Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Hooking fish, not endangered turtles
A tuna fisherman has taken it upon himself to make the seas safer for sea turtles, animals that are threatened or endangered with extinction worldwide. He’s designed a new hook that he says will make bait unavailable to marine birds and turtles until long after it’s sunk well below the range where these animals venture to eat.
- Life
Two steps to primate social living
Evolutionary shifts about 52 million and 16 million years ago led to the group structures observed today, researchers argue.
- Life
A gland grows itself
Japanese researchers coax a pituitary to develop from stem cells in a lab dish.
- Life
Prehistoric horses came in leopard print
Dappled animals, once thought to be the result of selective breeding after domestication, were around when early humans depicted them on cave walls.
- Life
School rules
Fish coordinate with one, or perhaps two, of their neighbors to make group travel a swimming success.
- Paleontology
DNA suggests North American mammoth species interbred
Supposedly separate types may really have been one.
- Life
Giant beavers had hidden vocal talents
With air passageways in its skull like no other animal known, an extinct outsized rodent may have made sound all its own.
- Paleontology
Tooth stranger than fiction
A mammal fossil unearthed in South America resembles ‘Ice Age’ saber-toothed squirrel.
-
- Life
Axing molecular zombies may slow aging
Killing off dormant cells slows the decline of mice genetically engineered to grow old fast.
- Life
Nearness key in microbe DNA swaps
Close quarters, like those inside the human body, are the most important factor in determining how often bacteria pick up one another’s genes.
- Life
Python’s heart-restoring elixir works in mice
A chemical brew used by snakes to build cardiac muscle could have medical applications.
