Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Paleontology
Like sea stars, ancient echinoderms nibbled with tiny tube feet
An ancient echinoderm fossil preserves evidence of tube feet like those found on today’s sea stars.
- Life
When a fungus invades the lungs, immune cells can tell it to self-destruct
Immune system resists fungal infection by directing spores to their death.
- Neuroscience
Brain chemical lost in Parkinson’s may contribute to its own demise
A dangerous form of the chemical messenger dopamine causes cellular mayhem in the very nerve cells that make it.
- Animals
Why bats crash into windows
Smooth, vertical surfaces may be blind spots for bats and cause some animals to face-plant, study suggests.
- Animals
Why bats crash into windows
Smooth, vertical surfaces may be blind spots for bats and cause some animals to face-plant, study suggests.
- Paleontology
Woolly rhinos may have grown strange extra ribs before going extinct
Ribs attached to neck bones could have signaled trouble for woolly rhinos, a new study suggests.
- Animals
Pollen hitches a ride on bees in all the right spots
Flower reproduction depends on the pollen that collects in hard-to-reach spots on bees, a new study shows.
- Science & Society
Learning is a ubiquitous, mysterious phenomenon
Acting Editor in Chief Elizabeth Quill talks about the science of learning and how our brains process new knowledge.
- Climate
Rising temperatures threaten heat-tolerant aardvarks
Aardvarks may get a roundabout hit from climate change — less food.
- Health & Medicine
Zika could one day help combat deadly brain cancer
The Zika virus targets cells that cause glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, studies in human cells and mice show.
- Neuroscience
Learning takes brain acrobatics
Brains that learn best seem able to reconfigure themselves on the fly, a new line of research suggests.
- Animals
This sea snake looks like a banana and hunts like a Slinky
A newly identified sea snake subspecies is known to live in a single gulf off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.
