The diamond weevil, which makes its home in the Brazilian tropics, has a body studded with tiny, brilliant reflectors. Each one is like a diamond, reflecting different-colored light in shiny arrays. New research has probed the microstructure of these brilliant facets and discovered that the way they work is familiar—but the way they are made is not.

Many butterflies and moths have colors that show a metallic sheen. That sheen occurs because the refracting material in their wings and bodies is spread out in layers precisely as thin as the wavelengths of the light they refract.

Israel's Dead Sea, also called the Salt Sea, lies over 1,000 feet below sea level and is the site of certain ancient events recorded in the Bible. Some scientists thought the sea is too salty to have ever been dry, since such extreme saltiness would presumably prevent all the water from evaporating. Now, a deep drill sediment core appears to show that they were wrong.

Many people in the post-industrialized era have problems with crowded teeth because there's not enough room in their lower jaws. The teeth sometime erupt crookedly and cause malocclusions, or misalignments of the teeth between the upper and lower jaws, which can cause chewing problems.