Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Chemistry
Plants and predators pick same poison
Zygaena caterpillars and their herbaceous hosts independently evolved an identical recipe for cyanide.
- Life
Penguin declines may come down to krill
Lack of food appears to be hurting birds on the Antarctic Peninsula.
- Tech
Fishy fat from soy is headed for U.S. dinner tables
Most people have heard about omega-3 fatty acids, the primary constituents of fish oil. Stearidonic acid, one of those omega-3s, is hardly a household term. But it should become one, researchers argued this week at the 2011 Experimental Biology meeting.
- Math
Cells take on traveling salesman problem
With neither minds nor maps- chemical-sensing immune players do well with decades-old mathematical problem, a computer simulation reveals.
- Life
Why diversity rules
A new experiment demonstrates the way a multitude of specialized species absorb nutrients more effectively than a highly productive one.
- Life
Sugar fuels growth of insulin-making cells
Mouse study suggests a new strategy for treating diabetes.
- Life
Worries grow over monarch butterflies
Migrants overwintering in Mexico rebounded somewhat this past winter, but still trending downward.
- Paleontology
Supersized superbunny
Fossils reveal a non-hopping giant rabbit that lived on the island of Minorca 5 million years ago.
- Life
Genes & Cells
Traditional medicine helps give the slip to bacteria, plus insulin insensitivity and dental plaque in this week's news.
- Life
Great-grandpa’s genes gone, effects stay
Removing an obesity-preventing scrap of DNA from a mouse lineage doesn’t prevent descendants from reaping its slimming benefits for generations.
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