Scorecard

Stem cells on the ISS

NASA's decision to include privately funded research on the International Space Station from 2011 could see stem cells, and other biomed products, going into space.

Everything else at NASA

With charges of drunken astronauts and lost and sabotaged equipment, NASA has more pressing concerns to address before turning to next decade's bioethics issues.

On the record

“The toes date from between 1000 and 600 BC , so if we can prove they were functional we will have pushed back prosthetic medicine by as much as 700 years.”

Biomedical egyptologist Jacky Finch of the University of Manchester, UK, who is studying ancient Egyptian big toes, made of wood and leather, from museums in Cairo and London. She's looking for people who have lost their right big toe and wouldn't mind helping to test out a modern replica.

Credit: S. MILNE/AP

Overhyped

Oscar, the cat of doom

If you believe the news, the cat who can “predict death” at a Rhode Island nursing home has “left doctors baffled”. And so, abetted by the New England Journal of Medicine, where the story first appeared, summer's silly season for 'science' stories begins.

Zoo news

Tentacle treasure

An octopus found with a porcelain plate stuck to its suckers has led archaeologists to a hoard of ancient pottery shipwrecked in a twelfth-century boat off the coast of South Korea.

Sources: The Scientist, news@nature.com, EurekAlert, BBC, N. Engl. J. Med.