Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Math
Unnatural selection
Inflicting damage on targeted species can help preserve perturbed ecosystems.
- Animals
Chimps wear personalities on their mugs
Humans can assess the dominance of their close evolutionary relatives by glancing at the apes’ expressionless faces.
- Chemistry
Wee work-around lets microbes thrive
Some crafty, salt-loving cells use stolen equipment for processing a key cellular building block.
- Life
Plastic-lined nests keep rivals at bay
A tangle of shopping bag scraps tells black kites in a Spanish national park that another bird’s home is not to be messed with.
- Life
Old amoebas spawn their farms
Some slime molds use a simple form of agriculture to ensure a steady food supply.
- Chemistry
Bitter flavors boost hunger hormone
Experiments in mice may help explain the allure of the aperitif.
- Chemistry
Why olive oil’s quality is in the cough
An anti-inflammatory compound found in the best presses tickles taste sensors in the throat, a study finds.
- Life
Making a worm do more than squirm
A laser used for locomotion control shines light on nematode behavior, one cell at a time.
- Neuroscience
The Tell-Tale Brain
A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human by V.S. Ramachandran.
- Math
Fruit flies teach computers a lesson
Insect's nerve cell development is a model of efficiency for sensing networks.
- Paleontology
Early meat-eating dinosaur unearthed
Pint-sized, two-legged runner from Argentina dates back to the dawn of the dinos, 230 million years ago.
- Humans
Marking penguins for study may do harm
Metal flipper bands used to tell birds apart hamper survival and reproduction, a 10-year study finds.
