鈥淲e have to put our money where our mouth is now so that we can put food into hungry mouths.鈥�
Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, is calling for more aid for poor countries to tackle spiralling global food prices (BBC online, 14 April)
鈥淚f you鈥檙e telling them it鈥檚 absolutely safe, then it鈥檚 not ethical.鈥�
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Soil chemist Murray McBride of the Cornell Waste Management Institute criticises a study in which sewage sludge was sprayed onto people鈥檚 yards in poor, black neighbourhoods in Baltimore to test whether the way it binds to lead could prevent poisoning from the soil (Associated Press, 14 April)
鈥淎re we talking about the Stephen Kings of the future or about somebody who鈥檚 seriously thinking about doing something harmful?鈥�
On the anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre, David Wallace of the University of Central Florida questions whether it is right to scrutinise violent material in student writing assignments to gauge the risk of a repeat event (The Washington Post, 13 April)
鈥淔or me, he was the last titan, the only physics superhero still standing.
Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pays tribute to John Wheeler, who coined the term 鈥渂lack hole鈥� and made huge contributions to 20th-century physics. He died this week aged 96 (The New York Times, 14 April)
鈥淢onkeys are very ill-mannered 鈥� they try to clutch whatever they can, they fancy they can switch whatever they want.鈥�
Vladimir Ponomarenko of the Russian Academy of Sciences argues dogs are much better behaved in space (Reuters, 11 April)