The Web site io9 looks at 25 of the scariest science experiments ever conducted. Curiously absent: people who send their kids to "swine flu parties."

Scientists observing the short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx in southern China's Guangdong Province report that the females prolong sex by licking the shaft of their mate's penis during dorsoventral copulation (both mammals facing in the same direction).

"Males never withdrew their penis when it was licked by the mating partner," the researchers wrote in a paper published on Wednesday in the electronic journal PLoS ONE. "Mating pairs spent significantly more time in copulation if the female licked her mate's penis than if fellatio was absent." 

Bats being bats, the "near-threatened" C. sphinx are also upside down as this occurs (see drawing by Mei Wang). --Don Troop

(Tip of the wing to Annals of Improbable Research.)

1. Trying to avoid swine flu? Harvard Medical School has an iPhone app for that. Just $1.99!

2. The Johns Hopkins University refers to its sick students as "pigs." No kidding.

3. A streaker arrested Friday at Northwestern University began vomiting while talking to the police. He told them that he may have caught swine flu from a family member.

Bobby Fong, president of Butler University, demonstrates how to properly sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" -- and to wash hands to minimize the risk of catching the flu.

Butler, like many institutions, is trying to reduce the number of H1N1 cases by offering tips to students and by other means, such as producing videos like the one above, or like this one.

Q: Washington and Lee University needs someone to speak at its Journalism Ethics Institute on November 6. Whom does it invite?

(a) Tom Brokaw, the retired anchor of NBC Nightly News.

(b) Ted Koppel, the retired anchor of ABC News Nightline.

(c) Jayson Blair, the reporter who resigned in disgrace from The New York Times after being caught fabricating and plagiarizing the news.

(d) The ghost of Walter Cronkite.

Boston Dynamics bipedal "Petman" robot eerily simulates the heel-toe motion of human ambulation. According to Popsci.com, Petman can crawl, perform calesthenics, and even perspire.

It may seem like nothing now, but someday in the not-so-distant future, the human race is going to pay for that little shove at 0:26. You read it here first.

When the Philadelphia Phillies meet the New York Yankees this week in the 2009 World Series, it's a safe bet that a batter will swing at a curveball and miss. Why is that pitch so difficult to hit?

A mind-bending animation created by four visual researchers demonstrates that the curveball is a simple trick of the eye. When batters try to gauge their approach to the ball, they must make a mid-swing switch between peripheral and central vision.

The animation -- created by visual researchers from American University, Dartmouth College, the State University of New York College of Optometry, and the University of Southern California -- took first place this past May in the sixth annual Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest, sponsored by the Neural Correlate Society. 

1. Your dog could have a greater carbon pawprint than your SUV.

2. Cornell University is America's best employer for workers over 50, according to the AARP. (MIT is No. 7, and George Mason University is No. 10.)

3. According to its 990 IRS form for the 2007-8 fiscal year, Nova Southeastern University spent $98,884 for "dolphins rental expenses."

4. The University of Central Florida told a freshman basketball player, Marcus Jordan, that he could wear his father's signature Nike Air Jordan-brand shoes while playing this season. But that promise is in jeopardy because the university has an exclusive $3-million contract with Adidas that obliges players and coaches there to wear that company's apparel.

5. Two physicists at Stanford University have calculated the number of possible alternate universes in the multiverse to be 10^10^16.

John McCain wasn't the only loser in November's presidential election. On hearing the results of the polling, the men who voted for him suffered a drop in testosterone levels, according to a study by researchers at Duke University and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The study was reported Wednesday in the Web journal PLoS One.

The researchers analyzed spit samples from 183 men and women in Durham, N.C., and Ann Arbor, Mich., at 8 p.m., on November 4, 2008, and again at 11:30 p.m. when Barack Obama was declared the winner. Two more samples were collected after that, at 20-minute intervals. 

Neither women nor male Obama voters showed significant changes in testosterone levels after the outcome was announced. But male supporters of John McCain and the Libertarian candidate, Bob Barr, posted lower levels of the steroid hormone (see graph above, by Steven Stanton, Duke University...

A Georgetown student with a part-time job in finance is willing to pay about $60 a week for a personal assistant to do his laundry, make his bed, schedule his haircuts and taxi him around town, Georgetown University's Vox Populi blog reports.

The student posted an advertisement on Georgetown's Student Employment Office Web site, sparing little detail about his expectations: "As my PA you will receive an email once a day by 9 a.m. with a task list for that day and a time estimate for each task. Important tasks will be bolded on the list and must be done that day (even though everything on the list should theoretically be finished on a daily basis). At the end of the day you will send me an email telling me what tasks are incomplete or that all tasks have been completed."

The student, who is not named in the article, evidently plans to get his money's worth: He'll give only half an...