It began when she found a dinosaur toy in the playground. Now Maayke Koevoets has mapped the life of plesiosaurs, ichtyosaurs that inhabited Svalbard 100 million years ago.

Researchers at the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health have earlier found a link between pregnant women's long-term use of paracetamol, which is one of the world's most commonly used medications, and an increased incidence of ADHD among their children. But when pregnant women use only a little paracetamol, the incidence of ADHD among their children is reduced.

The famous cognitive psychologist and best-selling popular science author Steven Pinker has described the period after World War II as "The Long Peace". But statiticians Nils Lid Hjort and Céline Cunen at the University of Oslo crunched all the numbers about interstate wars and found that "The Long Peace" in fact started later – during the Vietnam War. When Pinker read about their research, he was impressed.

The world's smallest fish lives like a larvae throughout its whole life. It thrives in peat swamp forest waters that are as acidic as Coke, with the same colour as tea. But the really strange discovery is that the "baby carp" has a genome lacking a lot of important bits.

Living spruce and fossilized bits of wood from Viking burial sites hide a number of secrets. They can be crucial in research on climate change.

The Ethiopian Bale monkey looks like the recipe for an endangered animal species: They prefer to eat only one kind of bamboo, their forest habitats are shrinking, and local farmers kill monkeys trying to find food on cultivated fields. But the monkeys could still be saved, says Addisu Mekonnen.

Apple and Steve Jobs had an enormous success with the Iphone, launched in 2007. But being the innovator isn’t always smart.

Anything we can do, bacteria can (maybe) do better.

What can craters tell us about our own planet and the history of the solar system? Nils Charles Prieur armed himself with a magnifying glass and got started on the detective work.

There is little of personal and career development for PhD students and young researchers in academia.  A unique mentoring scheme aims to do something about it.