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Some time ago, I helped develop a happiness rating scale for children ( 22 January, p 38 ). This involved asking a large reference group of children and teenagers to rate various statements according to how happy they thought someone agreeing with that statement would be. We picked the statements with the highest levels of …

David Robson's excellent review of studies of happiness confirmed that it involves multiple factors. Perhaps the most important is being content with what we have, while continuing to learn. The second is realism, as summarised in the plea:"Give me the strength to change the things I cannot accept; the patience to accept the things I …

How great that hearing people are learning sign language ( 15 January, p 27 ). How sad that the signs aren't the same all over the world. If legend is correct, the early peoples of the Americas had thousands of different languages and dialects, but all understood the same sign language. What an aid to …

Your update on the growing use in Belgium of bacteriophage viruses to treat intractable bacterial infections made me wonder if there are equivalent viruses that could be used against fungal infections ( 29 January, p 20 ). These are often hard to treat because we are more closely related to fungi than we are to …

Patricia Brennan is, of course, right in saying the clitoris isn't just a mini penis ( 15 January, p 16 ). Indeed, in hyenas, both organs are the same size – real sexual equality. But we need to understand that orgasms aren't just a reward system to encourage copulation. In some mammals, the female climax …

I often read that outdoor air pollution causes 4 million deaths a year, including in your wider look at the impact of chemicals on us ( 29 January, p 44 ). However, air pollution is estimated to reduce the life expectancy of a much larger number of people by months or, in more polluted locations, …

I would like to nominate a local place – Ironbridge – as ground zero for the Anthropocene epoch ( 29 January, p 14 ). It is a World Heritage Site because it was the birthplace of the industrial revolution. So much foundry slag was produced that it was crushed and used as roadstone. This artificial …

I am struggling to answer one question about the Anthropocene: which is more stupid, bringing about the devastation of Earth or naming this event after ourselves?

There have been suggestions that the new Anthropocene epoch, marking a signature of human influence on our planet's geology, should start with the industrial revolution in 1750 (for similar reasons to those your reporter Adam Vaughan covers, albeit earlier than the 1950 he mentions), and that for the past quarter of millennium, we have been …

In your interview, David Chalmers says we could perhaps be living in a Matrix -style simulation operated by an outside agency ( 29 January, p 48 ). If we are, then it is almost certainly digital. Even the most advanced operators would be unlikely to be able to use infinite bandwidth. Therefore, zooming in sufficiently, …