Snakes, as we know too well, come in two varieties: the venomous kind, which stick you full of poison, and the constricting kind, which smother you to death. (Both kinds, naturally, are quite beautiful.) But now New Scientist has revealed that bees come in both varieties, too – they can sting in self-defense, but they also will suffocate [...]

Science Daily reports on astronomers making an atypically cute discovery. The Hubble Space Telescope has isolated nine new galaxies – the smallest galaxies ever observed:

…[T]he nine compact galaxies discovered by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes are 100 to 1,000 times smaller than the Milky Way galaxy.

“These are among the lowest mass galaxies ever directly observed in the [...]

Because they’re going there, reports Nature. Not in person (not right away, anyway), but with the launch of a new satellite system:

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is calling it the biggest lunar mission since NASA’s Apollo programme. The JPY 32 billion (US$279 million) satellite, called the Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE), will survey the Moon’s mineralogy, [...]

That’s what those feisty young upstarts New Scientist are trying to tell us – that replacing sugar with honey will keep us bright, sharp and relaxed into our golden years:

Honey-fed rats spent almost twice as much time in the open sections of an assessment maze than sucrose-fed rats, suggesting they were less anxious. They were also were [...]

Tabulae sceleti et musculorum corporis humani by anatomist Bernard Albinus and illustrator Jan Wandelaar, 1747.

Apparently, the rhino’s name was Clara, and she was quite the science illustration celebrity at the time. More on Albinus and Wandelaar here and here, and more on Clara here.

from the Street Anatomy blog.

Dark energy is the mysterious force that keeps the universe from imploding – or, some say, is pushing us all farther and farther apart. Other than that, we don’t know a thing about it. But, Nature reports, we soon will:

The panel gives top marks to a Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) to probe dark energy, [...]

We’re in the middle of massive extinction event, warns SciDevNet – not of species, but of breeds. As in livestock. And that can be bigger problem than you’d think:

The report surveyed farm animals in 169 countries, finding that nearly 70 per cent of the world’s remaining unique livestock breeds are found in developing countries. Such rare breeds are [...]

Oh, man. Nature gives us another reason to be terrified of moray eels. They’re just like the alien that stalked Sigourney Weaver:

Like the fearsome extraterrestrial from the sci-fi horror classic Alien, these real-life beasts have a second, extendable pair of jaws — encrusted with sharp teeth — that thrusts forward to ensnare hapless fish and shrimp.

High-speed videos and [...]

Nature reveals that British researchers have been given the green light to create embryos from human DNA implanted in animal cells. Just don’t call them “human-animal hybrids”:

The embryos — called ‘cybrid’ embryos because they are not true hybrids but rather contain human DNA with cell cytoplasm from animals — could yield stem cells containing the donor DNA of [...]