All Stories by Bethany Brookshire
- Animals
Bats’ dinner conversation may go over your head
Hunting big brown bats do more than echolocate. When male bats compete for a single prize, they send social calls to keep other bats at bay.
- Neuroscience
Calcium in alcoholism drug may be what prevents relapse
Acamprosate, one of the few drugs to treat alcoholism, may be nothing more than a vehicle for a calcium supplement.
- Ecosystems
Do your bit for bumblebees
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and its partners have launched the Bumble Bee Watch website to track sightings. When you see a bee bumbling around, snap a photo.
- Animals
Sing a song of bird phylogeny
A new study challenges assumptions about birdsong, finding that the majority of songbird species have female singers.
- Animals
Chemical in male goat odor drives the lady goats wild
A new study shows that male goats exude pheromones from their skin that could make female goats ready to roll in the hay.
- Animals
Methylation turns a wannabe bumblebee into a queen
Epigenetic changes to bumblebee DNA turns a worker into a reproductive pseudo-queen, suggesting that genomic imprinting could be responsible for the bumblebee social system.
- Animals
A weighted butt gives chickens a dinosaur strut
Scientists put wooden tails on chickens to learn how small feathered dinosaurs moved, with results captured on video.
- Animals
Bonobos feel the beat
Some animals, like cockatoos and bonobos, are able to move to the groove. Studying animals that keep the beat might tell us whether musical rhythm is really widespread.
- Health & Medicine
Your epigenetics can be a pain
A new study shows that your epigenome can play an important role in pain sensitivity, potentially offering a new target that could make development of a more effective painkiller less of a ... pain.
- Life
The fluid part of semen plays a seminal role
We often think of reproduction as involving only sperm and egg. But a new study highlights the seminal role of liquid semen in fertility and healthy offspring.
- Tech
A turkey’s wattle inspires a biosensor’s design
A group of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley have developed a color-changing biosensor inspired by a turkey’s wattle.
- Neuroscience
Caffeine’s little memory jolt garners a lot of excitement
A new study claims that caffeine can perk up memory consolidation in students without a caffeine habit. But concerns about the effect size and the statistics in the paper require a little extra shot of replication.
