Man in the moon: Will high-def exaggerate my crags?
The first ever high-definition video images of the lunar surface were released this week by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation). Sponsored by the two organizations, the HDTV-equipped spacecraft Kaguya entered lunar orbit last month and went on to shoot a combined eight minutes of crisp video (available here) from a distance of around 60 miles (100 kilometers), offering a panoramic view of the moon's northern topography. (JAXA)

Moth brain controls robot
Science fluttered closer this week to the flame of ultimate knowledge as researchers revealed they had wired a six-inch-tall wheeled robot to follow the gaze of a moth. Trapped more like a firefly in a bot-mounted plastic tube, the insect's furtive eye movements were conveyed to its machine slave via an electrode that pricked a single neuron in its visual system. The cyber moth joins the esteemed ranks of simple organisms hitched to robots, including slime mold, a detached eel brain and the cockroach. (Los Angeles Times)

Fake paper fools global warming naysayers
The man-made-global-warming-is-a-hoax crowd latched onto a study this week in the Journal of Geoclimatic Studies by researchers at the University of Arizona's Department of Climatology, who reported that soil bacteria around the Atlantic and Pacific oceans belch more than 300 times the carbon dioxide released by all fossil fuel emission, strongly implying that humans are not to blame for climate change. Slight problem, however: the cited journal, department and study authors don't exist. (The University of Arizona apparently does). British climate blogger David Thorpe admitted online to having designed the bogus journal site as a joke, but insisted he did not write the faux paper, which has since been pulled from the Web—though it remains on Google's servers. Said Thorpe: "I designed the site because I was asked to by someone who knew I would be sympathetic to the joke. I appreciate it looks as though I wrote it. I even wish I had written it, because it's very funny. But I didn't." (paper, Thorpe's admission)

The skinny on fat: Too little is more dangerous than too much
Overweight people are at no greater risk than normal-weight folks of dying from heart disease or cancer and are actually less likely to fall prey to some other causes of death, such as accidents and Alzheimer's, according to freshly analyzed data on 2.3 million adults 25 years and older as of 2004. In fact, it's the underweight among us who are more likely to succumb to cancer, federal statisticians report in JAMA The Journal of the American Medical Association, possibly because the scrawny lack the fat stores to ride out tough times. Hoping to prevent this deep-fried bombshell from going straight to the love handles of public opinion, physicians told Reuters that extra pounds can lead to obesity, which the study linked to increased death from diabetes, kidney or heart disease as well as some cancers. (JAMA, Reuters)

Merck pays billions to settle Vioxx suit
Culminating years of legal wrangling, drug giant Merck today agreed to pay a whopping $4.85 billion to bring an end to thousands of lawsuits claiming that its painkiller Vioxx caused severe and, in some cases, fatal injury to users. The agreement, believed to be the biggest drug settlement ever, comes three years after Vioxx was pulled off the market after researchers determined that it doubled the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Lawsuits were filed by some 47,000 victims and family members of patients and there were about 265 potential class action suits pending. Teams of lawyers for both sides reportedly huddled more than 50 times in eight states and haggled by phone hundreds of more times before finally cutting the historic deal. "I'm very happy with it," Chris Seeger, one of the six plaintiff lawyers who helped hammer out the settlement told the Associated Press. "It's a tremendous way to resolve this litigation." Litigants may qualify if they filed claims by Thursday and can show medical proof that they suffered heart attack or stroke, received at least 30 Vioxx pills, and that they took the tabs within two weeks of injury. (AP)