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Motivation is very important in any arduous task, as David Robson highlights, but the bigger challenge is often how to maintain it. For example, much research is difficult, frustrating and prone to setbacks and possible failure. However, in supervising young, ambitious students, I found that the carrot of a probable publication with themselves as a …

You report the idea of grinding bones to make edible paste. In a case in point, my young son loves meat loaf. My wife and I noticed that the texture of it changed in all our usual shop-bought versions and thought there must have been some shift in ingredients that was so compelling that widespread …

Even among humans, with our inferior olfactory senses, some of us can taste and detect scents better than others. Does the hunt for human pheromones take into account that some people may be better at emitting and/or receiving these signals? On a similar note, I have always been intrigued by the idea that menstrual cycles …

You say that decommissioning the JET fusion reactor in the UK might take 16 years. Some people might wonder why it takes so long. The reactor has been exposed to high neutron fluxes and much of it is at least mildly radioactive , so needs to be appropriately dealt with ( 17 February, p 13 …

It seems to me that the quantum Cheshire Cat problem – just like the one-particle-at-a-time double-slit paradox – appears paradoxical only because, however much we are told not to, we still think of elementary particles as like billiard balls. Probably the word "particle" ought to be expunged from all courses on physics ( 17 February, …

Your article on cannibalism prompted an idea related to the consumption of human remains. Polar bears are starving due to a lack of sea ice. Burials use up land, cremations cause air pollution and cannibalism is frowned upon. Wouldn't it be better if people agreed to donate their bodies after death to the polar bears …

If we have been eating each other for "at least a million years", why are there no recipes?

Whenever I see newly planted trees staked, I become annoyed. Now I feel even more justified in having this emotion, thanks to James Wong's piece, which explained how bad the practice is. How do we persuade organisations to stop misguidedly tying young trees to posts? Perhaps we could highlight that it is much cheaper and …

Manfield couldn't have pointed out more clearly the big flaw in environmental policies: that city-centric thinking dominates.

On face value, Robin Dunbar's arguments about the health benefits of friendships favouring on-site working over doing so from home – whether some or all of the time – seem plausible. But the personal, environmental and financial gains for the individual, business and society of foregoing daily commutes far outweigh the problems he fears. In …