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The following post is from a series about the annual Ig Nobel Prizes in science, which honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” They were awarded in September in Cambridge, Mass. [More]

By Muriel Boselli PARIS (Reuters) - France needs to upgrade the protection of vital functions in all its nuclear reactors to avoid a disaster in the event of a natural calamity, the head of its nuclear safety agency said, adding there was no need to close any plants.

[muffled sound of voice saying “Many people take their hearing for granted.”] [More]

A version of this post was originally published on November 18, 2010. Click the archives image to see the original post.

Children breast-fed longer than six months scored a 3.8-point IQ margin over those who were bottle-fed, according to a seven-year study by researchers at Jagiellonian University Medical College in Poland.

Ever wander through a supermarket and past the open refrigerated cases that house cream cheese, butter and OJ? The refrigerated shelves are protected by jets of air that blow across the front. These jets form an air shield to keep the warm air out.

Early research on the sharpest octogenarians reveals unusually youthful brain regions A nasty affliction sets into humans as they advance in years. The hair either disappears or thins into a fuzzy halo, the skin sags and bunches, while inside the brain, changes set in that slow our reaction times and cause our memories to fade. A steady, widespread thinning out of the brain s cortex, the outermost layer of the brain, is thought to underlie some of this cognitive transformation

By Nina Chestney LONDON (Reuters) - The mystery of how a subglacial mountain range the size of the Alps formed up to 250 million years ago has finally been solved, scientists said on Wednesday, which could help map the effects of climate change. [More]

By Charlie Dunmore BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A European Union target to promote the use of biofuels will accelerate global species loss because it encourages the conversion of pasture, savanna and forests into new cropland, EU scientists have warned. [More]

I've always thought that when I get a fever, it's my body trying to make things uncomfortable for the invading pathogen. And that's often true--higher temperatures can inhibit the bad guys' ability to replicate

By Sid Perkins of Nature magazine The original colours of a fossilized moth have been brought back to life for the first time. [More]

The European Union on Monday prohibited the use of X-ray body scanners [1] in European airports, parting ways with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, which has deployed hundreds of the scanners as a way to screen millions of airline passengers for explosives hidden under clothing.

There's probably no intelligent life in the outer solar system. But it couldn't hurt to check.

By David Cyranoski of Nature magazine The likely demise of Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission has dashed China's hopes for its first Mars orbiter, Yinghuo-1, which was piggybacking on the larger craft (see ` Russia gets the red planet blues '). [More] Presented By: Grainger aids power outage response.