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Fed up with trying to get the lights on?and off?the Christmas tree every year? Scientists say that genetic modification will make it possible to grow Christmas trees that light themselves up. They also believe that trees could be grown that would provide power for homes and run appliances.

Professor Bernard Witholt, chairman of the Institute of Biotechnology at Zurich?s Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, says trees could be bred to mimic electric eels. Inspired by this, a group of postgraduate students at the University of Hertfordshire in the U.K. entered a government-sponsored competition with a proposal to create a Christmas tree that lights up on its own.
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Richard Wiseman, an English psychologist, has been investigating which jokes people find the funniest. He?s asked for jokes over the internet at Laughlab.co.uk, and has received 10,000 jokes from more than 70 countries.

One of his findings was that men and women think different things are funny. This is the type of joke that was rated highly by women: A man had a dog called Minton. One day Minton ate two shuttlecocks. When the owner found out, he said, ?Bad Minton.?

This kind of joke was rated highly by men: A guy walked in to a psychiatrist?s office wearing underpants made of transparent cling wrap. The psychiatrist said, ?Well, I can clearly see you?re nuts.?
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Michael Molnar, an astronomer formerly from Rutgers University in New Jersey, says he?s found the first mention of the star of Bethlehem outside the Bible. The reference is in a 4th-century manuscript written by a Roman astrologer and Christian convert named Firmicus Maternus.

Molnar believes that the star of Bethlehem was not a spectacular astronomical event such as a supernova or a comet but an obscure astrological one that would nevertheless have been of great significance to ancient Roman astrologers.
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A white Christmas is only a memory in most of the United States, according to Dale Kaiser and Kevin Birdwell, of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Looking at the snowfall in16 cities?mainly in the north?since 1960, the number of white Christmases per decade declined from 78 during the 1960s to 39 in the 1990s.People in Chicago, for example, saw the number of white Christmases, defined as at least one inch of snow on the ground, drop from seven in the 1960s to two during the 1990s. In New York, the number declined from five in the 1960s to one this past decade, and Detroit had just three white Christmases in the 1990s versus nine in the 1960s.
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