鈥淭hey鈥檙e professionals, and here comes this army of nerds bashing down the doors.鈥�
James Frew of the University of California, Santa Barbara, on the reaction of US coastguards to friends and colleagues of Microsoft researcher Jim Gray, who went missing on a sailing trip on 28 January, using their computer skills to help find him (The New York Times, 3 February)
鈥淢ore female partners leads to fatigue in males and smaller sperm packages. Unfortunately, the female butterflies know. This makes them more rampant.鈥�
Advertisement
Sylvain Charlat of University College London on how the sexual behaviour of Hypolimnas bolina butterflies changes when male partners become scarce (The Times, London, 6 February)
鈥淚f you were just going to talk to someone, I don鈥檛 know that you would need a wig, a trench coat, an air gun and pepper spray.鈥�
Barbara Jones of the Orlando police department on the arrest of astronaut Lisa Nowak on suspicion of attempting to kidnap a woman she believed was a rival for the affections of space shuttle pilot William Oefelein (Associated Press, 6 February)
鈥淭hese conditions are an ideological attack on the principles of freedom of academic research.鈥�
Angus McFarland, student council president at the University of Sydney, Australia, on the university鈥檚 promise not to conduct stem cell research on land bought from a Catholic college (The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 February)
鈥淥h my gosh, this is a urine extraction lab.鈥�
Becky Howell, a police officer in Wright county, Minnesota, on the discovery that methamphetamine addicts are recycling the drug from their urine (CBS News, 2 February)