Female fruit flies can be too attractive to the opposite sex –– too attractive for their own good –– say biologists at UC Santa Barbara. In a new PLoS Biology study, they report that too much male attention directed toward attractive females can lead to smaller families and, ultimately, a reduced rate of population-wide adaptive evolution.

The authors explain that the term "good looking," among fruit flies, refers to something, like a large body. From the perspective of a male fly, a desirable mate is a female that is larger and can therefore produce more offspring.

A couple of months ago I attended a lecture by Saul Kripke at CUNY’s Graduate Center. Kripke is one of the most influential philosophers of the late 20th century, someone who you simply have to go see give a talk if you have the chance, on the sole basis of his legendary status. As in many such cases, it is not unlikely that one is going to be disappointed, given the extremely high expectations.

Dear TV and Movie Producer Person,

I realize that you receive letters all the time complaining about the gratuitous sex and violence on television and in movies. This is not one of those letters. In a sense, I want more sex and violence. Let me explain.

It is worth reminding ourselves why we watch TV and movies. First and foremost, we watch to be entertained. And, secondly, we watch because we get to watch. That is, we watch TV and movies because the visual modality of the experience brings an evocativeness of its own, one that we seem to like. Sure, we like the dialog and the plot twists, but we could have dialog and plot twists via reading or listening to books. We watch TV and movies because, in addition, we get that visual evocativeness.

Potentially fatal mosquito-borne West Nile fever (WNF) can become much more widespread in Europe than previously thought, say scientists in a new report just out in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology(1). The disease in temperate climates is carried by a population of Culex pipiens mosquitoes that only bites birds - the disease reservoir host - but Bruno Gomes and colleagues from the Centre for Malaria and Tropical diseases and Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in Portugal found high numbers of hybrids between this population and another one that bites on humans. These hybrids, by feeding on both humans and birds, can act as a bridge transmitting the disease to humans.

A devastating drought, possibly the worst of the last century, is sweeping through Kenya-- killing children, spreading malnutrition, crippling economies and resulting in the death of livestock and wildlife reserve. Rewind 30 years. Reports on the worst famine in West Africa—Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Sudan— during the 1970’s and early 1980’s made  headlines across the world.