Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Genetics
Gene therapy with electrical pulses spurs nerve growth
Deaf guinea pigs' hearing improves with electrical pulses from a hearing implant are combined with gene therapy, a new study shows.
- Animals
Secrets of a sailfish attack
The large, long-nosed sailfish use their rostrums more like a sword than a spear to attack prey.
- Animals
Dolphins use sponges to dine on different grub
The animals can learn to use tools to exploit food sources that would be otherwise unavailable, a study suggests.
- Genetics
Rainbow trout genome shows how genetic material evolved
The finding challenges the idea that whole genome duplications are followed by quick, massive reorganization and deletions of genetic material.
- Animals
Submariners’ ‘bio-duck’ is probably a whale
First acoustic tags on Antarctic minke whales suggest the marine mammals are the long-sought source of the mysterious bio-duck sound.
- Neuroscience
Pain curbs sex drive in females, but not males
When in pain, female mice’s interest in sex takes a hit but males still want to mate.
- Genetics
New antibiotic resistance genes found in cow manure
Identifying these genes offers clues to how antibiotic resistance could move from agricultural ecosystems to other communities of organisms.
- Genetics
Neandertal, modern human DNA deviates even more
An analysis of genetic material of Neandertals and modern humans shows genetic differences in the species' population sizes and even the curves of their spines.
- Neuroscience
Bingeing rats show the power of food habits
Rats allowed to binge on sweetened milk show a bad habit for food. But while food might change our habits, a bad food habit may not necessarily be an addiction.
- Life
Cheetahs, but not wild dogs, manage to live with lions
One conservation tenet says that cheetahs can’t survive when lions are around, but it’s wild dogs that disappeared in one lion-dense area of the Serengeti.
- Animals
Little thylacine had a big bite
A reconstruction of the skull of a thylacine, an extinct, fox-sized Australian marsupial, reveals that the animal could have eaten prey much larger than itself.
- Ecosystems
War’s ecological effects laid bare in ‘A Window on Eternity’
In "A Window on Eternity," entomologist E.O. Wilson chronicles both the shifting ecology of Gorongosa National Park after the war and how researchers are trying to repair the damage.
