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January 26, 2013 This is the tale of one man's slobbering, very unpretty pet cat, his brave sister, his homicidal yet generous uncle, and what happened one winter night when he was a boy.

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January 25, 2013 In the story The Little Prince, a boy from a tiny planet lands on Earth. The boy is tall, the planet small, and you worry he might fall off. In real life, real Earthlings once had a hint of this experience. It was 1972, and you can go there with them.

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January 24, 2013 In New Zealand, where they do things differently, middle schoolers are taught statistics, probability and experimental science in an odd way. They explore frustrating supermarket lines, ungraspable tape, foot seeking thumbtacks and carpet soiling toast.

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January 22, 2013 What if I told you that there's a mathematical formula buried deep in living things that tells us — all of us, dandelions, gorillas, sea grasses, elm trees, buttercups — when it's time to die. Scientists think there is such rule. It has to do with size.

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January 19, 2013 Here's a new way to think about global warming. An interactive map plots how temperatures have changed in any region on the planet since the early 1950s.

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January 18, 2013 A big boxing match usually features two guys, thick with muscle, who know how to bob, weave and use their fists. This bout has two fighters who can't make fists because they don't have hands. What they have are necks. Long necks.

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January 16, 2013 If you are up in space looking down on America west of the Mississippi, one of the brightest patches of light at night is on the Great Plains in North Dakota. It's not a city, not a town, not a military installation. What is it?

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January 12, 2013 It's hard, during flu season, to avoid inhaling a virus or two (or three, or 10,000), but that doesn't mean they're going to take you over. You have an army of defenders in you, ready to take them on.

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January 11, 2013 The oldest rock in the world isn't even a rock. It's a teeny grain, a zircon, found inside a bigger rock. But what it's telling us is huge. It's rewriting the early history of the planet.

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January 9, 2013 One of the country's speediest, most daring and dangerously tall climbers seems to be walking across the sky until his foot touches the moon's edge. But he doesn't stay for long.

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January 8, 2013 American men are at the top of their shirt-buying game in their early 50s. Then something drastic happens.

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January 5, 2013 This can't be. How does that big heavy rock stay pivoted on top of that itsy bitsy one, which is hanging precariously onto the one below? Yet they do. The beauty of balance.

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