Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
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- Humans
DNA highlights Native American die-off
A genetic analysis points to widespread New World deaths after Europeans arrived.
- Life
Vying for the title of World’s Fastest Cell
Scientists film 58 kinds of mobile cells to study movement — and to have a little fun.
- Life
Biology’s big bang had a long fuse
The fossil record’s earliest troves of animal life are the result of more than 200 million years of evolution.
- Life
Cretaceous Thanksgiving
A fossilized feathered dinosaur dined on bird not long before its own demise.
- Life
DNA to flutter by
The complete genetic instruction book for making monarch butterflies contains information about how the insects manage their long migration to Mexico.
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- Animals
Lost to history: The “churk”
More than a half-century ago, researchers at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center outside Washington, D.C., engaged in some creative barnyard breeding. Their goal was the development of fatherless turkeys — virgin hens that would reproduce via parthenogenesis. Along the way, and ostensibly quite by accident, an interim stage of this work resulted in a rooster-fathered hybrid that the scientists termed a churk.
- Life
Immune cells function beyond battle
Cells lining the intestines take cues from immune cells and gut bacteria when deciding whether self-defense or metabolism is more important.
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- Life
How both macho and meek persist
Research in voles demonstrates one way that evolution preserves two divergent strategies in a single population.
- Life
Chromosome glitch tied to separation anxiety
The finding is the latest in a series linking extra or missing gene copies to mental conditions.
