Life

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

More Stories in Life

  1. Science & Society

    A discovery about this bat’s diet was hiding in a Renaissance painting

    Renaissance painter Jan Brueghel the Elder painted a bat eating a bird — 400 years before scientists would document the behavior.

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  2. Animals

    Giant, deep-sea roly-polies steal a gene to endure starvation

    The enormous deep-sea cousins of your garden’s pill bugs can go five years without food. A gene they pilfered from bacteria may be part of the secret.

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  3. Neuroscience

    Brains break and repair DNA to grow

    Newborn mice neurons can snap both DNA strands to migrate, then repair the breaks within a day. The process may be a normal part of brain development.

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  4. Microbes

    New science on algae die-offs is too late for the Reflecting Pool

    Iron and hydrogen peroxide trigger cell death via ferroptosis, which cascades killer molecules through the population, causing mass die-offs of algae.

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  5. Paleontology

    Ancient flowering plants may have used dinosaurs to spread their seeds

    Scientists thought angiosperms didn’t use animals to spread seeds until after the Age of Dinosaurs. Fossilized fruits from these plants challenge this idea.

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  6. Paleontology

    The world’s largest scorpion lived 415 million years ago

    A prehistoric scorpion was the largest ever to exist, and it may have preyed on land and freshwater species.

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  7. Neuroscience

    The ‘little brain’ may give the aging mind a big boost

    Most known for its role in movement, the cerebellum could compensate for flagging mental functions elsewhere in the brain.

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  8. Paleontology

    A new dino fossil may solve an ancient murder mystery

    A newly-described dinosaur, Jian changmaensis, may have glided through northwestern China about 120 million years ago, wreaking havoc on birds.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    The New World screwworm has returned to the U.S. Now what?

    At least a dozen animals have been found with the flesh-eating maggots. It could take more than a year to eradicate the parasite again, experts warn.

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