For years scientists have been touting a disease-fighting technique called RNA interference. The idea behind it is pretty simple: By piggybacking on the body's own system for silencing genes, researchers think they could stop troublesome proteins from being produced, and, as a result, halt the damage those proteins cause. The trick, though, is that scientists have had a hard time figuring out how to make RNAi, as it's known, work on specific tissues.

Confirming what had been a long-held hypothesis among paleontologists, scientists have now verified at the molecular level that the closest living relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex are indeed birds; most specifically ostriches and chickens. Skeletal evidence has strongly borne this theory out in recent years as data from fossils has accumulated, but this new study of bone proteins definitively shows that more of the T. rex genome is similar to birds' than to living reptiles'.

Just as CD players, personal computers, and HDTVs were prohibitively expensive when they were first released, so too was the cost of sequencing the entire genome of an individual. In 2003 that feat was accomplished for the staggering amount of $437,000,000 after 13 years of work. Today, CD players are ubiquitous and cheap; HDTVs are steadily entering the realm of affordability; and so, too, has the cost of sequencing a genome fallen precipitously. It will still set you back $1,000,000 and two months of time, but that is a tremendous savings over just five years ago.

Most of us have friends who are social smokers. They're the ones who don't ever take work breaks under the overhang with the smoking crowd, but come Friday, they're outside the bar having a butt or two as the night wears on. They rarely buy cigarettes because they don't want a whole pack; they're more likely to ask for a smoke from a friend. They never seem to get hooked and can go for weeks without even thinking about it. How do they do it when so many of the rest of us are hopelessly addicted?

In 1809, exactly 199 years ago this past Tuesday, Charles Darwin was born. Fifty years later, he published The Origin of Species, arguably the most intellectually innovative and intensely disruptive single text in the history of science.

And now, here we are two centuries later: 262 days ago, the $27 million Creation Museum opened its doors; 174 days ago, a U.S. presidential candidate defended his stance against evolution; and earlier this week, the last public hearing was held by Florida's Board of Education over proposed standards to require that evolution be taught as the fundamental underpinning of biology. Clearly, Darwin and his singular theories are still under fire, but if a group of British scientists have their way, Darwin’s upcoming 200th birth year may be the time to begin an organized campaign to address Darwin’s critics with fervor.

What if you could carve off a chunk of the most succulent slab of steak you’ve ever eaten, clone a bull from it, then produce weeks of identically delectable dinners?

Although many jilted brainiacs might beg to differ, there’s no concrete evidence that women are more attracted to dumb men. Yet the same might not be true for some of our mammalian cousins. Consider, for example, the bat. After gathering available brain and testis size data for 334 species of bats, evolutionary biologist Scott Pitnick of Syracuse University found that males with the biggest cranial capacity were likely to have the smallest testicles, and vice versa.