Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Genetics
Faulty gene can turn colds deadly for babies, toddlers
Children with a faulty virus-sensing gene may land in intensive care after a cold.
- Neuroscience
Bayesian reasoning implicated in some mental disorders
An 18th century math theory may offer new ways to understand schizophrenia, autism, anxiety and depression.
- Neuroscience
Brain waves in REM sleep help store memories
Mice with disturbed REM sleep show memory trouble.
- Life
Gut microbe may challenge textbook on complex cells
Science may finally have found a complex eukaryote cell that has lost all of its mitochondria.
- Life
How to trap sperm
Lab-made beads can trick and trap sperm, potentially preventing pregnancy or selecting sperm for fertility treatments.
- Health & Medicine
This week in Zika: First mouse study proof that Zika causes microcephaly
Three new studies in mice shore up the link between microcephaly and Zika virus infection.
- Health & Medicine
Mouse studies link Zika virus infection to microcephaly
Three new studies in mice shore up the link between microcephaly and Zika virus infection.
- Animals
Vultures are vulnerable to extinction
Life history makes vultures more vulnerable to extinction than other birds, a new study finds, but humankind’s poisons are helping them to their end.
- Neuroscience
Social area of the brain sets threat level of animals
How people perceive an animal’s danger level is encoded in a particular wrinkle of cortex, a brain scan study suggests.
- Animals
History of road-tripping shaped camel DNA
Centuries of caravan domestication and travel left some metaphorical tire marks on Arabian camel genes, researchers find.
- Animals
Crocodile eyes are optimized for lurking
Crocodiles hang out at the water’s surface, waiting for a meal. A new study shows their eyes are optimized for spotting their prey from this position.
- Health & Medicine
This week in Zika: An anniversary, how the virus kills brain cells and more
New weapons in the fight against Zika, how the virus shrinks minibrains, a quick paper-based test for Zika, and more in this week’s Zika Watch.
