of those lizards that dug a straight shaft never managed to climb out to grow and reproduce.
Watford, Hertfordshire, UK
Editor's pick: Does brain training really help ADHD?
You wrote that “brain training may help people with ADHD to focus”, reporting a meta-analysis by Megan Spencer-Smith and Torkel Klingberg which claims to show that a working memory training programme called Cogmed reduces inattentiveness in people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and other problems related to attentiveness (28 March, p 18).
This claim cannot be sustained. We found that data combined from the various studies had been wrongly coded, for example with positive numbers entered as negative. Reanalysing the data, we found that the effects of Cogmed training were no longer significant for people with ADHD. Also, the differences in inattention between the Cogmed and control groups were analysed by comparing the levels of inattention after treatment only. To measure a reduction of inattention, post-treatment inattention needs to be compared with pre-treatment inattention. Claims of “reductions”, “benefits” or “improvements” cannot therefore be made and it cannot be concluded that the Cogmed programme reduces inattentiveness in people with ADHD. For details see PLoS One, ( ().
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Ancient spirals and squatter lizards
Your article on the lizard that digs the deepest nest in the vertebrate world (4 July, p 16) reminded me of an episode of the BBC’s . It showed a diictodon of the late Permian with a spiral nest about 1.5 metres deep.
So the spiral is not a recent invention. It allows an extended entrance within a small soil area, to help maintain the environment of the nest chamber.
I was comforted in two ways by this article. It confirms that nature knows better than to mess with a good idea, even after 250 million years; and it shows that we do not know everything.
Stafford, UK
Brain under siege from a rare disease
Isn’t the statement that our brains are experiencing much greater stress than in the past just a rose-tinted view on halcyon bygone days? Surely the stresses of securing your place in the social structure etc existed in our ancient past too?
Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, UK
Brain under siege from a rare disease
After reading Dara Mohammadi’s report on the immune system and depression (27 June, p 38), I would like to raise awareness of a rare autoimmune disease I was struck with last year.
For five months after developing symptoms, I was diagnosed with purely psychological problems. I suffered insomnia, depression, anxiety, paranoia and finally memory loss.
Initial treatment was with various antidepressants, beta blockers and antipsychotics. After many months, I felt suicide seemed my only option due to the extreme depression. I spent two months in a psychiatric intensive care unit, and was then transferred to a neurology ward.
A month of tests there finally produced a diagnosis of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. Put simply, my body was attacking my brain, which was becoming inflamed. I was treated with intravenous immunoglobulin. This basically acted as a reset switch on my immune system 鈥� for a week it was flooded with good antibodies from tens of thousands of blood donors.
The disease is thought to be as old as humanity itself, but was only discovered in 2007. If it had happened to me before then, I would not be here today.
Psychiatry and neurology both study the brain, but in different ways. Clearly there needs to be a greater connection between the two disciplines to ensure that cases such as mine are not misdiagnosed for so long.
Norwich, UK
How can courts save the climate?
Michael Le Page reports moves to get courts to mandate action on climate change (4 July, p 10). But how are the courts’ decisions to be enforced? If a government does not reduce emissions, what will the penalty be, and what will be penalised: the government or the state which has received the order? If the government, does this mean individual ministers will be held to account? If the state, will citizens be taxed to pay the fine?
Bedford, UK
<b>First class post</b>
This is making me all weepy and awed. I’m 12 again
about the images of Pluto and Charon (see page 25)
Enough with the clich茅d cavemen!
鈥� We try hard to present a realistic gender balance in our articles, but this time we fell short of our own standards. We will try harder. Thanks to all who have raised this issue.
Enough with the clich茅d cavemen!
The use of the term “caveman”, the unnecessarily gendered language and the clich茅d portrayal of early prehistoric people in your article “Dawn of a continent?” (4 July, p 28) raised our ire. But it was the illustrations that accompanied the article and the corresponding app (“How much of a caveman are you?”) that really made us angry.
Depictions of past societies consisting of active men and passive women have been vociferously challenged in archaeology over the past 30 years. It was astonishing to see the article’s illustration, where perhaps 15 active men were accompanied by a sole woman, apparently preening her hair.
Please, 快猫短视频, can you lead the field in the portrayal of our ancestors, rather than following some distance behind?
Bristol, UK