Life

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We summarize the week's science breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Neuroscience

    Boosting a liver protein may mimic the brain benefits of exercise

    Finding that liver-made proteins influence the brain may advance the quest for an “exercise pill” that can deliver the benefits of physical activity.

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  2. Animals

    Calculating a dog’s age in human years is harder than you think

    People generally convert a dog’s age to human years by multiplying its age by seven. But a new study shows the math is way more complex.

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  3. Genetics

    South Americans may have traveled to Polynesia 800 years ago

    DNA analyses suggest that Indigenous people from South America had a role in the early peopling of Polynesia.

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  4. Life

    Bizarre caecilians may be the only amphibians with venomous bites

    Microscope and chemical analyses suggest that, like snakes, caecilians have glands near their teeth that secrete venom.

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  5. Animals

    A sparrow song remix took over North America with astonishing speed

    A variation on the white-throated sparrow’s song spread 3,300 kilometers in just a few decades.

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  6. Life

    Here’s how flying snakes stay aloft

    High-speed cameras show that paradise tree snakes keep from tumbling as they glide through the sky by undulating their bodies.

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  7. Life

    Fish eggs can hatch after being eaten and pooped out by ducks

    In the lab, a few carp eggs survived and even hatched after being pooped out by ducks. The finding may help explain how fish reach isolated waterways.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Strokes and mental state changes hint at how COVID-19 harms the brain

    In a group of people severely ill from the coronavirus, strokes, psychosis, depression and other brain-related changes come as complications.

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  9. Animals

    Dolphins can learn from peers how to use shells as tools

    While most foraging skills are picked up from mom, some bottlenose dolphins seem to look to their peers to learn how to trap prey in shells.

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  10. Paleontology

    Fossil discoveries suggest the earliest dinosaurs laid soft-shelled eggs

    Finding soft-shelled dinosaur eggs in the fossil record for the first time has scientists rethinking how dinosaur eggs evolved.

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  11. Tech

    Bubble-blowing drones may one day aid artificial pollination

    Drones are too clumsy to rub pollen on flowers and not damage them. But blowing pollen-laden bubbles may help the machines be better pollinators.

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  12. Neuroscience

    How to make a mouse smell a smell that doesn’t actually exist

    The ability to create a perception might lead to a deeper understanding of how the brain makes sense of the world.

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