News Bytes of the Week—Ovulating Strippers Make Bigger Tips

Tree Frog Inspires New Easy-Off Stickies

"Knockout mice" designers win Nobel Prize

Chili Pepper Cocktail Blunts Pain

Putting the Squeeze on Nanothreads to Spin Living Tissue

Fair Play in the Genes

Genetic Code-Dependent: DNA Structure Also Crucial to Genomic Variation

Eat (Less) to Live (Longer)

Testes May Prove Fertile Source of Stem Cells

Caught on Film: Lefties Were Rare in 19th-Century England

Race-Based Medicine: A Recipe for Controversy

Is race-based medicine a boon or boondoggle?

The New Psychology of Leadership

Recent research in psychology points to secrets of effective leadership that radically challenge conventional wisdom

What Finnish Grandmothers Reveal about Human Evolution

Biologist Virpi Lummaa's work reveals that humans may be the best subject to study for evolutionary effects across generations

Science Museums Adapt in Struggle against Creationist Revisionism [Slide Show]

Institutions step up fight against attacks on theory of evolution

Can Adult Stem Cells Do It All?

Scientists may have turned mouse skin cells into embryolike stem cells, but prior claims for the power of adult cells have yet to stand the test of time

Why do migratory birds fly in a V-formation?

Floyd Landis tested positive for increased testosterone on the day of his spectacular stage win at the Tour de France last year, after testing negative on previous days. Can a large dose of the hormone produce such an immediate and profound improvement?

Why does it take so long for our vision to adjust to a darkened theater after we come in from bright sunlight?

Why do apple slices turn brown after being cut?

How is everyday onboard exercise on the International Space Station changing the rate of bone loss of its occupants? Can individual differences between humans explain differences in bone loss in microgravity?

Strange but True: The Largest Organism on Earth Is a Fungus

The blue whale is big, but nowhere near as huge as a sprawling fungus in eastern Oregon

Fact or Fiction?: Babies Exposed to Classical Music End Up Smarter

Is the so-called "Mozart effect" a scientifically supported, developmental leg up or a media-fueled "scientific legend"?

Strange but True: Males Can Lactate

Unless you are an Indonesian fruit bat, though, it probably won't happen naturally

Strange but True: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets

There is a reason cats prefer meaty wet food to dry kibble, and disdain sugar entirely

Fact or Fiction?: Birds (and Other Critters) Abandon Their Young at the Slightest Human Touch

Does nature's proclivity to nurture override its flight mechanism?

  How Does Consciousness Happen

Two leading neuroscientists, Christof Koch and Susan Greenfield, disagree about the activity that takes place in the brain during subjective experience

This is Your Brain on Food (extended version)

Neuroimaging reveals a shared basis for chocoholia and drug addiction

  The Shark's Electric Sense

An astonishingly sensitive detector of electric fields helps sharks zero in on prey

  Windows on the Mind

Once scorned as nervous tics, certain tiny, unconscious flicks of the eyes now turn out to underpin much of our ability to see. These movements may even re?veal subliminal thoughts

Should Science Speak to Faith?

Two prominent defenders of science exchange their views on how scientists ought to approach religion and its followers

  Speaking in Tones

Ni hao or bonjour: do genes drive preference for language type?

  Attitude Screen

Seeing if the public is ready for personal genetic information

  Pieces of a Paranoid Past

A plan moves ahead to reconstruct East Germanys shredded secret police files

  Sequencing Sea World

A genetic census of the ocean's primary predators

An Immune Portal

Protein may be a key to autoimmune disorders

Orangutan Technology

How did the great apes get to be so smart?

The Major Unsolved Problem in Biology

Three books try to explain consciousness

Climatic and Evolutionary Whiplash

How sudden shifts in climate may have boosted human ingenuity

Meddling with Human Nature

The political outcomes of biotechnology

A Three-Billion-Year Memoir

Thanks to Matt Ridley, the human genome now has its own autobiography

The Trouble with Men

Deadbeat granddads, life-shortening sons and genetically bullying brothers—these are just a few effects revealed in biologist Virpi Lummaa's studies of how evolutionary forces shape later generations

Going beyond X and Y

Babies born with mixed sex organs often get immediate surgery. New genetic studies, Eric Vilain says, should force a rethinking about sex assignment and gender identity.

A Proposition for Stem Cells

Last fall Robert Klein got Californians to vote for embryonic stem cell work. That was a piece of cake compared with getting the resulting research agency off the ground

Geographer of the Male Genome

The notion of the Y sex chromosome as a genetic wasteland still entices biologists. David C. Page has spent a good part of his career knocking down that myth

What's in a Name?

Not much at the moment, thinks biologist Kevin de Queiroz, but names could be made to reflect our modern understanding of life's origins and complexity