Oceans
Got pesky, invasive corals? Blast ‘em away with air guns
Compressed air bids bye-bye to invasive sun corals in Brazil. The blasts obliterated soft tissue and fragments couldn't regenerate.
Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
More Stories in Life
- Anthropology
How to invent a realistic language for fictional speakers
Linguists can mix, match or even break the rules of real-world languages to create interesting imaginary ones.
- Animals
This tree is number one for cloud forest mammals going number two
The strangler fig is a keystone species in the tropics, providing food and shelter, and a place to poop for 17 different mammal species.
- Health & Medicine
Some GLP-1 drugs are more effective for those with specific gene variants
In a study, people with gene variants in two genes lost slightly more weight on GLP-1 drugs, but threw up more on Zepbound.
- Health & Medicine
New mutations help the H5N1 bird flu virus infect cows but not people
The findings show how the H5N1 bird flu virus is evolving in livestock and what that may mean for human health.
- Life
Smithsonian secrets most likely to blow your mind
Millions of objects stashed at a site open only to select visitors tell the history of Earth's inhabitants.
- Life
Talking dogs and chatty cats could one day ‘speak’ in our language
Advances in decoding animal sounds might someday make animal translators a possibility.
- Animals
For gray whales, San Francisco Bay is becoming a deadly pit stop
Climate change could be forcing gray whales to seek food in San Francisco Bay, where vessel strikes may be driving rising deaths.
- Neuroscience
Seeing and imagining activate some of the same brain cells
By recording brain activity directly, scientists showed that imagining an object can revive parts of the neural pattern used to see it.
- Paleontology
Mummified reptile hints at the origins of how we breathe
A cave preserved two animals’ rib cages, cartilage and even traces of protein, revealing a flexible breathing apparatus like that of today’s land dwellers.
