Life
- Animals
Algal blooms created ancient whale graveyard
Whales and other marine mammals died at sea and were buried on a tidal flat in what's now in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
- Neuroscience
Girls may require more mutations than boys to develop autism
New results may help explain why more males wind up with autism.
- Life
Rivalry helps fruit flies maintain brainpower
In lab tests, males dim mentally after generations without competitors.
- Animals
The mystery of the missing fish heads
When scientists opened up the stomachs of shortfin mako sharks, they found that nearly all of the digesting fish had no heads or tails.
- Animals
Methylation turns a wannabe bumblebee into a queen
Epigenetic changes to bumblebee DNA turns a worker into a reproductive pseudo-queen, suggesting that genomic imprinting could be responsible for the bumblebee social system.
- Genetics
What your earwax says about your ancestry
Both armpit and ear wax secretions are smellier in Caucasians than in Asians, thanks to a tiny genetic change that differs across ethnic groups.
- Animals
A tiny ocean vortex, with pop art pizzazz
Coral polyps kick up a whirling vortex of water by whipping their hairlike cilia back and forth in the photography winner of the 2013 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.
- Neuroscience
Brain’s fact-checker located
A bit of brain tissue near the top of the head may be the body’s fact-checker. Called the supplementary motor cortex, this brain region monitors the body’s action and sends an alert when a mistake is made.
- Animals
We’re only noticing the snowy owls
A lemming boom last summer probably led to rises in populations of several predator species.
- Animals
Fish lose their fear on a denuded reef
Juvenile damselfish lose their ability to smell danger when in a degraded habitat.
- Neuroscience
Like people, dogs have brain areas that respond to voices
MRI study may help explain how pups understand human communication.
- Life
Fins and wings alike share design features
Animals have adapted a number of different ways to swim and fly. But new research suggests that wings, fins and flukes share a couple of basic design parameters.
