John Gribbin helps discuss the death of a Martian probe, fertility developments, and Charles Darwin's beard

Creation of Adam

Intelligent design and young Earth creationism are both false, but that does not discount the notion of creation, writes Michael Poole

Genital mutilation is usually performed shortly after birth, but can take place during childhood, adolescence or before marriage. Photograph: Ed Kashi/Corbis

Two doctors in Saudi Arabia want to change cultural attitudes to female genital mutilation by gathering evidence of its links to sexual dysfunction

Jeremy Ginsberg is one of the engineers on the Google Flu Trends project

A 38-year old woman in London has become the first person to have a baby after a full ovary transplant

Image: Nasa/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Nasa's Martian probe has come to a dark and frigid end, but its dying gasp was 'triumph'

Opinion from both sides of the Atlantic on what Barack Obama's election means for science and the environment

I'm not quite sure what to make of this survey from the website and TV station Teachers TV. It apparently shows that 29% of teachers think creationism should be taught as science and 18% of science teachers think evolution and creationism should be given equal status.

To anyone who cares about science, evidence and rational argument these results should be shocking. Any science teacher who is at all ambiguous about the difference between a scientific based explanation for the diversity of life and a faith based one that contradicts a mountain evidence is not doing their job.
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American space tourist Richard Garriott tells Ian Sample what it's like to be blasted into space in a Soyuz capsule, and crashing back to Earth

Woolly mammoths could rise again from their permafrost graves. Photograph: Corbis

Scientists have created healthy mice by cloning dead relatives that were frozen for 16 years, raising hopes that extinct species could once again walk the Earth

Mark Lythgoe discusses improvisation and the creative mind; plus Richard Garriott on space tourism

A pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147, photographed by the rebooted Hubble space telescope. Photograph: Nasa/ESA

After being out of action for most of the month, Nasa has now rebooted the Hubble space telescope and got back to taking snaps of the universe. Continue reading...

It's no surprise to see Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Marilyn Monroe on a list of the top 10 highest earning deceased celebrities, but what's Albert Einstein doing there?

He's been dead for 53 years, but Einstein's estate still brings in a whopping $18m (£11.2m) every 12 months, putting him fourth in the annual ranking compiled the by the US finance publication Forbes.

The latest version of the list puts only Elvis Presley, the Peanuts cartoonist Charles M Schulz and the actor Heath Ledger above him. Ledger's financial legacy is boosted by percentage deals linked to his role as the Joker in Batman film The Dark Knight.

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Mathematician Marcus du Sautoy talks about his new job as chair for the public understanding of science at the University of Oxford

Adam Rutherford: How the vice-presidential candidate became a laughing-stock among scientists