A paper in the International Journal of Web-Based Communities suggests that the familiar interfaces of online social networking sites might be adapted to allow us to interact more efficiently with our networked devices such as cars, domestic appliances and gadgets.

The concept would also extend to the idea of those devices connecting with each other as necessary to improve efficiency of heating and lighting, make our home entertainment systems smarter and much more.

80 years ago, America was going through The Dust Bowl and farmers got a lot of the blame. They didn't let land lay fallow, or used monocultures. Now we know it was the worst drought of the last 1,000 years, 7X larger than other comparable intensity droughts that struck North America since 1000 A.D. 75 percent of the country was affected, 27 states severely, and farming had very little to do with it.

But farmers have gotten a lot more scientific since then anyway. They know monocultures can be cultivated efficiently but they are not sustainable so crops are often rotated. Monocultures remain the principal crop form in some regions because it is believed that is the only way to get higher yields in plant production.

Myths about the brain are common among teachers worldwide and are hampering teaching, according to new research which presented teachers in the UK, Holland, Turkey, Greece and China with seven 'neuromyths' and then asked whether they believe them to be true.

Over 25% of teachers in the UK and Turkey believe a student's brain would shrink if they drank less than six to eight glasses of water a day, while 50% of those surveyed believe we only use  10% of our brains and that children are less attentive after sugary drinks and snacks.

Over 70% of teachers in all countries wrongly believe a student is either left-brained or right-brained, peaking at 91% in the UK.

There's just no substitute for a dead body.

Computer teaching is all the rage and simulation can do many things, but when it comes to anatomy, students learn much better through the traditional use of human cadavers.

Cary Roseth, psychologist at Michigan State University, said the paper suggests cadaver-based instruction should continue in undergraduate human anatomy, a gateway course to medical school, nursing and other health and medical fields.

Human bathroom walls contain messages that are wonderfully informative about our modern condition - they can tell you who to call if you have an evolutionary mandate to procreate or even notify you that someone else once peed in the same spot.

White-footed sportive lemurs learn a lot about each other due to bathrooms also. Only instead of writing on the walls, they use scent-marks to communicate with their own kind. A study published online in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology by Iris Dröscher and Peter Kappeler from the German Primate Center (DPZ) found that the urine left on latrine trees serves as a method to maintain contact with family members. It also serves as a means to inform an intruder that there is a male that will defend his partner.

In modern culture, boys are often slighted; girls get billions devoted to their welfare while boys are the default excuse for whatever is wrong. Almost every television show that has a tough woman has her disclaiming, 'I grew up in a house full of boys', which is insulting to both girls and boys.

And that public relations has worked. Boys in surveys increasingly feel like peer relationships are less valuable. But new surveys show that may be not so; while sisters claim to benefit from having boys as siblings, boys also seem to benefit from being siblings. That means even if boys are positive socially, someone else gets the credit.