Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
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- Health & Medicine
Clean inside those bagpipes — and trumpets and clarinets
Bagpipes’ moist interiors may be the perfect breeding ground for yeasts and molds.
- Neuroscience
Cool nerve cells help mice beat heat
A new study pinpoints fever-busting cells in mice’s brains.
- Genetics
Genes help snub-nosed monkeys live the high life
Snub nosed monkeys have certain genetic variants that help them breathe easy in low oxygen.
- Life
Lyme bacteria swap ‘catch bonds’ to navigate blood vessels
Lyme bacteria use same tricks as white blood cells to navigate blood stream.
- Neuroscience
Computers refine epilepsy treatment
Surgeons harnessed computers in 1966 to pinpoint source of epilepsy in the brain.
- Genetics
Thank (or blame) your genes for ability to handle java jolt
A gene involved in caffeine processing may control coffee consumption.
- Animals
Warm-up benefit could explain morning birdsong
Even birds sing better after vocal warm-up, and an evolutionary arms race among rivals might have led to the intensity of the dawn chorus.
- Microbes
Bacteria display qualities that a mother would love
Editor in chief Eva Emerson discusses big lessons we can learn from some of Earth's smallest organisms.
- Health & Medicine
Weapon of bone destruction identified
Scientists discover myeloma’s secret bone-destroying messenger.
- Life
CRISPR inspires new tricks to edit genes
CRISPR/Cas9 has been a rockstar gene-editing tool for just four years and it’s already being tweaked to do more things better.
- Neuroscience
What Donkey Kong can tell us about how to study the brain
Neuroscience tools failed to reveal much about a simple microprocessor. What can they really tell us about the brain?
