“Dr. SkySkull” selects several notable posts each week from a miscellany of ResearchBlogging.org categories. He blogs at Skulls in the Stars.

• Life in the dark. Most of us live in areas of near-endless light —  night is filled with the glow of man-made illumination.  In a fascinating post, Greg Downey of Neuroanthropology discusses the effects — physiological and cultural — of living in in a region of genuinely dark nights.
• A galaxy far, far away… While we’re thinking about peering out into the darkness, Kelly Oakes of basic space describes the observation of the most distant object yet in the universe — so distant, in fact, that it formed in an era when galaxies and stars were just forming!
• Finding science in my mother’s jewelry box. Remarkable natural phenomena can be seen all around us, sometimes in the most unlikely of places!  Starting from her mother’s jewelry, Kelly Grooms of Promega Connections takes us 50 million years into the past to learn about our planet’s ancient geology.
• C is for Cookie: Cookie Monster, Network Pressure, and Identity Formation. Alas, poor Cookie Monster — he isn’t the same sugar-gobbling beast that he was when I was a kid!  Now that he only eats a cookie after filling up on vegetables, Krystal d’Costa of Anthropology in Practice explains how we can learn about social network pressure from his change in diet.

Check back next week for more “miscellaneous” selections!