So what are some top science priorities that President Obama can stick on his “ASAP” list? Here’s a few ideas, along with the likelihood that they’ll be addressed in the super/semi/not-so-near future:

Abortion: The most likely candidate on the list. CNN reports that the new president may repeal a 2001 Bush policy that prevents federal money from going to international family planning groups that perform abortions as early as today or tomorrow.

Stem Cells: Lifting the ban on federally-funded stem cell research is another move that’s likely to happen quickly.

Energy/Environment: So, uh, how ’bout those emissions cuts? Chances are, they won’t come until later in the year, with alt-energy legislation taking priority. And in the meantime, halting that environmental fire sale sure would be nice.

Health care: We need action. Fast. As in, yesterday. Yes, the task is huge and the hurdles enormous. But the costs of doing nothing to reform the American health care system will be crippling in every sense of the word. So where does the Big H.C. stand on the agenda? According to the Wall Street Journal, the new administration will “move fast on [Obama's] proposal to overhaul” health care, with a “major event at the White House” likely happening sometime in March.

You still can’t get away with saying it in Hollywood, but after a lawsuit by a Christian anti-choice group, now you can smack it in the center of a Google ad. The New York Times reports that Google is now allowing religious organizations to buy ads in the search giant’s vast network that contain the keyword “abortion.” In the past, the search juggernaut had followed a policy of not selling the “abortion” keyword to religious groups—though it would allow other groups, including doctors offering abortions and resource sites like Our Bodies, Ourselves, to purchase ads with the keyword.

Enter Britain’s staunch anti-choice group the Christian Institute, which took its case to court after Google rejected its ad containing the following: “UK abortion law: Key news and views on abortion law from The Christian Institute.” The ad was referring to a bill before the House of Commons concerning potential abortion restrictions.

The case is a clear example of how messy things can get when you mix technology and sociopolitics, and Google did the prudent thing by rushing to a quick settlement (the terms are undisclosed) and capitulating in full—Christian groups can now have the word as long as their ads are “determined to be factual, and not graphic or emotional.” If Google wants to dodge monopolism fears, it needs to establish itself as a free and unbiased marketplace for ads. Still, it’s a tricky line to walk—in order to prove you’re not a monopoly, you must suspend all political convictions in the process.

The big story today: A new study from the University of Liverpool found that birth control pills could be messing with women’s ability to find genetically dissimilar partners, thereby upping the chances of infertility, miscarriage, and offspring with weakened immune systems.

The key issue, according to Craig Roberts, an evolutionary psychologist who led the study, is body odor:

Humans choose partners through their body odor and tend to be attracted to those with a dissimilar genetic make-up to themselves, maintaining genetic diversity. Genes in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), which helps build the proteins involved in the body’s immune response, also play a prominent role in odor through interaction with skin bacteria. In this way these genes also help determine which individuals find us attractive.

The pill has been shown to affect the sense of smell in the past, and while the exact reason for this side effect isn’t known, researchers have speculated that, since the areas of the brain that control both the sense of smell and the ovaries are located near one another, taking a pill that alters one could alter both.

The problem with the odor effect, argue the authors, is that it alters subjects’ preferences for genetically dissimilar men—a loaded idea, given that it hints there might be serious repercussions from the world’s most popular form of birth control. The odor-changing theory has been around for a while, and until now most of the data on MHC differences were gathered from rodents.

So Roberts and his team decided to take their hypothesis to human subjects, asking 100 women to sniff six different male body odor samples both before they started taking the pill, and then again a few months later, after they started taking it. Sure enough, the subjects demonstrated the same change in preferences as the mice.

So should we tell the millions of women on the pill to throw their prescriptions away? Not so fast. Several studies looking at tens of thousands of women have found no link between infertility or miscarriage and pill use. But as an added kicker, Roberts asserts that oral contraception could “ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships” after women stop taking it, since “odor perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners.”

But in a tiny sliver of good news, at least it probably won’t be reclassified as abortion.