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I found Emma Young's piece on epic dreaming very interesting because I'd never heard the term before, but feel I've probably experienced it most, if not all, of my life. I've experienced lucid dreams ever since I can remember, some more powerful than others. I'm now 75 and have broken sleep every night, but I …

In light of the piece, "Carrying the load" by Michael Marshall, I think Primo Levi's essay "A bottle of sunshine" deserves a mention, in which he posits that the creation of vessels is the defining trait of human civilisation, representing our unique ability to isolate space and control nature ( 23 May, p 40 ).

I've long held the opinion that the very first human invention was the basket, probably made of large leaves or woven stalks. For the "gathering" part of "hunting and gathering" to be really useful to the tribe, as opposed to the individual, the person picking the fruit or digging the tubers would need to transport …

I enjoyed Carissa Wong's article on the mystery of love. My three pillars necessary for love to bloom and last are different from those proposed by Robert Sternberg. My triad consists of desire, respect and trust (based on honesty in word and deed). As I don't believe we have control over much of our neural …

Regarding sending messages back in time, I would be very wary of sending anything back to the 1930s or 40s because of the butterfly effect. A slight change in history and Hitler wins the war. Maybe the only safe message to send back is "Change Nothing Now" ( Letters, 30 May ).

Alice Klein's story about a man who was genetically destined to develop Alzheimer's but didn't after working for two decades in sauna-like, hot engine rooms makes perfect sense physiologically. The cardiovascular effects of such hot conditions are similar to those of exercise: greater total-body blood flow, faster heart rate, stronger heartbeat, a larger difference between …

I thoroughly enjoyed Annalee Newitz's piece on biohybrid microrobots and how they can be steered using blue light or magnetic fields. Annalee references the 1980s' movie Innerspace as a science-fiction precursor, but older readers might remember the 1960s' movie Fantastic Voyage, starring Rachel Welch, which involved the miniaturisation of a submarine and crew that were …

Regarding the article "A revolution in maths", I think the answers may come from AI, but the questions will come from humans ( 6 June, p 30 ).

Reading your leader about the origin story of life, I was reminded of how people conflate the idea that "survival of the fittest" means "ruthless". It doesn't. It means "survival of one who best fits the environment in which it finds itself". In saying competition is what it's all about, Charles Darwin did not suggest …

The problems of DNA evidence discussed in Turi King's The Secrets of Our DNA are foreshadowed in G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown story, The Mistake of the Machine . A person is arrested for the murder of Lord Falconroy on the evidence of a polygraph test, where the test had picked him out because he was …