Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
Giraffe’s long neck linked to its genetic profile
Giraffes’ genes may reveal how their necks grew long and hearts got strong.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists wrestle with possibility of second Zika-spreading mosquito
It’s hard to say yet whether Asian tiger mosquitoes will worsen the ongoing Zika outbreak in the Americas.
- Animals
‘America’s Snake’ chronicles life and times of iconic timber rattlesnake
America’s Snake looks past timber rattlesnake’s fearsome reputation and delves into the fascinating biology of this iconic serpent.
- 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.
