Female birds often choose their mates based on fancy feathers. Female mammals, on the other hand, may be more likely to follow their noses to the right mate. That's one conclusion of Cambridge zoologist Tim Clutton-Brock and Harvard researcher Katherine McAuliffe, whose review of evidence for female mate choice is published in the March 2009 issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology.

Historically, most examples of female mate choice and its evolutionary consequences are found in birds. The classic case is the peacock's tail. The ornate tails do nothing to help peacocks survive. Rather, they emerged because peahens prefer to mate with males that have showy plumage.

WASHINGTON – Romance does not have to fizzle out in long-term relationships and progress into a companionship/friendship-type love, a new study has found. Romantic love can last a lifetime and lead to happier, healthier relationships.

"Many believe that romantic love is the same as passionate love," said lead researcher Bianca P. Acevedo, PhD, then at Stony Brook University (currently at University of California, Santa Barbara). "It isn't. Romantic love has the intensity, engagement and sexual chemistry that passionate love has, minus the obsessive component. Passionate or obsessive love includes feelings of uncertainty and anxiety. This kind of love helps drive the shorter relationships but not the longer ones."

I could write a book refuting the nonsense regularly expounded by New York Time’s columnist Stanley Fish. Oh, wait, I almost have written a book about it!

The “Holy Grail of Climate Change" press release about biomaterial found in Wyoming clouds has been making its way across the internet like a steady front. 

It's always best not to go overboard but the discovery of Darwinius masillae is pretty darn exciting, because it represents the most complete fossil primate ever found;  the skeleton, soft body outline and even the stomach contents.   It is phylogenetically terrific. Or not.  In any new claim like this, there will be doubts.

Empa and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) have, together with Bucher Schoerling, Proton Motor, BRUSA Elektronik AG und Messer Schweiz, developed a hydrogen powered municipal street cleaning vehicle which was presented to the public last week in Basel. The vehicle is named the "Bucher CityCat H2"  and is the first municipal utility vehicle in the world powered by fuel cell technology.   For the next 18 months it will be tested in everyday usage.

Morphometric and phylogenetic analyses of the fossilised remains of the jaws and teeth of a shrew discovered in a deposit in Gran Dolina de Atapuerca, in Burgos, a city of northern Spain at the edge of the central plateau, have shown this to be a new species (Dolinasorex glyphodon) that has not previously been described. The extinct animal had red teeth, was large in size compared with mammals of the same family, and was more closely related to Asian than European shrews.

Neanderthals/neandertals, popularly regarded as the 'stupid' cousins of modern humans, were actually capable of capturing the most impressive animals - and that takes some sense.   Dutch researcher Gerrit Dusseldorp analyzed their daily forays for food to gain insights into the complex behavior of the Neanderthal. His analysis revealed that the hunting was very knowledge intensive. 

A new type of air-fuelled battery called the STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell could give up to ten times the energy storage of designs currently available, meaning a new generation of batteries for electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.

The new design has the potential to improve the performance of portable electronic products and give a major boost to the renewable energy industry. The batteries will enable a constant electrical output from sources such as wind or solar, which stop generating when the weather changes or night falls.

Dutch firm Nexus Technology enters the market for laptop accessories with a new patented liquid cooling solution. The TDD-9000 is a soft black velvet blanket with inside a gel-like liquid. The patented liquid has unique heat dissipating characteristics and works completely passive and noiseless.

"When you put the laptop cooling pad on your lap you will feel your lap turn colder within 10 seconds," says Michael van der Jagt, CEO of Nexus Technology. "The Taiwanese testing institute SGS Taiwan has done independent tests that support these claims.