How many eggs shall I lay? I’ll ask the neighbors. Photo by yanajen.

• Raise a glass (or two or three) for us absentees. I couldn’t make it to Research Triangle Park this year, but the #Scio12 hashtag is nicely busy.
• With, hopefully, lots of extra lives. Why classes should be a little more like video games.
• Keeping up with the neighbors. Flycatchers decide how many eggs to lay in a given season by watching other birds.
• Awkward! Yes, that ostrich is indeed flirting with you.
• Sound advice. When choosing graduate advisers, prioritize personalities over projects.
• I am become life … One of the most enthusiastic funders of synthetic biology is the U.S. military. One goal: greener munitions.
• The truth, putting its boots on. Assessing the fallout from The Atlantic’s bunk report on miRNAs and GM food.
• Eureka! Yeast that clumps! Multicellularity, evolved in a test tube.
• Boom. With citations. In which Kate Clancy and Scicurious bury Jesse Bering’s “deep-thinking hebephile” column under a great big pile of data.
• For straight couples, that is. The per-coital act risk of HIV transmission, calculated.

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