Letters from our readers – Page 8
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Opinion
Fracking lacking concerns
Fracking coverage must acknowledge the potential environmental impact
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Opinion
Truth about science
Poor quality research and a lack of scientific rigour are more harmful to science than misconduct
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Opinion
The unusual suspects
There are more elements in pharma than are dreamt of in Derek Lowe's philosophy
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Opinion
Letters: May 2012
The article ’Making Light Work’ (Chemistry World, April 2012, p52) coincided with an alarming Daily Telegraph article relating the near-catastrophic increase in antibiotic resistance due to misuse by the NHS and in agriculture. It seems that big pharma is no longer interested in infection control for two reasons: Any ...
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Opinion
Grant clarity
Applicants do not help their proposals by the apparently careless way in which they sometimes present their applications
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Opinion
Letters: April 2012
As an affiliate member of the Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC’s) peer review college, I would like to comment on the article about NERC’s intention to reduce the number of uncompetitive proposals submitted for funding (Chemistry World, March 2012, p17). For several years, I have helped in ...
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Opinion
Letters: March 2012
The article ’Silver soils’ (Chemistry World, February 2012, p36) highlights some interesting recent events relating to the environmental impact of silver residues. While a wealth of evidence exists to show that silver ions are toxic to lower organisms, there is less evidence that nanocrystalline or other forms of silver present ...
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Opinion
Letters: February 2012
In his comment article, David Fox (Chemistry World, January 2012, p42) highlights the importance of having access to a well-curated repository of small molecules for drug discovery (and chemical genomics), but he feels that it is important to ’combine a well-validated target with a means of intervention that minimises attrition ...
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Opinion
Letters: January 2012
Why is Chemistry World so shy about showing the language of chemistry on its pages? We do after all possess, along with music, one of the most efficient notations ever invented. So, in the latest edition I was very interested to see an article on marine adhesives (Chemistry World, Dec ...
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Opinion
Letters: December 2011
Metals and metalloid elements in the environment have a major impact on human, animal and plant life as seen in the recent Hungarian red mud catastrophe. Some elements like calcium, iron, zinc etc serve as essential nutrients without which life fails to thrive, whereas lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, antimony and ...
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Opinion
Letters: November 2011
The presenter of the BBC Horizon programme which dealt with the safety of nuclear installations broadcast on 14 September was careful to avoid commitment but clearly implied that, based on the concept of tolerability of risk, the nuclear energy industry is as safe as any other of equal size ...
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Opinion
Letters: October 2011
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has recently announced worrying new policies, which many scientists believe will ’sound the death knell for fundamental scientific research in the UK’. One of the first two to be arbitrarily targeted with reduced funding is synthetic organic chemistry, a subject that is ...
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Opinion
Letters: September 2011
In his Last retort article on chemical words (Chemistry World, June 2011, p72), David Jones comments that the chemical name of DDT is the only one he knows of which fits perfectly into a poem. Paul Ehrlich’s anti-syphilis drug Salvarsan has also been set to poetry. The following limerick ...
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Opinion
Letters: August 2011
I read with interest and some trepidation your recent article on UK copyright laws (Chemistry World, July 2011, p11). The Digital Opportunity report mentioned in the article recommends that the UK Government introduces an exception to its copyright law to allow text and data mining of copyright works for non-commercial ...
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Opinion
Letters: July 2011
Many models of chemical bonding have been proposed over the past century and a half. The one clear concept that comes from all of these is the importance of the chemical bond, a localised interaction between two neighbouring atoms, but as Philip Ball pointed out (Chemistry World, March 2011, p33), ...
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Opinion
Letters: June 2011
In reference to your recent editorial (Chemistry World, May 2011, p2) where the ethics of biofuels are discussed, we believe it is misleading to suggest that deforestation and the displacement of indigenous people are a result of biofuel production. It is accepted that logging is the primary cause of these ...
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Opinion
Letters: May 2011
There are many ways of discovering truth. The scientific method is one of the best. It depends on the carrying out of repeatable experiments. Science cannot really deal with a unique event. So I am surprised that Philip Ball (Chemistry World, April 2011, p33) dismisses so easily the practicality of ...