Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Plants
Mosses frozen in time come back to life
Buried under a glacier for hundreds of years, plants regrow in the lab.
- Animals
How roaches developed disgust at first bite
A change in taste cells makes glucose-baited traps repellent.
- Life
Tests show that deadly flu could spread among people
Experiment shows that new influenza virus transmits through air between ferrets, a common experimental stand-in for humans.
- Life
A molecular window on itch
Researchers discover chemical puppet master behind the need to scratch.
- Life
Foot fungi a thriving, diverse community
A skin census finds that toes and heels have the most fungal types.
- Life
Experimental vaccine protects against many flu viruses
Ferrets that receive shot can fight off variety of influenza strains.
- Plants
Giant genomes felled by DNA sequencing advances
Complete genetic blueprints have been collected for several conifer species.
- Psychology
Dog sniffs out grammar
After years of word training, a canine intuitively figures out how simple sentences work.
- Life
Viruses and mucus team up to ward off bacteria
Phages may play an unforeseen role in immune protection, researchers find.
- Life
Analog circuits boost power in living computers
New cell-based computers do division and logarithms more like a slide rule than a laptop.
- Humans
Highlights from the Biology of Genomes meeting
Highlights from the genome biology meeting held May 7-11 in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., include an enormous tree's enormous genome, genes for strong-swimming sperm, and back-to-Africa migration some 3,000 years ago.
- Life
Invasive frogs may spread deadly amphibian fungus
African clawed frogs imported for 20th century pregnancy tests apparently communicate B. dendrobatidis to native species.
