Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
Fossil pushes back land-animal debut
Creatures first squished mud through their five toes millions of years earlier than previously believed.
- Physics
Plants’ reproductive weaponry unfurled
Botanical tricks include adhesion and bubbles to spread their spores into the environment.
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- Life
After a breakup, coral embryos live on as clones
Even modest waves can break apart embryonic corals, but the bits that survive can grow into separate clones.
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- Life
Pollutants long gone, but disease carries on
Even without new exposures, various chemicals can impact DNA and cause illness across at least three subsequent generations, rat study finds.
- Anthropology
Frozen mummy’s genetic blueprints unveiled
DNA study reveals the 5,300-year-old Iceman had brown eyes, Lyme disease and links to modern-day Corsicans and Sardinians.
- Life
Sardine fishery may be in peril
Cool ocean cycle, population slide evoke collapse of Pacific resource in the late 1940s.
- Life
Brain cells know which way you’ll bet
Activity of nerve cells in a key brain structure reveals how people will bet in a card game.
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- Life
Eggs may be made throughout adulthood
The discovery of stem cells in human ovaries suggests that women are not born with a lifetime’s supply of gametes.
- Life
Bird flu less deadly, but more widespread, than official numbers suggest
The H5N1 virus appears to have infected far more than the 573 officially confirmed victims.
