Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Cats recognize their own names
A new study suggests that cats can tell their names apart from other spoken words.
- Plants
A major crop pest can make tomato plants lie to their neighbors
Insects called silverleaf whiteflies exploit tomatoes’ ability to detect damage caused to nearby plants.
- Animals
Tiny pumpkin toadlets have glowing bony plates on their backs
Pumpkin toadlets are the first frogs found to have fluorescent bony plates that are visible through their skin under ultraviolet light.
- Paleontology
New fossils may capture the minutes after the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact
North Dakota fossils may depict the aftermath of the dinosaur-killing asteroid, but controversial claims about the breadth of the find are unproven.
- Genetics
A Nobel Prize winner argues banning CRISPR babies won’t work
Human gene editing needs responsible regulation, but a ban isn’t the way to go, says Nobel laureate David Baltimore.
- Health & Medicine
In ‘The Perfect Predator,’ viruses vanquish a deadly superbug
In ‘The Perfect Predator,’ an epidemiologist recounts the battle to save her husband from an antibiotic-resistant infection.
- Animals
Watch a desert kangaroo rat drop-kick a rattlesnake
Desert kangaroo rats have a wide arsenal for dodging rattlesnake ambushes. But the most dramatic might be their powerful midair kick.
- Animals
Chytrid’s frog-killing toll has been tallied — and it’s bad
Losses due to the amphibian-killing chytrid fungus are “the greatest documented loss of biodiversity attributable to a pathogen,” researchers find.
- Animals
Geneticists close in on how mosquitoes sniff out human sweat
A long-sought protein proves vital for mosquitoes’ ability to detect lactic acid, a great clue for finding a human.
- Science & Society
The science of CBD lags behind its marketing
Editor in Chief Nancy Shute discusses the lack of scientific research on CBD.
- Science & Society
The CBD boom is way ahead of the science
As CBD-laced foods and health products gain popularity, researchers are just beginning to fill the gaping holes in knowledge about this cannabis molecule’s benefits.
- Health & Medicine
Epileptic seizures may scramble memories during sleep
Overnight seizures seemed to muddle memories in people with epilepsy.
