Aha, we thought so
According to scientists, women are getting more beautiful, reports Ben Leach in The Daily Telegraph. "Researchers found that attractive women have more children than their less attractive counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Once those daughters become adult they tend to be good-looking themselves and so the pattern is repeated as women over the generations become steadily more aesthetically pleasing. As attractive couples are less likely to have a boy than a girl, men, in contrast, remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors, the scientists claim. The findings have emerged from a series of studies of physical attractiveness and its link to reproductive success in humans."
Real hunger
"Lions in Cameroon are having their kills stolen from under their noses by hungry villagers," BBC News reports. "Incidences of such kleptoparasitism, the stealing of food from another, usually occur between top predators such as lion, hyena and cheetah. But people are increasingly getting into the act, conservationists say. They suspect the practice may be much more common than thought, and are concerned that it could threaten the dwindling number of lions in Cameroon." People are stealing the meat to get an easy source of protein, say researchers, as lions may be wary enough of people to be easily scared off their kills.
They could kill us?
"Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence," writes John Markoff in The New York Times, "a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society's workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone. ... The researchers - leading computer scientists, artificial intelligence researchers and roboticists who met at the Asilomar Conference Grounds on Monterey Bay in California - generally discounted the possibility of highly centralized superintelligences and the idea that intelligence might spring spontaneously from the Internet. But they agree that robots that can kill autonomously are either already here or will be soon."
Computer bugs
"Computers are evolving - literally," The Guardian reports. "While the tech world argues netbooks vs. notebooks, synthetic biologists are leaving traditional computers behind altogether. A team of U.S. scientists have engineered bacteria that can solve complex mathematical problems faster than anything made from silicon." The research, published in the Journal of Biological Engineering, proves that bacteria can be used to solve a puzzle known as the Hamiltonian Path Problem - a sort of "travelling salesman problem," where the aim is to visit a series of cities exactly once by the shortest possible route. This problem is surprisingly difficult to solve, but a bacterial computer can look at millions of possible routes at once. "The biological world also has other advantages. As time goes by, a bacterial computer will actually increase in power as the bacteria reproduce."
Buy wine in bulk
"Frank DeSalvo's dinner guests have come to expect a bit of spectacle when their host serves wine," Jennie D'Amato writes in The Wall Street Journal. "The process sometimes involves a wooden cradle, holding an exquisitely blown-glass vessel containing the equivalent of 24 bottles of wine, being lifted by several men onto the table. 'When I roll out the melchior, everybody just goes 'Oh, my,' ' says Mr. DeSalvo, a retired attorney in New York who collects wine in large-format bottles." The melchior holds 18 litres, or the equivalent of 24 bottles of wine. A growing variety of wines is being sold in large-format bottles worldwide. Experts say the big bottles are more than just an image statement. The format is superior to regular-sized bottles for maturing wine, because the ratio of air to liquid is lower in large formats, allowing the wine to age more slowly.
Stop or I'll enchant
British police who worship heathen gods will get eight days off a year to celebrate pagan festivals, The Daily Express reports. "They are also in line for thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money in recognition of their status as a 'community' of pagans. ... Last year the Home Office introduced a pagan oath which can be used in courts and [this month] officials said self-styled witches, Druids and heathens were welcome in the police." Constable Andy Hill of Staffordshire police, the founder of paganpolicegroupuk.co.uk and a practising wiccan, says he has cast spells to help his promotion prospects and contends: "This is nothing to do with black magic or devil-worshipping. ... It is working with nature for good."
Thought du jour
"Great passions, my dear, don't exist: they're liars' fantasies. What do exist are little loves that may last for a short or a longer while."
- Anna Magnani (1908-73), Egyptian-born Italian actress
