Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Neuroscience
Life span lengthens when mice feel less pain
When rodents are missing a sensory protein, their metabolism revs up and they live longer.
- Life
A slow heartbeat in athletes is not so funny
Endurance athletes often experience sinus bradycardia, a slow heartbeat. A new paper shows this effect may be due to changes in the “funny channel” of the sinoatrial node.
- Life
In a surprise find, placentas harbor bacteria
Mouth bacteria make their way to the placenta. Some mixes may trigger premature birth.
- Animals
Mice really do like to run in wheels
When scientists stuck a tiny wheel out in nature, wild mice ran just as much as their captive counterparts do.
- Life
Genes gives clues to outcome of species interbreeding
Genetics provides clues to why hybrid river fish formed a subspecies but insects formed a new species.
- Ecosystems
Deep-sea trawling threatens oceans’ health
Dragging large nets along the seafloor to catch fish cuts organic matter and biodiversity in half and may threaten all of the world's underwater ecosystems.
- Animals
How an octopus keeps itself out of a tangle
The suckers on an octopus stick to just about anything, except the octopus itself. Scientists think they’ve figured out why.
- Health & Medicine
How Kawasaki disease may blow in with the wind
The origin of Kawasaki disease has been linked to farmlands in northeastern China.
- Animals
Lizards may scale back head bobbing to avoid predators
Brown anoles may scale back mating signals to avoid being eaten.
- Life
‘The Amoeba in the Room’ uncloaks a hidden realm of tiny life
Mycologist Nicholas Money reveals the secret (and dramatic) lives of amoebas, bacteria, fungi and other often-overlooked microbes in The Amoeba in the Room: Lives of the Microbes.
- Animals
For upside-down sloths, what goes down can’t come up
Upside-down sloths have to hold their organs up and their food down.
- Animals
Winds predict deadly jellyfish blooms
A change in the winds flowing over Australia’s Great Barrier Reef coincides with reports of the potentially fatal Irukandji syndrome.
