In the last year of the noughties there was plenty to hold the attention of those with an academic interest in sexual attraction and reproduction.
Male engineers and computer programmers could take heart from psychologists' finding that females were particularly attracted to problem-solvers – and that went for both satin bowerbirds and humans.
Slightly less encouraging for these problem-solvers was the discovery that they – along with other men – are more likely to attract admiring glances from single women if they are already taken.
An evolutionary biologist summarised existing knowledge about the female orgasm, a subject returned to in a report on six things science has taught us about the female orgasm.
In the animal kingdom, researchers from China captured an alarming act of bat fellatio
on film, while others pondered the evolutionary implications of dozens of species engaging in same-sex relations.
The received wisdom that couples should abstain from sex for several days before trying to conceive was again undermined by fertility doctors, who said that daily sex is good for sperm quality. And New Scientist posted footage from an experiment in which a couple were filmed having sex while in an MRI scanner (see also 2009 review: Most popular articles of the year – not surprisingly).
Read more reviews of the year:
Most popular articles of the year From space storms to vampires to porn, here's a countdown of the year's most-read articles. Warning: contains sex stories. A lot of them
Favourite picture galleries From carnivorous robots to exploding stars and bizarre medical devices, here are your favourites from the image galleries we posted this year
Top videos of the year The best of New Scientist's video coverage, including a tiny hovering robot, bionic penguins and plasma ejections from the sun
The year in space Astronomers found water on the moon and saw the most distant object yet, but space radiation hit a record high and the Spirit rover struggled for life
Most popular space articles of the year Find out how to go to Mars in 39 days and see what it would look like to fall into a black hole
Most popular physics articles of the year These include an investigation into the best way to slice a pizza
Digging up prehistoric monsters Dinosaur hunters and anyone with an interest in prehistoric creatures great and small were not disappointed
In sickness and in health It was a year as hopeful as it was scary, with a flu pandemic, genome hackers and fresh hopes for Alzheimer's disease and HIV
It's the environment, stupid Thoughts of climate change were never far away, but with ice on fire and a salamander uglier than ET, there was more to 2009 than political brouhaha
In green tech we must trust More brainpower than ever before has been expended on technologies to cut the damage we do to the environment – here are some of the most interesting
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