In the current debate on organ transplants can anyone tell me at what age one’s organs cease to be of benefit to anyone?

We had a relative of 93 who died of heart disease and multiple organ failure. But, on asking the nurse dealing with us in the relatives’ room whether any of his organs would be of any use to anyone, she went away to make inquiries and returned to say that his corneas could be used, in spite of his age and failing eyesight.

Ultimately, the next of kin received a letter of gratitude from the hospital, saying that the gift had given sight to different people.

Vivienne Gray, Northwich, Cheshire

Theoretically, there is no upper limit in that, say, the liver of a fit, healthy, clean-living 70-year-old may be in better condition than one belonging to a heavy-drinking, drug-taking 25-year-old. But practically any organ or body part becomes useless with molecular cell death, which happens soon after brain and cardiac death, when intra-cellular mechanisms responsible for absorbing oxygen and pumping out carbon dioxide and other metabolites fail. The cell swells and then ruptures.

Robert Randell, London SE 25

Where were army uniforms made, and by whom, before the invention of the sewing machine?

Before the days of sewing machines in factories, these were made by individual tailors and sent as “out work” to local seamstresses. My great-grandmother was one such worker as a young girl in 19th-century Essex, and was well known for her excellent buttonholes. She used the offcuts of the cloth to make herself a rag rug, still in use when she died in 1942.

Georgina Colwell, Hersham, Surrey

Why do so many younger people now speak with a raised inflection at the end of sentences?

This is known as AQI, or the Australian Questioning Intonation, picked up from TV soaps and migrated across the globe where the high-rising tone, or upspeak, began flourishing in call centres, at customer service desks and in schools and among staff in the caring professions. This is probably because it is considered a non-threatening method of eliciting a response to a statement, rather than an actual question, to gauge whether the speaker is being understood.

Originally, it was primarily used by young, female working-class Australians and spread to the UK and North America. It doesn’t appear to be confined to younger people, however, some of my contemporaries — I am in my sixties — picked up the inflection some years ago.

In the UK, the rising inflection has always been a common feature of many regional accents, including Geordie, Scouse and Northern Irish.

Rodney Miskin, Hastings

In terms of charged particles, what happens to the e-mails deleted from my deleted folder ?

Every letter of the alphabet is traditionally represented in the computer by a unique combination of electrical signals on eight wires, each of which may be set to five volts or zero volts. When a file is open, such signals are temporarily stored in a memory chip called a DRAM. Inside the DRAM, each character of an e-mail is assigned eight microscopic physical positions on the surface of an insulator, and small static charges, meaning a few electrons, are placed in each position, corresponding to the voltage on each wire. These charges can remain for a long time. The computer can, when required, read the pattern of charges and display the correct character.

When you close the e-mail, the static charges are connected to earth and leak away. In practice, the main storage is a magnetic disk (hard drive), and the characters stored in the DRAM are just those you are looking at on the screen. When you delete the e-mail the main magnetic disk information is erased.

David Sumner, Southwater,

West Sussex

At what point in history did the three lions become part of the royal standard?

Mary Hyde, Clifton, Bristol

Why do we pronounce Berkshire and Hertfordshire and Derbyshire as though the “E” were an “A”?

Mrs R. C. B. Firebrace, Woodbridge, Suffolk

Who was “sweet Fanny Adams” and why is her name used to imply someone has scant knowledge of a particular subject?

Mrs P. E. Hardie, Purley, Surrey

If identical twins are genetically identical, does that mean that their DNA is identical too?

Ron Naylor, Lytham St Annes, Lancs

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