A compendium of research from the editors of Harper’s magazine:

•In Sweden, 10,000 hunters set out to cull 27 wolves.

•Scientists hoped to discover why Swedish spruces have so much DNA.

•Prions – infectious proteins that possess neither DNA nor RNA – may be capable of Darwinian evolution.

•California researchers developed a method to determine the ethnicity of stem cells.

•U.S. Department of Energy physicists hoped to harness the Casimir force.

•An anthropologist observed a male chimpanzee performing a special fire-dance next to a huge blaze on the Senegalese savannah.

•Seismologists noted that the movements of the sun and moon cause tremors in the San Andreas fault, indicating that the fault is highly lubricated.

•Champagne is good for the heart.

•Acetaminophen may alleviate psychological pain.

•Goldfish and Atlantic salmon are much slower than humans at metabolizing morphine.

•Zoologists found that the occasional disappearance of embryos from the brood pouches of male pipefish was likely because of filial cannibalism, with the father feeding on the unborn.

•A cricket was seen pollinating an orchid on the island of Reunion; neither the pollination of flowering plants by crickets nor that species of raspy cricket had previously been observed.

•Fig trees kill the larvae of wasps that fail to pollinate them.

•Castration without anesthetic was found to be the norm for male European pigs, which undergo the procedure to improve their marbling and prevent the smell known as “boar taint.”