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From Nature magazine.

The most common types of ingested birth control contain estrogen. But the hormone doesn’t just prevent human babies.

By Heidi Ledford of Nature magazine At last, a member of the celebrated sirtuin family of proteins has been shown to extend lifespan in mammals -- although it's not the one that has received the most attention and financial investment. Sirtuin genes and the proteins they encode have intrigued many researchers who study ageing ever since they were first linked to longevity in yeast.

By Zeeya Merali of Nature magazine You just can't keep a good superconductor down. [More]

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazine Men can breathe a sigh of relief--their sex-determining chromosomes aren't going anywhere. [More]

Google's working on a new device, a pair of augmented reality glasses that've been all but confirmed by the New York Times. We looked at this idea a couple months back--now here's what's new. The New York Times isn't messing around with today's headline : "Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses By Year's End." Nick Bilton's convinced enough by info from his sources to really go for it.

At the end of the month, Netflix subscribers will no longer be able to stream Starz content--one of the largest providers of movies and TV shows. Netflix puts on a happy face: "We are confident we can take the money we had earmarked for Starz's renewal . . .

An internationally recognized water and climate change expert admitted yesterday that he lied about his identity to obtain internal funding and strategy documents from the Heartland Institute. [More]

And then there was one. The last known Rabb’s fringe-limbed tree frog ( Ecnomiohyla rabborum ) now lives by himself at Zoo Atlanta in Georgia after the zoo euthanized the only other member of its species

About 300 million years ago, volcanic ash buried a tropical forest located in what is now Inner Mongolia, much like it did the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. [More]

From Nature magazine [More]

Image courtesy of iStockphoto/vladacanon Scary antibiotic-resistant infections aren’t just lurking in the hospital anymore. They’re in gyms, at the beach , and increasingly, on the farm. [More]

Scanning tunnelling microscope image of a silicon surface lithographically prepared for two electrodes and a single transistor atom in the center. Credit: ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication, at UNSW The shift from fragile, bulky vacuum tubes to solid-state transistors paved the way for the information age. And the steady downsizing of transistors has made the devices of the information age ubiquitous, thanks to processors that become smaller, cheaper and faster with each passing year.

By Declan Butler of Nature magazine After weeks of debate, two controversial papers describing forms of the H5N1 avian influenza virus capable of transmitting between mammals should be published in full. [More]

By Sharon Levy of Nature magazine During the Ice Age, Earth's northern reaches were covered by chilly, arid grasslands roamed by mammoths, woolly rhinoceros and long-horned bison.