The grim kitty: cat senses death
When a cat named Oscar curls up next to an ailing patient at a nursing home in Rhode Island, staffers start calling next of kin. Seems the standoffish kitty gets friendly when he senses the end is near: In the two years since Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence adopted the finicky feline, more than 25 residents in the center's dementia unit died just hours after Oscar showered them with affection, Reuters reports. The New England Journal of Medicine let the cat out of the bag. (NEJM; Reuters)

We will rock you into outer space
Queen guitarist Brian May is a stone's throw from completing what rock superstardom interrupted more than 30 years ago: his astrophysics PhD. The 60-year-old rocker told the Associated Press that he plans to submit his doctoral thesis, "Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud," to Imperial College London within two weeks. Sounds like a bitching title for an album, er, CD. (Associated Press)

Writer's cramp writ large in brain
More than just a pain in the neck, the chronic muscle contraction commonly known as writer's cramp not only puts a crimp in penmanship but may also wither parts of the brain—or, on the other hand, may result from such withering—says a new study. Researchers report that people with stiff achy hands have less gray matter in three areas of the brain (the cerebellum, thalamus, and sensorimotor cortex) that coordinate sensation and movement for the affected hand. (Neurology; press release)

Humans give computer the straight flush
On Tuesday, a pair of human poker pros beat a wily computer program before not quite a full house in the first ever "man-machine poker championship." Computers may have trounced humans in backgammon, checkers and chess, but gray matter is still king when lady luck rules. (University of Alberta)

My four suns
A dusty disk found swirling in the quadruple-star system HD 98800 150 light-years away could someday coalesce into one or more planets that would receive quite the light show. The disk encircles a pair of twin suns that waltz around a more distant duo. Astronomers say that planet-forming clouds may be common around multiple-star systems. (Preprint; SPACE.com)

Sloshed and snipped in space
NASA's already bad year got worse on Thursday, when word broke of allegations that two astronauts had on separate occasions been cleared to fly after boozing it up within 12 hours of a launch. Adding to the agency's woes: news that an employee for one of its subcontractors deliberately snipped the wires in a computer set to be sent to the International Space Station on the shuttle Endeavor. (Aviation Week; Associated Press)

The .06-million-dollar hand
Juan Arredondo was devastated when his left hand was blown off during a 2005 patrol in Iraq. But now the 27-year-old war veteran has a new, bionic one in its place. This real-life Luke Skywalker is one of the first recipients of the i-Limb, which transmits nerve signals from his arm into instructions for five independent motors that flex and straighten the fingers. Price tag: $65,000. The Defense Department foot the bill for the mechanical hand, which Arredondo's Dad told the AP his son "goes nuts'' over. (Engadget; Touch Bionics; video)

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