Life
We summarize the week's science breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Antarctic test of novel ice drill poised to begin
Any day now, a team of 40 scientists and support personnel expects to begin using a warm, high pressure jet of water to bore a 30 centimeter hole through 83 meters of ice. Once it breaks through to the sea below, they’ll have a few days to quickly sample life from water before the hole begins freezing up again. It's just a test. But if all goes well, in a few weeks the team will move 700 miles and bore an even deeper hole to sample for freshwater life that may have been living for eons outside even indirect contact with Earth’s atmosphere.
- Life
News in brief: Counting project reveals forest’s bug diversity
Some 25,000 species of arthropods live in Panamanian forest.
- Life
Early life forms may have been terrestrial
A controversial theory suggests that at least some of the earliest widespread complex life forms lived on land.
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- Life
News in brief: Fins to limbs with flip of genetic switch
Boost of gene activity may help explain how arms and legs evolved in vertebrates.
- Life
Feces study gets the poop on gorillas’ diet
Chemical traces in animals’ droppings reflect shifts in recent food consumption.
- Life
Genes & Cells
Healing broken hearts, tracing Romani migration using genes, and how insulin irregularities may be linked to obesity.
- Life
Contender for world’s oldest dinosaur identified
An African specimen suggests the lineage may have arisen 15 million years earlier than thought.
- Life
Among bass, easiest to catch are best dads
Recreational fishing may be inadvertent evolutionary force, favoring cautious fish over better caretakers of the young.
- Life
Gut bacteria may affect cardiovascular risk
An abundance of antioxidant-producing microbes seems to keep plaques from breaking free and causing heart attacks and stroke.
