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Leah Crane informs us that if we want to send probes to Uranus and Neptune, we had best get a wriggle on to make the next launch window in the late 2020s and early 2030s ( 28 July, p 40 ). If we miss this opportunity, we have to wait until 2050 to get close-up …

Autism does give some of us amazing abilities but for most autistic folk it is debilitating Kevin responds to the proposition that autism can bring extra abilities – and Anna Remington is finding out why ( 14 July, p 32 ) .

Graham Lawton rightly sets about unpicking some assertions about loss of biodiversity ( 28 July, p 28 ). But he bases the discussion on whether biodiversity really is in a crisis largely on extinction rates and on whether planetary boundaries have been exceeded. He pays little attention to the loss and degradation of natural habitat. …

You report Amaia Arranz-Otaegui's discovery of bread crumbs that predate farming by a few millennia at Shubayqa in Jordan ( 21 July, p 6 ). You find it curious that bread doesn't seem to have become a staple food in the Stone Age. Aboriginal Australian people were harvesting grass seeds, native rice and nardoo fern …

Stephen Battersby discusses proposals to prevent or detect spoofing of GPS signals ( 7 July, p 32 ). What about using mobile phone cell sites? Of course they are only of use on land, but they are numerous and fixed. A system using them would be very difficult to effectively spoof as it would be …

I was intrigued by Gregory Paul's discussion of the relationship between religion and economic development ( 28 July, p 24 ). But economics can be used to measure well-being up to a relatively low level of income ( 28 July 2012, p 40 ) As countries or communities become more unequal in wealth distribution, measures …

Paul asks why non-theistic countries are more successful. But how should we measure "success"? Finland, for example, is ranked top in the 2018 World Happiness report but 42nd by gross domestic product. The US is ranked top by GDP but only 18th for happiness. Religions value compassion, which promotes happiness. In contrast, economic success comes …

Catherine de Lange reports a virtual reality headset improving users' vision "to 20/30, which is pretty close to 20/20 vision" ( 4 August, p 4 ). In the UK, doctors and opticians now use a metric measure of visual acuity: "6/9 vision" means being able to read at 6 metres what one should, nominally, be …

• Cold fact: the amount of carbon dioxide needed to make a Martian atmosphere is about a million cubes of dry ice each 1 kilometre across ( 4 August, p 6 ). • Alfred Russel Wallace was racked by yellow fever during his South American expedition of 1848–1852 and studied birds of paradise in the …

You write: "You may think you already know everything there is to know..." (Leader, 28 July ). Surely, the fact that we are reading Â鶹´«Ã½ means we don't?