Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Animals
Olinguito’s bio built by crowd-sourcing
Crowd-sourcing fleshes out the bio of little-known raccoon relative, the olinguito.
- Animals
New subspecies of Philippine tarsier discovered
Genetic tests settle a taxonomic debate surrounding Philippine tarsier, one of the world’s smallest primates.
- Health & Medicine
HPV vaccine protection lasts at least eight years
Immunization shields children from human papillomavirus infection for nearly a decade.
- Agriculture
Killer bug behind coconut plague identified
A pest has devastated coconuts in the Philippines, and scientists now realize the perp is not the bug they thought was causing the damage.
- Animals
Zebra finches go mad with mercury, and other animal updates
Mercury exposure makes zebra finches bold and hyperactive, and additional research from the 2014 Animal Behavior Society Meeting.
- Animals
Dolphins and whales may squeal with pleasure too
Dolphins and whales squeal after a food reward in about the same time it takes for dopamine to be released in the brain.
- Humans
Antibiotics in infancy may cause obesity in adults
By altering the microbiome of infant mice, drugs predisposed the animals to gain fat as adults.
- Health & Medicine
Inflammation-blocking cells might fight often-fatal sepsis
Treatment saved young and old mice from overactive immune response to infection.
- Physics
Common motion emerges in swarms of only 10 midges
A swarm of midges may start to fly as a collective group with as few as 10 individuals, a new study shows.
