Researchers have retrieved and analyzed a huge chunk of Neandertal DNA. (p. 323)

The mysterious cosmic push that's tearing up the universe began revving up about 5 billion years ago. (p. 323)

Roboticists have made a walking machine that carries on despite serious damage. (p. 324)

Circumcised men are less likely to get sexually transmitted diseases than uncircumcised men are. (p. 325)

By adding grooves to the surface of a common oil-skimming device, researchers recovered up to three times as much oil as they do with smooth-surfaced devices. (p. 325)

The chicken may be the first animal other than primates that's been shown to make sounds that, like words, represent something in the environment. With audio. (p. 325)

Injecting a special type of stem cell into dogs with the canine equivalent of Duchenne muscular dystrophy significantly slowed the disease's progression. (p. 326)

Rogue waves, which tower over the waves that surround them, are probably more common than scientists had previously suspected. (p. 328)

A heated debate has broken out among anthropologists over whether a highly publicized partial skeleton initially attributed to a new, tiny species of human cousins actually comes from a pygmy Homo sapiens with a developmental disorder. (p. 330)

More than half of the airborne dust that provides vital nutrients to the Amazonian rainforest comes from a small corner of the Sahara. (p. 333)

The Viking landers may have missed potential signs of life when they explored Mars in 1976. (p. 333)

In the Pacific Northwest, sea lice that spread from cultivated salmon to their wild counterparts have become major parasites affecting the wild population. (p. 333)

Scanning the sky for high-energy X rays, a NASA satellite found more than 200 supermassive black holes within 400 million light-years of Earth. (p. 333)

A tiny chunk of amber from Southeast Asia contains the remains of a bee that's at least 35 million years older than any reported fossil of similar bees. (p. 334)

Astronomers have confirmed the existence of the nearest known planet beyond the solar system. (p. 334)

Scientists have discovered a way to give memory a modest lift while people slumber. (p. 334)

A test with a jumbo-size mirror suggests that Asian elephants may be among the few species that can recognize their own images. (p. 334)

(p. 335)