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Faye Flam writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer that investment tycoon Sir John Templeton is giving out grants worth a total of $1 million to 15 scientists to look for proof that God exists. These scientists, many with international reputations, have spent their careers studying the Big Bang, the origin of stars and galaxies, the fundamental physical constants, and the origin of life.

The question that intrigues Templeton, as it has philosophers and astronomers for centuries, is this: Is the universe the product of design or accident? Templeton, who is 88, sold his mutual fund empire in 1992 for $913 million and now devotes himself to his quest for common ground between science and religion.
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People around the world are having fewer children and living longer. The U.S., Europe and even large parts of the developing world are becoming aging societies without enough social services.

In many countries the old are neglected and abused, even if they?re still productive, and many don?t have enough health insurance or pension money to live decently, according to a United Nations report to the Second World Assembly on Aging. “In Africa, when an old man dies, a library disappears,” says UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “Without the knowledge and wisdom of the old, the young would never know where they come from or where they belong.”
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Parents who smoke produce fewer boys, according to research on Japanese couples. The researchers don?t know why this happens, but say both the mother’s and father’s smoking habits are important.

Stress, temperature, birth order and even the number of wives in a man’s harem are all known to influence the relative proportions of girls and boys at birth. But this is the first time the sex ratio of babies and smoking have been linked.

The researchers questioned over 5000 Japanese women on their smoking habits and those of their partner around the time they conceived their children. The 11,815 births reported were then split into groups based on parental smoking habits and the team compared the ratio of boys to girls in each category.
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Men are more likely to pay attention to their female partners around the time of ovulation. This could be an evolutionary strategy to keep women away from other men during fertile periods, say the researchers who carried out the questionnaire study.

There?s a good reason for this: It?s been discovered that between one and 30 per cent of children are not the offspring of their so-called fathers. Steven Gangestad and colleagues at the University of New Mexico found that women fantasized more about other men just before ovulation. “It was clear from the results that the women’s primary partners were more attentive and proprietary near ovulation,” Gangestad says. “The results suggest a conflict of interest between the sexes when women are fertile.?
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