November-December 2009

Graphic representations of how movie stars and their critics rate, according to Metacritic.com.

Professor Shigeru Watanabe from Keio University in Japan, writing in the journal Animal Cognition, says pigeons can use color, pattern and texture to distinguish good paintings from bad.

An esteemed professor rightly takes AIDS denialists to task, but his valuable history of the movement is at times a caustic read.

How the government can make us better at self-government.

Psychologist Todd Kashdan explores the many benefits of cultivating curiosity.

How can the U.S. and Europe keep ship owners from paying ransoms that make Somali pirates more dangerous?

Jessica Sager and Janna Wagner train home-based child care providers for the poor neighborhoods that need them most.

How to get to Sesame Street? Take Wonk Way and turn left on Research Road.

The U.S. spends billions on levees, but river flooding still causes havoc across the country. Vermont has a better way.

A law professor explains how to keep criminal informants from duping prosecutors, police and the rest of us.

Can the descendants of horses left by Spanish explorers coexist with native plants and animals on North Carolina's environmentally sensitive Outer Banks? A study will tell.

The Obama administration has a mortgage refinancing program that needs some tuning.

A financial stimulus for the recession-battered middle class: pot farming.

AVMA president responds in the debate on the use of extra-label antibiotics in poultry.

Researchers Christian Davenport and Allan C. Stam say the accepted story of the mass killings of 1994 is incomplete, and the full truth — inconvenient as it may be to the Rwandan government — needs to come out.