My picks from ScienceDaily

Female Spiders Eat Small Males When They Mate:

Female spiders are voracious predators and consume a wide range of prey, which sometimes includes their mates. A number of hypotheses have been proposed for why females eat males before or after mating. Researchers Shawn Wilder and Ann Rypstra from Miami University in Ohio found that the answer may be simpler than previously thought. Males are more likely to be eaten if they are much smaller than females, which likely affects how easy they are to catch.

Cryopreservation Techniques Bring Hopes For Women Cancer Victims And Endangered Species:

Emerging cryopreservation techniques are increasing hope of restoring fertility for women after diseases such as ovarian cancer that lead to destruction of reproductive tissue. The same techniques can also be used to maintain stocks of farm animals, and protect against extinction of endangered animal species by maintaining banks of ovarian tissue or even nascent embryos that can be used to produce offspring at some point in the future.

Real-world Behavior And Biases Show Up In Virtual World:

Americans are spending increasing amounts of time hanging around virtual worlds in the forms of cartoon-like avatars that change appearances according to users' wills, fly through floating cities in the clouds and teleport instantly to glowing crystal canyons and starlit desert landscapes.

Good Luck, Not Superiority, Gave Dinosaurs Their Edge, Study Of Crocodile Cousins Reveals:

In a paper published in Science, Steve Brusatte and Professor Mike Benton challenge the general consensus among scientists that there must have been something special about dinosaurs that helped them rise to prominence.

Flies, Too, Feel The Influence Of Their Peers, Studies Find:

We all know that people can be influenced in complex ways by their peers. But two new studies in the September 11th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveal that the same can also be said of fruit flies. The researchers found that group composition affects individual flies in several ways, including changes in gene activity and sexual behavior, all mediated by chemical communication.