3. The mercury's been rising these past few months across the United States as the region heads into
summer, which officially starts on June 21 with the summer solstice. The reason for the season, some
might think (and not illogically so), is that according to a natural cycle, the Earth has temporarily
shifted closer to the sun and is sweltering in the extra heat.
But this explanation is bogus. In fact, in its oval-shaped orbit around the sun, the Earthwill be at its
annually farthest point from its star, a position called aphelion, on July 5. Perihelion, the closest point,
happened back on Jan. 2. Instead of corresponding to the coldest and warmest days of the year for
Americans, it's nearly the opposite. So what gives?

4. Despite the fact that men are increasingly involved in family life, stereotypes about dad still persist:
He's bumbling. He's immature. He's never seen a dirty diaper he'd volunteer to change.
Yeah, right.
Research is increasingly revealing that dads make a big difference in their kids' lives — and (surprise,
surprise), they're perfectly capable of being competent parents. For example, dads can recognize their
baby's cries as well as moms, and in some cases, a father-child relationship can influence that kid's
life to a greater extent than the mother-child bond.
Cheetahs may hold the distinction of being the fastest animals on land, but these elegant felines
actually owe their hunting prowess to their ability to rapidly accelerate and maneuver around tight
turns, a new study finds.

5. A team of researchers monitored five wild cheetahs in northern Botswana and found that despite
clocking top speeds of nearly 60 mph (97 km/h), cheetahs use their agility — rather than simply
relying on a furious pace — to track down prey.
"Cheetahs have a very high top speed, but they don't always use it,” said study lead author Alan
Wilson, a professor in the department of comparative biomedical sciences at The Royal Veterinary
College in the United Kingdom.“What was more remarkable was the maneuverability and acceleration
that they displayed."
When iceberg chunks break off of floating ice shelves, it can serve as dramatic proof of melting — and
this traditionally has been considered the main way that these expanses of Antarctic ice become
smaller. But new research reveals a disconcerting finding that is invisible to the naked eye: These ice
shelves primarily melt from below.
Knowing what is driving ice-shelf melt is important because when ice shelves lose mass, they speed
up the flow of land-bound glaciers that feed them, moving ice from the continent to the ocean, and
contributing to global sea level rise.
The study, published today (June 13) in the journal Science, found that on average, Antarctica's ice
shelves are thinning by about 1.6 feet (50 centimeters) per year. But some of them are thinning much
more quickly, by as much as 328 feet (100 meters) annually, said Eric Rignot, a study co-author and
researcher at the University of California, Irvine.

6. What started out as a casual sightseeing trip to a historic castle in the Netherlands took a bizarre turn
for one Dutch woman, who claims she may have spotted some kind of UFO.
Corrine Federer, 43, a business manager and amateur photographer, was visiting medieval Muiderslot
Castle outside Amsterdam last month when she started taking pictures using her camera's high-
dynamic range, or HDR, feature.
"In order to create HDR images, you take three or more exposures … at the same time, because you
then overlap the images and it gives you the full spectrum of light," Federer told The Huffington Post.
This image from the Netherlands appears to show
some kind of object flying above Muiderslot Castle
outside Amsterdam.

7. Is it ethical to use a dead man's sperm to father a child? Experts are calling for a consensus on
policies surrounding this question, which currently vary widely across the country.
It has been possible for a few decades to obtain a man’s sperm after his death and use it to fertilize
an egg. Today, requests for postmortem sperm retrieval (PMSR) are growing, yet the United States
has no guidelines governing the retrieval of sperm from deceased men, said Dr. Larry Lipshultz, a
urologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.
In the absence of government regulations, medical institutions should come up with their own rules so
they can handle the time-sensitive and ethically questionable procedures, Lipshultz argued in an
editorial published June 5 in the journal Fertility and Sterility.
Is it ethical to become a father after death?
CREDIT: