Young chimpanzees at play. Photo by Tambako the Jaguar.

• The correlations are suggestive, except when they’re not. Thoughts on a study that connects “maternal” feelings to hormone levels and “feminine” facial features, by Kate Clancy and Scicrious.
• Shiny! Paleontologists reconstruct the colors of a fossilized moth.
• You have to admit, it’d be pretty cool. Other paleontologists basically invent a giant superintelligent prehistoric squid out of thin air.
• Raising the wrong kind of awareness. Seeing chimpanzees in entertainment programming may be setting back efforts to save wild chimps.
• Welcome to the future, if your insurance covers it. Genetically-engineered adult stem cells cure a genetic liver disease.
• Not so much a needle as the whole haystack. Sequencing the genome of the bacterium responsible for bubonic plague suggests that there isn’t just a single gene that made it so deadly.

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“… all they’re doing is shooting a blast of hot bacteria full force onto your hands.” Photo by eatmorechips.

• Much like my transition to regular coffee drinking. Ancient proto-whales’ transition from terrestrial to aquatic life is recorded in their teeth.
• Non-anthropologists should also take note. Anthropology gets a dressing down, from an anthropologist.
• So is it possible to get high on fake weed? The placebo effect may work through the same biochemistry as a marijuana high.
• Pretty fast, all things considered. The path of a publication, traced from initial observation to acceptance, over a mere three years.
• Hot-air driers: gross as well as ineffective. The disease-fighting possibilities, and failures, of public restroom design.
• Science writers commemorate teachers who got them started.
• I, for one, etc. A new brain-machine-brain interface gives monkeys prosthetic limbs with a sense of touch. (See also.)
• Eventually. Tortoises are not social animals, but they can learn by watching other tortoises.
• With nuance. Charles Darwin, animal rights advocate.

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Nothing like the real thing. Photo by Jamie Anderson.

• It’s a magical-seeming discovery! The molecular biology of miracle fruit, which makes sour taste sweet.
• For one thing, you can’t get lost in a map. Seeing a place is not the same as physically moving around within it—on a neurological level.
• I’m just catching up on these, I know. Sarcozona interviews Jeremy Fox, Zen Faulkes, and Jean Burns.
• When you’ve got eight to start with … Spiders deal with missing legs pretty quickly.
• Shiny! Fossilized in the right conditions, beetles keep their colors for millions of years.
• Sample size matters. A Bayesian perspective on understanding Amazon seller ratings.
• Top-notch long form. The biologist behind “arsenic life,” profiled.
• Jurassic cluck. A paleontologist wants to recreate dinosaurs from chickens.
• Knowing the limits. Defining expertise in terms of what you don’t know.
• More than a pinch. The salinity of the world’s oceans, measured from orbit.
• No fruit salad is safe. The latest food-bourne illness outbreak is from contaminated cantaloupe.

And now video, via Kevin Zelnio, of the sand tiger shark’s embryonic, siblicidal cannibalism. Ew?

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Easter Island. Photo by vtveen.

• Easter Island is no Greenland. The collapse of Polynesian society on Easter Island may not have been due to ecological damage, but a terminal case of Europeans.
• Angry Birds can’t do that. Players of an online game have resolved the structure of a key HIV protein.
• The kids are all right. David Dobbs draws together emerging research on the brains of teenagers.
• You’re running late. But so is everyone else. Our perception of the present is really a remembrance of the immediate past.
• Fortunately, I hear that the honey badger doesn’t care. The popular idea that honey guide birds lead honey badgers to beehives is probably a myth.
• Hold your horses, Jean-Baptiste. Heritable epigenetic changes to gene expression may not have much impact over evolutionary time.
• Predator becomes prey. Ground beetle larvae prey on much larger frogs and toads by luring them in for an attack.

And finally, via SciAm, the peacock spider. Check out that thorax!

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No in-flight drinks on this trip. Photo by pheanix.

• Take note, Book of Leviticus. Menstruating women are not poisonous.
• Oops? As many as half of all neuroscience papers may make a basic statistical error.
• Talk about commitment. Migrating birds supply themselves with water by breaking down their own muscles.
• Well, why not? The placebo effect may be as much about waiting room décor as it is about a well-designed sugar pill.
• First, remove the stack of unread manuscripts from thine own inbox. Is peer review broken, or are we all just lousy peers?
• Billions. The costs of introduced insects, estimated.
• Not a monster-themed alternative history, either. Abraham Lincoln, forensic meteorologist.
• Hundreds of billions. The economic return on investment of ones of billions in NIH research funding, estimated.
• Wait. Rats’ ears can ring? A possible cure for ringing ears, demonstrated in rats.
• Prince, biologist, geologist, anarchist, fan of Adam Smith and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Eric Michael Johnson interviews the author of a new biography of Peter Kropotkin.
• Might be pretty humid, though. Astronomers identify an exoplanet about the right distance from its primary to support life as we know it.
• Brains aren’t as hard to come by as we thought. A new phylogeny of the molluscs supports four independent origins of complex brains.

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A caribou in Denali National Park, Alaska. Photo by blmiers2.

• Biodiversity riches needn’t beggar their neighbors. Longstanding conventional wisdom that protected wild areas depress the economies of nearby communities turns out to be untrue.
• You say you want a revolution? Humans may riot not because we’re evolved to riot; but because we’re not evolved to deal with stressful times.
• Not unlike wearing a wedding band. The decision to take your spouse’s last name when you marry may say a lot about you, except when it doesn’t.
• And, yes, like humans. Even though it sounds like whistling, dolphins form sound by vibration, just like other mammals.
• Interesting yes, but not quite enlightening. It’s no surprise that conservatives and liberals think differently, so it’s probably not surprising that their brains look different.
• To panic, or not to panic? A conversation about the upcoming, highly-researched pandemic film Contagion.
• Simultaneously awesome and disgusting. A virus prompts caterpillars to climb to the top of a tree, then melts their flesh.

Nasty stuff, regardless of where you drink it. Photo by Darby Rose.

• Which is why I stick with gin and tonic. “Four Loko” might not be extra-intoxicating because it combines caffeine and alcohol, but because it doesn’t taste alcoholic.
• Go easy on the pawpaw, too. Too many carrots can, in fact, turn you orange.
• When he helps with the cover-up, I think probably yes. When a graduate student falsifies results, is his or her advisor responsible?
• Forty. Percent. Profits. The case against for-profit academic publishing. (But see also.)
• Good digestion goes a long way. Mice fed “probiotic” bacteria seem to be less stressed out.
• I’m sure we’re all glad to know that the tick phylogeny is now much clearer. A rare and unique species of tick has been rediscovered in South Africa almost thirty years after it was last seen.
• “We had Kate Winslet learning how to pipet.” The new film Contagion aims to accurately portray an emerging epidemic.
• Especially great if you’re shopping for a graduate advisor. If you haven’t already, go check out Sarcozona’s ongoing series of interviews from the ESA meetings.
• Yes, it’s a link to another linkfest. Ed Yong picks his favorite online science writing of August 2011.