Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Berries may give yellow woodpeckers a red dye job
A diet of invasive honeysuckle berries may be behind stray red feathers in woodpeckers called yellow-shafted flickers.
- Life
In a first, mouse eggs grown from skin cells
Stem cells grown in ovary-mimicking conditions in a lab dish can make healthy mouse offspring, but technique still needs work.
- Neuroscience
Out-of-sync body clock causes more woes than sleepiness
The ailment, called circadian-time sickness, can be described with Bayesian math, scientists propose.
- Ecosystems
‘Citizen Scientist’ exalts ordinary heroes in conservation science
Journalist Mary Ellen Hannibal’s “Citizen Scientist” tells tales of ordinary people contributing to science.
- Animals
Be careful what you say around jumping spiders
Sensitive leg hairs may let jumping spiders hear sounds through the air at much greater distances than researchers imagined.
- Life
Placenta protectors no match for toxic Strep B pigment
Strep B uses a toxic pigment made of fat to kill immune system cells, spurring preterm labor and dangerous infections, a monkey study shows.
- Life
One-celled life possessed tools for going multicellular
Unicellular ancestors of animals had molecular tools used by multicellular life.
- Genetics
How gene editing is changing what a lab animal looks like
What makes a good animal model? New techniques bring opportunities and challenges to model organisms.
- Animals
Hot and spicy pain signals get blocked in naked mole-rats
Naked mole-rats have a protein that interrupts pain signal.
- Animals
Hot and spicy pain signals get blocked in naked mole-rats
Naked mole-rats have a protein that interrupts pain signal.
- Life
Ocean archaea more vulnerable to deep-sea viruses than bacteria
Deep-sea viruses kill archaea disproportionately more often than bacteria, a killing spree with important impacts on the global carbon cycle.
- Paleontology
Birds’ honks filled Late Cretaceous air
Oldest avian voice box fossil yet discovered belonged to a ducklike bird that lived during the age of the dinosaurs.
