Science

We see symbols and their power at work in the recent controversy surrounding the effort to extend bans on smoking to the electronic cigarette. An e-cigarette is no more a cigarette than a chocolate cigarette is.

But — as with the case of toy guns — this doesn't mean they are any less dangerous.

Now more than ever before, we have the tools to study the mysteries of consciousness. Memory, dreams, the self are now being examined using high-tech brain scans developed by physicists on the cutting edge of their field.

January will go down in the weather history books as the fourth-warmest on record.

That's right.

No matter how brutal the winter was in North America, especially the Eastern half, it was balanced by warm temperatures elsewhere on the planet.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climate Data Center says that last month marks the 38th consecutive January and the 347th consecutive month (almost 29 years) that global temperatures have been above the average for the 20th century.

A paw on the leg. A nose nuzzling against your arm. Maybe even a hop onto your lap.

Dogs always seem to know when you're upset and need extra love, even though they hardly understand a word of what you say. How can that be?

Our four-legged friends have a little patch of their brain devoted to deciphering emotions in human and dog voices, scientists reported Thursday in the journal Current Biology.

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Think for a moment about an artist who is really out there in some way. Maybe a musician comes to mind, somebody like Lady Gaga or a painter like Salvador Dali. New research now asks whether you like such artists because of their art or because they conform to a mental stereotype of how artists are supposed to behave. NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam joins us regularly on this program. Hi, Shankar.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.

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It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

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And I'm David Greene. Good morning.

Animal welfare groups go to great lengths to show us how "the sausage" is made inside the factory-style farms that produce most of our meat. For the past few years, they've armed activists with video cameras and sent them undercover to document alleged abuses or risky practices.

Two self-styled amateur archeologists from Germany, who filmed themselves scraping off pieces of Egypt's Great Pyramid in hopes of proving that the ancient wonder was built by people from the legendary city of Atlantis, are now facing possible criminal charges in their home country.

During a trip to Egypt in April 2013, Dominque Goerlitz and Stephan Erdmann, along with a German filmmaker, were granted access to parts of the Great Pyramid at Giza that are normally off-limits to the public. They smuggled their samples back to Germany with plans to produce a documentary.

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