London, United Kingdom. New findings argue for the persistence of sex-linked chromosomes, such as the male Y chromosome, refuting theories that the Y is doomed to extinction.

The results confirm that although these chromosomes have shrunk over millions of years, and have lost many of their original genes, those that remain are extremely important in predicting fertility and are, therefore, unlikely to become extinct.

Washington, DC, USA. The federal government leaves most insurance regulation to the states, but passage of the Dodd-Frank law inserted the feds more deeply into the mix.

Congress passed the 848-page Dodd-Frank law two years ago to try to prevent another financial meltdown like the one that sent the economy into a tailspin in 2008. It rewrites many of the federal rules covering banks and insurance companies to prevent businesses from becoming “too big to fail.”

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,

—  Robert Frost, Mending Wall

Waltham, MA, USA. In rural New England, as in much of the rest of the world, people mark their territory, like some race of architecturally-adept spaniels, by building a wall around its borders.

Muncie, IN, USA. Several states made controversial changes to the evaluation, pay and retention of teachers, claiming improved teaching quality and student performance.

Pasadena, CA, USA. When facing high financial incentives to succeed, people can fear losing their potentially lucrative reward so much that their performance suffers.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have been trying to figure out what causes people to choke when the stakes are high and came up with this somewhat unexpected conclusion.