Scientists from the universities of Exeter and Cambridge have turned a textbook example of sexual selection on its head and shown that females may be more astute at choosing a mate than previously thought.

New research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and published in Current Biology, shows that differences in the lengths of the long tail feathers possessed by male barn swallows are more about aerodynamics than being attractive. Female barn swallows favour mates with longer tails and the prominent male tail ‘streamers’ that extend beyond the tail were cited by Darwin as evidence of sexual selection. Now for the first time, scientists have tested this assumption and found that these ‘ornaments’ are in fact linked to natural selection.

I grew up in the prairies and one of my favourite ways to relieve the boredom of long summer road trips was to examine the different bugs splattered on the windshield. I would try to figure out which bug each splatter was and I was fascinated by the ways some left green smears or bright, thick, yellow splats. It made me wonder why animals have different colours of blood and how many different colours there are.

In a galaxy far, far away, a massive star suffered a nasty double whammy. On Oct. 20, 2004, Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki saw the star let loose an outburst so bright that it was initially mistaken for a supernova. The star survived, but for only two years. On Oct. 11, 2006, professional and amateur astronomers witnessed the star actually blowing itself to smithereens as Supernova 2006jc.

As the ancient Greeks were placing the last few stones on the magnificent theater at Epidaurus in the fourth century B.C., they couldn’t have known that they had unwittingly created a sophisticated acoustic filter. But when audiences in the back row were able to hear music and voices with amazing clarity (well before any theater had the luxury of a sound system), the Greeks must have known that they had done something very right because they made many attempts to duplicate Epidaurus’ design, but never with the same success.

New research by Iowa State University psychologists says it provides more concrete evidence of the adverse effects of violent video game exposure on the behavior of children and adolescents. 

Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson, Assistant Professor of Psychology Douglas Gentile, and doctoral student Katherine Buckley share the results of three new studies in a book, "Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents" (Oxford University Press, 2007). It says it is the first book to unite empirical research and public policy related to violent video games.

Geophysicists at the University of Rochester announce in today’s issue of Nature that the Earth’s magnetic field was nearly as strong 3.2 billion years ago as it is today.

The findings, which are contrary to previous studies, suggest that even in its earliest stages the Earth was already well protected from the solar wind, which can strip away a planet’s atmosphere and bathe its surface in lethal radiation.

The maximum extent of Arctic sea ice in winter 2007 was the second lowest on satellite record, narrowly missing the 2006 record, according to a team of University of Colorado at Boulder researchers.

The Arctic sea-ice extent, which is the area of ocean covered by at least 15 percent ice, was 5.7 million square miles in March 2007, slightly higher than the record low of 5.6 million square miles measured in March 2006.

Dr Alwyn Ruddock, a former reader in history at the University of London, was the world expert on John Cabot's discovery voyages from Bristol to North America (1496-98). What she was said to have found out about these voyages looked set to re-write the history of the European discovery of America. Yet, when Dr Ruddock died in December 2005, having spent four decades researching this topic, she ordered the destruction of all her research.

In an article published today in Historical Research, Alwyn Ruddock's extraordinary claims are explored by Dr Evan Jones of the University of Bristol.

Mating strategies are straightforward in bottlenose dolphins, or are they? Much of the work carried on male-female relationships in that species to date show that males tend to coerce females who are left with little choice about with whom to mate. This explains the complex relationships we observe in male bottlenose dolphins, which are only paralleled by human social strategies: the formation of alliances and alliances of alliances, also called coalitions. These alliances and coalitions are then used to out-compete other male bands to access females.

Horizon: My Pet Dinosaur was broadcast on BBC Two on 13 March at 21:00GMT. The idea behind the program is what would have happened if the dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct? This sounds like a fantastic idea for a program and I am all for popularizing science, I believe public interest in scientific research is important. But some of these popularizations go to far; there are bound to be small anatomical mistakes in TV shows, even some hypotheses based on limited evidence, but what I hate is unreined wild speculation.