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How Crabs Find Their Way Home (515 diggs) How animals keep their bearings on hunting trips is somewhat of a mystery. What is more puzzling is how animals measure distances. A new study has found the first direct evidence that fiddler crabs monitor their travels by tracking their strides.

Times Square bash left about 40 tons of trash (1,054 diggs) One million revelers packed into Times Square plus a ton of confetti and countless noisemakers equals a whole lot of garbage about 40 tons, according to the city Department of Sanitation. Cleanup crews hit the streets shortly after midnight Thursday following the 2009 ball drop. Sanitation spokesman Keith Mellis said 163 people worked until 8 a.m.

New Evidence of Meteor Bombardment (528 diggs) Researchers say that an abrupt cooling of the Earth about 12,900 years ago may have been caused by one or more meteors that slammed into North America.

NASA chief's wife to Obama: Don't fire my husband (627 diggs) Late on Christmas Eve, one last wish was sent, by e-mail: Please let NASA Administrator Michael Griffin keep his job. It was from his wife. Rebecca Griffin, who works in marketing, sent her message with the subject line "Campaign for Mike" to friends and family.

A pilot's view of Mount Baker in Washington, USA. (1,539 diggs) Photographer: Travis Church

6 Factors Shaping the Renewable Energy Industry in 2008 (367 diggs) Many industries experienced turbulence this year and renewable energy was no exception. 2008 was really a mixed bag for the industry, with lots of good and bad news.

Chinese Planning World's Largest Solar Project (839 diggs) Planned solar projects in the U.S. seemed to be one-upping each other throughout 2008, ending with the enormous planned 500 MW facility in San Luis Obispo CA. But now the Chinese are in on the game and, surprise, they're even bigger...planning a solar project twice as large as any currently planned, with a capacity of a full gigawatt.

Too Much Thinking 'Can Make You Fat', Study Finds (612 diggs) Too much thinking could make you fat, according to a new study. Researchers found the stress of thinking caused overeating with heavy thinkers seeking out more calories.

Steven Chu Discusses the Ultimate Fuel Technology (600 diggs) Steven Chu discusses a needed breakthrough in creating fuel: creating technology that creates energy like plants do. Chu has been nominated by Barack Obama to become his Secretary of Energy in his cabinet.

Sharks have weak bites, say scientists (487 diggs) Steven Spielberg's Jaws instilled the fear of sharks deep into our psyche but scientists have revealed that the film may have been misnamed after discovering the predators have a surprisingly weak bite.

I, For One, Welcome The Evening Tornadic-Supercell Overlord! (1,032 diggs) Photographer: Herb Spickard

NASA Faults Equipment in Columbia Shuttle Disaster (425 diggs) A NASA report on the last minutes of Space Shuttle Columbia cited problems with the crew's helmets, spacesuits and restraints, which resulted in "lethal trauma" to the seven astronauts aboard.

Cracking A Tough Nut For Semiconductor Industry (294 diggs) Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a method to measure the toughness —the resistance to fracture—of the thin insulating films that play a critical role in high-performance integrated circuits.

Wired Science's 13 Most Popular Stories of 2008 (522 diggs) It was a good year for Wired Science, and we have our readers to thank for that. So, for the dual purposes of thanking you and patting ourselves on the back, here is a list of our most read stories of 2008 (and a couple we think should have been).

MIT Project Uses Nanotech To Deliver Drugs:Fight Cancer/AIDS (391 diggs) Researchers at MIT are using nanoparticles and infrared light as part of a project to develop a more accurate method of delivering multiple drugs to patients battling diseases such as cancer and AIDS. The researchers have created differently shaped nanoparticles that are each designed to release their medicinal payloads at different times.

The Top 10 Green Tech Breakthroughs of 2008 (465 diggs) Green technology was hot in 2008. Barack Obama won the Presidential election promising green jobs to Rust Belt workers. Investors poured $5 billion into the sector just through the first nine months of the year.

The Future of Food: Algae and Jellyfish (555 diggs) You can get 10,000 to 30,000 gallons of algae per acre. It can be grown in salt or fresh water, in a whole variety of temperatures. It increases the food supply rather than depleting it. We're going to show people how to make plastic from potatoes and make styrofoam peanuts from two ingredients and a microwave.

Scientists to explore beneath an Antarctic glacier (482 diggs) A team of British scientists are to venture into the unknown by becoming the first to explore beneath an Antarctic glacier.

Celestial Show Set for New Year's Eve (393 diggs) Space.com – Tue Dec 30, 11:47 am ETA delightful display of planets and the moon will occur on New Year's Eve for anyone wishing to step outside and look up just after sunset. Venus, brighter than all other planets and stars, will dangle just below the thin crescent moon in the southwestern sky...

Soviets Stole Bomb Idea From U.S., Book Says (558 diggs) A new book says Moscow acquired the secret of the hydrogen bomb not from its own scientists but from an atomic spy at the Los Alamos weapons lab in New Mexico.

Solar Panels to Sarah Palin: 2008's Top Eco-Politics Stories (347 diggs) 2008 was a year for the armchair political pundit and the politically uninitiated alike. But it was also a year where unprecedented (political) attention was paid to the big energy and environmental issues.

Mars Rovers approaching five years of service, still kicking (1,066 diggs) The two Mars rovers operating right now on the surface of Mars, Spirit and Opportunity, will turn five the 3rd and 24th respectively. Their original 90-days of service has been surpassed by more than 20x as both rovers still carry out missions even today on the red planet - weather permitting, of course.

Human Beings Are Born With Numbers in Their Brain (601 diggs) One of those ways of understanding the world is by number. People are born with an innate sense of how many items there are in small collections. Experiments in which older children and adults are shown randomly arranged dots and asked to say quickly how many there are show this sense is retained throughout life.

The biggest star known to man (1,409 diggs) And you thought Earth was a big place...Comments are now back however any more arguing and they go off again.Order of appearance Earth Moon Mercury Mars Venus Uranus Neptun Saturn Jupiter Sun/Sol Sirius Pollux Arcturus Rigel

Moods 'spread like ripples through friends' say scientists (629 diggs) Bad moods are contagious and can spread through friends and family across hundreds of miles, according to new research.