Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Marine biologist chronicles a lifelong love of fishing
In A Naturalist Goes Fishing, a marine biologist takes readers on a round-the-world fishing expedition
- Paleontology
New evidence weakens case against climate in woolly mammoths’ death
Hunters responsible for woolly mammoths’ extinction, suggests a chemical analysis of juveniles’ tusks.
- Climate
High-flying birds recruited for meteorology
Monitoring the midflight movements of high-flying birds can provide valuable meteorological data, new research shows.
- Animals
How to drink like a bat
Some bats stick out their tongues and throbs carry nectar to their mouths.
- Paleontology
Dimetrodon’s diet redetermined
The reptilelike Dimetrodon dined mainly on amphibians and sharks, not big herbivores as scientists once believed.
- Animals
Bees get hooked on flowers’ caffeine buzz
Flowers drug honey bees with caffeinated nectar to trick them into returning, causing the bees to shift their foraging and dancing behaviors.
- Plants
Early cyanobacteria fossils dug up in 1965
In 1965, early photosynthetic plant fossils were discovered. The date of earliest oxygen-producing life forms has since been pushed much earlier.
- Neuroscience
Adolescent brains open to change
Adolescent brains are still changing, a malleability that renders them particularly sensitive to the outside world.
- Humans
U.S. is growing more genetically diverse
Young Americans are more genetically diverse than previous generations, a new DNA analysis reveals.
- Genetics
Microbes may reveal colon cancer mutations
Certain microbial mixes are associated with particular DNA mutations in colon cancer, a new study suggests.
- Animals
Root fungi make or break monarchs’ chances against parasite
Fungi that live amid the roots of milkweed plants change the chemicals produced in the plant’s leaves, which can either aid or hinder a monarch butterfly’s ability to fight off parasites.
- Neuroscience
That familiar feeling comes from deep in the brain
Knowing what’s new and what we’ve seen before is at the base of memory. A new study shows that with a flash of light, scientists can change the firing of brain cells, and make the old new again.
