A new study indicates that higher levels of estrogen in a women are correlated with her perceived attractiveness, suggesting that our ideas of sexual attractiveness are indeed rooted in fertility, as we would expect.

And on the subject of sexual attraction, more weirdly, it appears that male mice, like male birds, sing in response to sexual pheromones! You can hear their song (too highly pitched to be heard by human ears without technical intervention) here.

Scientific American reports on a couple of interesting recent studies. Apparently schizophrenics aren't fooled by certain optical illusions, indicating there may be some dysfunction in their contextual processing. This may explain why schizophrenics sometimes misunderstand other people's actions.

The second study looked at activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (an area of the brain involved in regulating emotion) in women at different times of their menstrual cycle. It seems that those women who do not suffer premenstrual mood swings show changing patterns of activity that may reflect the region's ability to compensate for hormonal changes.

Perhaps we can finally put to rest that old dichotomy: nature vs nurture. It never was an either/or question, and the only reason it was ever put forward as one is because humans are wedded to either/or, black-&-white propositions -- well, we'd all like a simpler world, but this is the one we've got (a many-shades-of-grey one). Anyway, forget the question: either nature or nurture; forget even the far more reasonable: how much nature and how much nurture. We are now in the realm of epigenetics -- which means, nature and nurture (particularly prenatal nurture) are indissolubly intertwined. And this has far-reaching consequences for any debates on intelligence.

Remember that old story about the elephants' graveyard? Well, there may be a reason for thinking elephants have a human sensitivity to their dead -- New Scientist reports on a study experimentally testing observations that elephants become agitated on seeing dead elephants; it seems that elephants show a much greater interest in elephant skulls than those of rhino or buffalo. Few animals show an interest in their own dead.