Answer: It's not really how many genes but how they're regulated or expressed during development, says Hopi Hoekstra of the University of California-San Diego. In fact, we have scarcely more genes than worms and fleas and far fewer than salamanders. Secondly, "junk DNA" is something of a misnomer; there is clear evidence that these regions not coding for proteins are full of gene-regulatory elements. "In other words, some non-coding DNA regions have function, even if termed 'junk,' and these control gene expression. Finally, there's simply no correlation between genome size and organismal complexity."

Question: So many wonderful ways to look at a kicking, crying, arm-waving newborn baby. For instance, how much cosmic energy does the little darling represent?

Answer: E = mc^2 — that's Einstein's most famous equation. The E stands for the energy bound up in ordinary amounts of mass, the c represents the speed of light, or 186,000 miles (300,000 kms) per second! Squaring the speed of light, you get a sense of how even a little mass — like the "stuff" in a newborn — is worth a lot of energy, says Nigel Calder in "Magic Universe."

Say the babe weighs 3 kilograms: A hurricane would have to rage for an hour or a large power station run for a year to match the cosmic energy in that bouncy body. "If the parents had to pay for the energy, it would cost them a billion dollars."

Question: Empathy — being able to feel for another person — is akin to sympathy or compassion. Can this subtle capacity be detected by an MRI?