Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Lionfish invasion comes to the Mediterranean
Scientists had thought that the Mediterranean was too cold for lionfish to permanently settle there. But now they’ve found a population of the fish off Cyprus.
- Neuroscience
Rewarding stimulation boosts immune system
Activating feel-good nerve cells boosts mice’s immunity, a new study suggests.
- Life
Letting parasites fight could help battle drug resistance, too
Helping one strain of malaria trounce another in lab mice demonstrates a way of avoiding the evolution of drug resistance.
- Climate
Warming alters mountain plant’s sex ratios
Global warming has different effects on male and female plants. Tracking sex ratio shifts could be a fast signal of climate change, researchers say.
- Animals
Frigate birds fly nonstop for months
The great frigate bird can fly for up to two months without landing, thanks to a boost from wind and clouds.
- Animals
Sneaky male fiddler crabs entrap their mates
Some male banana fiddler crabs get a female to mate with them by trapping her in their burrow, a new study finds.
- Science & Society
Empathy for animals is all about us
We extend our feelings to what we think animals are feeling. Often, we’re wrong. But anthropomorphizing isn’t about them. It’s about us.
- Health & Medicine
This week in Zika: vaccine progress, infection insights
Vaccine candidates for Zika virus take a step forward, birth defects span spectrum of problems and doubts about Zika’s link to microcephaly may be extinguished by new reports from Colombia.
- Health & Medicine
Vaccines could counter addictive opioids
Scientists turn to vaccines to curb the growing opioid epidemic.
- Paleontology
Parasites wormed way into dino’s gut
Tiny slimed tunnels in the guts of a 77-million-year-old duck-billed dinosaur fossil offer the first hard evidence that dinosaurs may have been infected by parasitic worms, paleontologists say.
- Materials Science
Shark jelly is strong proton conductor
A jelly found in sharks and skates, which helps them sense electric fields, is a strong proton conductor.
- Animals
Two newly identified dinosaurs donned weird horns
Two newly discovered relatives of Triceratops had unusual head adornments — even for horned dinosaurs.
