“In Western culture there are countless examples of reference to female legs as a factor in sexual attraction”.

Utopia is a perfect world where we can eat to our heart's content without without getting heart disease or diabetes or even cancer.  In mice, Utopia may be coming closer. Mice with an extra dose of a known anti-cancer gene called Pten lose weight even as their appetites grow. They also live longer - but not just because they aren't getting cancer.

One of the animals' youthful secrets is hyperactive brown fat, which burns energy instead of storing it. The findings add to evidence that tumor suppressors aren't designed only to protect us against cancer, the researchers say. They also point to new treatment strategies aimed to boost brown fat and fight aging.

One of our popular topics last year was earthquakes.  That makes sense, with the earthquake in Japan.  It's not like there was some greater instance of earthquakes but if you are a Doomsday fearmonger, any event is a good event; that means anti-science activists determined to send us back to the 13th century looked for ways to make earthquakes result from fracking.

If you dispute that, you get meaningless gibberish responses like 'you can't prove the earthquakes did not come from fracking', which is true, in the same way you can't prove I am not the disembodied brain of Adolf Hitler writing this piece from my Antarctic Fortress where I am plotting the Fourth Reich - but it's sort of silly to live your life believing it.

If you want to know basic things about animals, like who eats whom, you might guess that your days would consist of watching real-life nature documentaries. You might expect to go out into the savannah or into the depths of the sea to observe predators hunting and devouring their prey.

Actually, it takes a lot of sitting still and watching to see even a single predation event. It turns out you can get a lot more data a lot more quickly by looking at predator vomit and feces. Oh, the glamour of science!

When it comes to squid, the remmants they leave in their predators' guts or scat are usually beaks. These hard, chitinous structures last a lot longer than the muscle that makes up the rest of the squid.

“Exaggerated celebrations after making a goal, such as sliding, piling up, and tackling a team-mate when racing away, can result in serious injury.”

Bülent Zeren, MD from the Center for Orthopaedics and Sports Traumatology, Karsiyaka, Izmir, Turkey, and Haluk H. Öztekin, MD at the Clinic of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Atatürk Research and Training Hospital, Izmir, Turkey, have undertaken one of the very few formal scientific studies into ‘Score-Celebration Injuries’ (SCIs)

A research team has announced discovery of molecular oxygen ions (O2+) in the upper  atmosphere of Dione, one of the 62 known moons orbiting Saturn. 

I would like you to consider carefully the following comments made by Gerhard Adam in the discussion that followed a recent article on artificial intelligence.

Gerhard’s contribution is a lesson in the benefits of disciplined logical thought. Please read on:

“Intelligence" didn't just "wake up" one day. Its presence is visible from microbes up to the highest organisms. The notion that if you just cobble together enough pieces and intelligence will emerge is simply magical thinking.”

And in response to another comment; “It just seems that intelligence is being viewed as some arbitrary "add-on" to biology. Like it's some feature that is "out there" and has nothing to do with the organism in question.”