Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Second wave of bird flu ups pandemic worries
The H7N9 avian influenza virus, which first appeared in 2013, is sweeping China with a second, larger wave of illness.
- Life
Acid-bath method for making stem cells under fire
No one has been able to reproduce a new technique for creating stem cells called STAP cells, leading some researchers to call for the retraction of the original research papers.
- Planetary Science
Feedback
Readers respond to a special report on neuroscience and discuss moon dust.
- Animals
Elephants can tell men’s voices from women’s
Amboseli elephants may pick out age and gender — and even distinguish between languages — when listening to human voices.
- Animals
Spotted seals hear well in and out of water
Spotted seals, native to the northern parts of the Pacific, hear frequencies that may mean they are susceptible to the effects of anthropogenic noise.
- Ecosystems
City spiders may spin low-vibe webs
Spider webs built on human-made materials have less background bounce than those built on trees and other natural surfaces, which might shrink the arachnid’s hunting success.
- Neuroscience
Heartbeats help people see
People were more likely to spot a flash of a hard-to-see ring when the image was presented right after a heartbeat
- Animals
Pelican spiders: slow, safe assassins
Spiders, thank goodness, haven’t evolved assassin drones. But the specialized hunters of the family Archaeidae can kill at a distance.
- Life
Giant zombie virus pulled from permafrost
After lying dormant in Siberian permafrost for 30,000 years, the largest virus ever discovered is just as deadly as it was when mammoths roamed the Earth.
- Neuroscience
Me, Myself, and Why
Me, Myself, and Why is an ambitious effort to dissect the hodgepodge of genetic and environmental factors that sculpt people’s identities.
- Plants
Australian flowers bloom red because of honeyeaters
Many flowering plants converged on similar a color to attract the common birds.
- Paleontology
New dino species named Europe’s top predator
At up to 10 meters long and weighing in at four to five tons, this Tyrannosaurus rex-like beast could have been the biggest predator to ever roam Europe and among the largest dinosaurs to walk Earth during the late Jurassic period.
