Here's some food for thought. How many calories would you get from consuming one whole human body? More than 125,000, according to a recent study on human cannibalism. James Cole, an archaeologist at the University of Brighton in England, pondered that question while studying "nutritional human cannibalism" during the Paleolithic, which lasted from about 2.5 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago. He concludes that humans are not really worth eating purely for sustenance. Some examples of Paleolithic cannibalism that had been interpreted as "nutritional" may have occurred for social or cultural reasons.

Volcanoes so close, yet so different

Mauna Loa, the biggest volcano on Earth — and one of the most active — covers half the island of Hawaii. Just 35 miles to the northeast, Mauna Kea rises nearly 14,000 feet above sea level. These volcanoes have plagued scientists with a long-running mystery: How did they develop along two parallel tracks over the same hot spot in the Pacific Ocean? And why are their chemical compositions so different? Scientists now theorize that 3 million years ago, the tectonic plates above the hot spot shifted direction, moving north. This shimmy rearranged zones of magma in the shallower part of the Earth's mantle. Separate magma zones fed each volcano, giving each a distinct chemical composition.

New York Times