Life

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We summarize the week's science breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Life

    Feedback

    Readers discuss Dulles' microscapes exhibit, baby birthweights and what should be done about the triclosan problem.

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  2. Animals

    Seeing past the jellyfish sting

    Jellies don’t get nearly as much love as their cousins, the corals, but they deserve credit for providing homes to some creatures, dinner to others and more. They’re an integral part of the oceans.

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  3. Life

    Test drug stops Marburg virus in monkeys

    Using a nano-size piece of RNA, scientists have stopped Marburg virus in monkeys.

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  4. Animals

    These lizards may be able to learn from each other

    An experiment with skinks provides the first evidence of social learning in lizards.

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  5. Oceans

    Viruses might tame some algal blooms

    The rapid demise of a giant, carbon-spewing algal bloom points to the influence of viral wranglers.

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  6. Animals

    Hummingbirds evolved a strange taste for sugar

    While other birds seem to lack the ability to taste sugar, hummingbirds detect sweetness using a repurposed sensor that normally responds to savory flavors.

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  7. Ecosystems

    Lake under Antarctic ice bursts with life

    Abundant microbes thrive in subglacial lakes deep under the Antarctic ice sheet.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Experimental drugs and vaccines poised to take on Ebola

    The use of experimental drugs and vaccines against Ebola may turn the tide against an outbreak in Africa that has defied efforts to control it.

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  9. Animals

    Orcas and other animals may speak with complexity

    From finches to orangutans, animal vocalizations may be more complex and not as distant from the structure of human language as previously thought.

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  10. Genetics

    Long before Columbus, seals brought tuberculosis to South America

    Evidence from the skeletons of ancient Peruvians shows that seals may have brought tuberculosis across an ocean from Africa.

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  11. Life

    Malaria parasite’s invasion of blood cells tweezed apart

    Tugging on malaria-causing parasite cells with laser optical tweezers suggest that the parasite cells interact only weakly with red blood cells and that the interactions could be disrupted with drugs or antibodies.

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  12. Animals

    Olinguito’s bio built by crowd-sourcing

    Crowd-sourcing fleshes out the bio of little-known raccoon relative, the olinguito.

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