There's playing online games, and then there's collecting 68 virtual "husbands" in a game. That's when Chinese parents intervene and send their wayward offspring to a boot camp staffed by soldiers of the People's Liberation Army.

A good dose of nature can still soothe the psyche of the modern human, but sometimes nature, red in tooth and claw, can also just gross you out. Wasps turn helpless caterpillars into a 24x7 buffet for young ones, mama mantis snacks on the head of its former lover, and a frog gives new meaning to oral fixation when nurturing the kiddies.

Think that college lab work is dull and uninspiring? Student inventors claimed a $25,000 grand prize and other awards Wednesday night for creating antibacterial agents, "plastic steel," and a spherical robot that can climb stairs.

The winners were contestants in the 2008 Collegiate Inventors Competition, operated by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation since 1990.

Get ready for more interstellar signposts. Astronomers have directly spotted no less than three planets orbiting a star that sits 130 light-years from Earth. The three gas giants are 10 to seven times the size of Jupiter, with their parent star weighing in at 1.5 times the mass of our sun. Both the Gemini North telescope and W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii helped scope out the planets through infrared light.

James Bond's latest nemesis in the film Quantum of Solace sees more people on Earth needing more water, and he likes it. "This is the world's most precious resource," Dominic Greene says with eyes alight. "We need to control as much of it as we can."

His plan has the ring of truth. Scientists and policymakers continue to warn about water shortages all across the United States and the world.