Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Microbes
How warming is shifting microbial worlds
Climate change is affecting microbes, and that has implications for all life on Earth.
- Animals
Sharks are ingesting drugs in the Bahamas
Nearly one third of sharks studied near the Bahamas’ Eleuthera Island were found to have caffeine, painkillers and other drugs in their bloodstreams.
- Animals
Platypus fur has a surprising feature seen only in bird feathers
Platypuses are the first mammals known to have hollow melanosomes, pigment-bearing structures found in the hair of many animals.
- Animals
Wild monkeys invaded Florida. Should people protect them?
A colony of African vervets in Dania Beach raises big questions about how humans can and should manage nonnative species.
- Neuroscience
Yaks may hint at a way to treat brain diseases like MS
A genetic mutation tied to keeping the brain healthy at high altitudes may point to a way to repair nerve damage, experiments in mice show.
- Paleontology
A large fossil leg bone hints at T. rex’s origins, but scientists disagree
A new analysis of a large fossil shinbone suggests T. rex ancestors came from North America instead of Asia. Not everyone agrees.
- Genetics
Why African striped mice can be the best of dads — or the worst
Environmental cues can flip a molecular switch in the brain, turning males from caregivers to killers.
- Space
One possible recipe for life on Titan is a bust
An experiment mimicking conditions on the Saturn moon suggests that cell-like bubbles don’t form in methane lakes, puncturing hopes for alien life.
- Genetics
The Amazon molly — a sex-skipping fish — hacks evolution
The Amazon molly reproduces without sex. A genomic copy-and-paste trick called gene conversion may explain how it avoids evolutionary meltdown.
- Animals
Submerged bumblebee queens breathe underwater
Submerged bees breathe and use strategies that don’t require oxygen, lab tests show. In nature, that trick could help the bees survive floods.
- Plants
Tree tops sparkle with electricity during thunderstorms
Ultraviolet cameras captured faint electrical flashes from leaves and branches as storm charges built up in the atmosphere.
- Neuroscience
The remarkable brains of ‘SuperAgers’ hold clues about how we age
A new study reports signs that nerve cells in the brain keep dividing over the decades. It’s not so simple.
