The solar system is getting busier as time goes by. Well, it’s not, but we’re slowly discovering that it always has been. Astronomers have logged the discovery of a 45-strong batch of rocky and icy objects, all found in orbits further out than Neptune. We may be running short of resources on Earth, but it seems there’s plenty out in space.

Looks like five servings a day of fruits and vegetables might not be enough any more. The green stuff we eat today has less nutrients than it did in 1950.

The more you read about the human brain, the more you realize that self-awareness is, at best, one tool in a big box of survival mechanisms. Yet more proof: the regions of the brain associated with self-awareness are turned off when you concentrate.

A research team in Toronto has created a material that when painted on glass capillaries emits coherent light. This material could be used to form tiny optical switches in optical computers.

Sound recognition software can analyse audio in ways that our hearing cannot. But human hearing has the edge in other skills – discriminating one audio source from a background of many for example, like a conversation at a loud party. Which is why engineers at the UK’s Newcastle University are developing a computer model of the ‘auditory midbrain’, the lump of grey matter that deals with the way we perceive sound. The results could enable voice-commanded robotics and a new generation of hearing aids.