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Michael Marshall's article about forgotten art and culture from ancient times was fascinating. Even more forgotten is the input of women. They tended to work on textiles, but these rarely survive compared with metals or wood ( 16/23 December 2023, p 28 ). In August 2023, I saw a woman demonstrating weaving. She was using …

You report that having children earlier in life is genetically linked to dying younger. Perhaps this makes more sense if we say that having children later in life is genetically linked to dying older ( 16/23 December 2023, p 9 ). Establishing a career before committing to family life is the preferred choice for some, …

Recent correspondence has focused on transport options, such as encouraging more walking, free local buses and so on, as ways to cut car use. To this end, I would like to propose that every UK household is given a shopping trolley ( Letters, 30 December 2023 ). My trolley has been a companion since 1991, …

Stuart Farrimond, in his look at the science of "food bridging", seems to have rediscovered the classic Mayan/Aztec dish turkey mole , also familiar as the variant "chocolate chicken". The peanut bridging ingredient originated in Central America before becoming more widely known ( 16/23 December 2023, p 70 ).

The survivability of bacteria under extreme conditions, as highlighted in "What's living in your kitchen?", surely gives support to the theory of panspermia. This proposes that life such as bacteria may travel the universe via a suitable object and seed hospitable planets ( 16/23 December 2023, p 64 ). Perhaps bacteria can't survive in a …

Regarding detection of planets that seem to have survived the death of their star, there seems to be an assumption that a planet in orbit close to a white dwarf was always in that orbit ( 16/23 December 2023, p 60 ). Consider a planet that was far out prior to star death. When the …

Doubling energy efficiency is a headline target from COP28, but is this a win for the planet or for the fossil fuel industry? If not coupled to reductions in fossil fuel production, rebound effects can diminish the emissions reductions that we would expect ( 9 December 2023, p 8 ). Energy efficiency can even boost …

Peter Turchin's studies of social collapse may have relevance to the objectives and means of Russia and other states to enhance the collapse of some Western societies ( 9 December 2023, p 36 ). Can't the West use history to expedite the fall of dangerous authoritarian regimes?

In searching for extraterrestrial life, we need to think about what we mean by life. It could be organic, based on carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur. Or it could be completely different ( 25 November 2023, p 40 ). For example, we can imagine machines becoming a second form of life on Earth, …

Has anyone taken the following into account in describing a "healthy BMI" for older people? We all lose height as we get older, through vertebral body collapse and loss of hydration of the intervertebral discs. Hence, even if our weight stays the same, our BMI will gradually creep up ( 2 December 2023, p 12 …