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Over the years, we?ve regularly reported on the progress of every woman?s dream: a birth control pill for men. This new day may be dawning soon.

Jeanna Bryner writes in LiveScience.com that researchers have discovered that male mice that have been bred without a certain protein, which is also found in human males, have reduced fertility. There is hope that this discovery could lead to a non-hormonal birth control pill for men. Let?s just hope they don?t treat men who want the pill as badly as they treat women!
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Five years ago, we reported that a dolphin recognizes himself when it sees its image in a mirror. Now it has been discovered that elephants do too. Scientists think that this is a true test of self-awareness.

Peter Aldhous writes in New Scientist that recognizing your own image was thought to be something only humans were capable of. Those of us who have pets know that when a cat or dog sees itself in a mirror, it thinks that another animal is there and will sometimes try to attack it. People who have a single bird as a pet will often put a mirror in the cage so that the bird thinks there?s another bird there, keeping it company.
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We recently reported that climatologists are using supercomputers to try to figure out exactly how global warming will affect different parts of the world. Researcher Cameron Wake says, “The very notion of the Northeast as we know it is at stake. The near-term emissions choices we make in the Northeast and throughout the world will help determine the climate and quality of life our children and grandchildren experience.”
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Why do our fingers have a musty, “metallic” odor after handling coins? It turns out we?re not really smelling the coins, we’re smelling a kind of body odor. And there’s a reason we can smell it: it helped our hunter ancestors track down their wounded prey during hunting forays.

Ker Than writes in LiveScience.com that the smell is created by the breakdown of oils in the skin after touching objects that contain iron. He quotes German researcher Dietmar Glindemann as saying, “That we are smelling the metal itself is actually an illusion? That humans can ‘smell’ iron can be interpreted as a sense for the smell of blood.”
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