Featured Stories

Liquid calories don’t satisfy hunger the way solid food does — and the research on sugary drinks, diet drinks, and alcohol was surprisingly clear even in 2011.

April 2011: after a decade of meat worship, top chefs started treating vegetables as the center of the plate. How they made veggie dishes taste meaty.

At 92, Clara Tang was committed to stand trial for the 2010 killing of her 98-year-old husband in Sydney — Australia's oldest woman to face a murder trial.

March 2011: Lelyveld's 'Great Soul' was banned in Gujarat before critics had read it, while reviews sold Gandhi as weirdo, incompetent, faddist.

This week's pick: Gary L. Anderson, CPA, a Chicago-area tax preparer our editors turned to for cross-border tax questions.

Alka Tyle’s 2011 run for the District 204 school board was part of a bigger story: Indian Americans stepping into the local civic institutions that shape

Saif Ali Khan argued Bollywood is creatively self-sufficient. The commercial case is strong; the creative one is more contested.

Jennifer Moses's 2011 WSJ essay asked why parents let preteen girls dress like adults. The argument, the backlash, and the question underneath.

Amy Chua's 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' detonated a parenting debate in 2011. What the research on authoritarian vs authoritative parenting says.

In 2011, Matalan sold padded bras to girls as young as eight. The controversy, the pattern behind it, and the fight over the sexualisation of childhood.

In 2011, Facebook let users rent The Dark Knight with Facebook Credits. Why social movie streaming flopped -- and what it got right too early.

Why the Mediterranean diet topped nutrition's evidence hierarchy: from Ancel Keys' Seven Countries Study to the PREDIMED trial -- and what held up.

A US scientist called strict vegan diets for children 'unethical.' The Kenyan study behind the claim, the vegan response -- and where nutrition science

Counterintuitive 2011 research: Facebook wasn't just pulling teens from families -- in some homes it was bringing parents and teenagers closer.

The spanking debate: what the research actually shows, why causation is hard to prove, and the honest case on both sides.

National Geographic's 2011 '7 Billion' series named the most typical human face: a 28-year-old Han Chinese man. Why the projection said India was next.

What makes a book on learning how to learn worth reading? Spaced repetition, retrieval practice, and why fluency feels like competence but isn't.

Children spanked at age 3 are more likely to be aggressive by age 5, research finds. What the science says about corporal punishment -- and what works instead.

In 2011, Kay Hymowitz's 'Manning Up' argued the rise of women had turned men into boys. The extended-adolescence debate -- the facts and the framing.

At Mobile World Congress 2011, Visa bet big on paying by phone. The plan, the security debate -- and how the mobile-wallet prediction played out.