what did 2009 ever do for you

Grumpy people think more clearly because negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking.

Scientists have discovered how to scan brain activity and convert what people are seeing or remembering into crude video images.

Analysis of Greenland ice samples shows Europe froze solid in less than 12 months 12,800 years ago, partly due to a slowdown of the Gulf Stream. Once triggered, the cold persisted for 1,300 years.

One mutated gene is the reason humans have language, and chimpanzees, our closest relative, do not.

More than 350 new animal species were discovered in the eastern Himalayas, including the world's smallest deer

Babies pick up their parents' accents from the womb, and infants are born crying in their native dialect. Researchers found that French newborns cry in a rising French accent, and German babies cry with a characteristic falling inflection.

Seven new glow-in-the-dark mushroom species have been discovered, increasing the number of known luminescent fungi species from 64 to 71. The fungi, discovered in Belize, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia and Puerto Rico, glow constantly, emitting a bright, yellowish-green light.

The calmest place on Earth is on top of an icy plateau in Antarctica known as Ridge A, several hundred miles from the South Pole. It is so still that stars do not twinkle in the sky because there is no turbulence in the atmosphere to distort the light.

The human body emits a glow that is 1,000 times less than what our eyes can detect.