Life

  1. Health & Medicine

    Newfound immune cells are responsible for long-lasting allergies

    A specialized type of immune cell appears primed to make the type of antibodies that lead to allergies, two research groups report.

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  2. Animals

    Does this drone image show a newborn white shark? Experts aren’t sure

    If a claim of the first-ever sighting of a newborn white shark holds, it could help solve a mystery of where adult white sharks give birth.

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  3. Animals

    Migratory fish species are in drastic decline, a new UN report details

    The most comprehensive tally of how migrating animals are faring looks at more than 1,000 land and aquatic species and aims to find ways to protect them.

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  4. Artificial Intelligence

    How do babies learn words? An AI experiment may hold clues

    Using relatively little data, audio and video taken from a baby’s perspective, an AI program learned the names of objects the baby encountered.

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  5. Neuroscience

    A new device let a man sense temperature with his prosthetic hand

    A device that can be integrated into prosthetic hands capitalizes on phantom sensations to enable users to sense hot and cold.

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  6. Animals

    Here’s how many shark bites there were in 2023

    The chance of being bitten by a shark is still incredibly slim, according to a new report from the Florida Museum of Natural History.

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  7. Animals

    The first known scorpion to live with ants carries mini hitchhikers

    Small arachnids hitch a ride on the scorpion, possibly to get inside food-rich ant nests.

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  8. Plants

    Here’s why blueberries are blue

    Nanostructures in a blueberry’s waxy coating make it look blue, despite having dark red pigments — and no blue ones — in its skin, a new study reports.

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  9. Plants

    This weird fern is the first known plant that turns its dead leaves into new roots

    Cyathea rojasiana tree ferns seem to thrive in Panama’s Quebrada Chorro forest by turning dead leaves into roots that seek out nutrient-rich soil.

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  10. Paleontology

    A rare 3-D tree fossil may be the earliest glimpse at a forest understory

    The 350-million-year-old tree, which was wider than it was tall thanks to a mop-top crown of 3-meter-long leaves, would look at home in a Dr. Seuss book.

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  11. Planetary Science

    Bacteria that can make humans sick could survive on Mars

    Experiments suggest that common illness-causing microbes could not only survive on the Red Planet but also might be able to thrive.

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  12. Paleontology

    50 years ago, trilobite eyes mesmerized scientists

    Decades of research has confirmed that for such simple creatures, trilobites had astoundingly complex eyes.

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