Some Linkage, Science and Otherwise

Researchers from my alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, have found that tiny copper rods in your pots may cook your spaghetti with less energy use. That’s not their first envisioned application, though.
Higher pitched women’s voices are more attractive than lower pitched ones. It always depresses me a bit when I read research that illustrates ways in which we are hard-wired to find other people attractive.
More speciation demonstrated in the lab. In case you’re not keeping up with the news in evolutionary biology, Richard Lenski of Michigan State University recently published findings that showed E. Coli evolving new traits. Through 20 years of reproduction, the E. Coli has mutated in a fashion that allows it to process the substrate of its flasks for food, a characteristic which was not present in the ancestral population. I can’t do this justice. Go read. Of course, creationists have been taking whacks at it, in ways that descend to the comical.
Wall-E gets reviewed by SF Signal! I need to see this soon.