Credit: M. GROLL/AP

Scorecard

Mushrooms

Fungi may soon become the latest addition to the menu for eco-builders, thanks to Rensselaer Polytechnic graduates Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre, who have invented organic household insulation tiles that use mushrooms as their key ingredient.

BlackBerrys

Credit: S. MAY/ALAMY

French defence experts have warned senior government staff not to use the hand-held e-mail devices for official business, citing fears that the messages, which pass through servers in Britain and the United States, are not safe from spies.

On the record

“The work is quite unpleasant. We have to stay in a lab smelling those awful gases repeatedly.”

Liu Jingcai, one of China's new 'professional noses', who have been trained to sniff out dangerous pollution in the southern industrial town of Panyu.

Number crunch

103 is the average IQ of adults who were born first among their siblings, according to a Norwegian study.

100 is the average IQ of secondborn children, showing that older siblings generally grow up to be the cleverest.

4 is the number of older siblings of Charles 'father of biology' Darwin, proving that there's no accounting for genius.

Sources: Associated Press, Reuters, Science