Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Neuroscience
Neurons in silk scaffold mimic behaviors of a real brain
Proteins of silkworm cocoons can form the scaffold for a three-dimensional model of a brain.
