Lab notes: I gotta vole lotta love for this week's science

Voles have almost perfected monogamy, which has made them perfect subjects for studying the neuroscience of love. With the help of rodent Romeos and Juliets, scientists have now pinpointed the specific patterns of brain activity that accompany romance. It's an exciting development, but this next one blew me away: scientists have also now discovered how the brain recognises faces - effectively by reading the minds of monkeys. Yuh-huh. We're through the looking glass, people. And on the other side of looking glass may well be the secrets of black holes and dark matter, now that Ligo has detected gravitational waves for the third time. This latests observation brings scientists closer to goal of using gravitational waves to see ancient events invisible to optical and radio telescopes. And from the stars, we looked back into history here on Earth - through ice, although the results have been a little disturbing. Ice cores and records from the era of the Black Death show lead entered the air from human activity - and scientists now think that there's no such thing as a "natural background" level for lead. So essentially, as one researcher put it: "We have basically been poisoning ourselves for about 2,000 years." Oops. This last piece of news makes up for it though - scientists have found a way to modify the already pretty magical antibiotic vancomycin so that it works in three ways, making it harder for bugs to develop resistance. This is truly the sort of development that could pull us back from the brink, so ladies and gents of the Scripps Research Institute, I tip my hat and raise my glass to you.