Uninhabited: What would happen if mankind were to vanish from Planet Earth? An answer is given in a new book by US journalist Alan Weisman, The World Without Us. He says that the concrete jungle of New York City would eventually revert to a real forest. An entertaining video summary is available .

Public support: About 60% of people with embryos frozen in US fertility clinics would be willing to donate them for human stem cell research, according to a survey in the journal Science by researchers at Duke University and Johns Hopkins University. About 28% would be willing to donate embryos to improve cloning techniques.