Life
- Animals
At-home experiments shed light on cats’ liquid behavior
Cats can flow like liquids through tall crevices, but they solidify a bit as they approach short crannies, new research shows.
- Neuroscience
Your brain can perceive subtle odor changes in a single sniff
The speed at which our brain can tell smells apart is on par with color perception, a new sniff device shows.
- Animals
DNA from old hair helps confirm the macabre diet of two 19th century lions
Genetic analysis of cavity crud from two famed man-eating lions suggests the method could re-create diets of predators that lived thousands of years ago.
- Neuroscience
Hair pulling prompts one of the fastest known pain signals
The ouch of hair pulling is transmitted with the help of a protein used to sense light touches. These details could lead to new treatments.
- Health & Medicine
A viral gene drive could offer a new approach to fighting herpes
A new gene drive can copy and paste itself into the genomes of herpes simplex viruses in mice. The end goal is a version that disables the virus in humans.
- Paleontology
The largest arthropod to ever live finally has a head
Fossils of an extinct giant millipede reveal new details about the arthropod’s anatomy.
- Chemistry
Work on protein structure and design wins the 2024 chemistry Nobel
David Baker figured out how to build entirely new proteins. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper developed an AI tool to predict protein structures.
- Animals
To tell a right-trunked elephant from a lefty, check the wrinkles
Elephant trunks, more sci-fi face-tentacle than ho-hum mammal nose, are getting new scrutiny as researchers explore how the wrinkles grow.
- Neuroscience
Semaglutide saps mice’s motivation to run
Mice given semaglutide, the key ingredient in drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, lost weight, but they also voluntarily ran less on a wheel.
- Animals
These sea creatures can fuse their bodies
A species of comb jelly can fuse its body with another jelly after injury. Some of the pair’s body functions then synchronize.
- Genetics
The discovery of microRNA wins the 2024 physiology Nobel Prize
Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun found a new principle of gene regulation essential for all multicellular organisms.
- Animals
Some tadpoles don’t poop for weeks. That keeps their pools clean
Eiffinger’s tree frog babies store their solid waste in an intestinal pouch, releasing less ammonia into their watery cribs than other frog species.
