Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
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- Chemistry
Bacterium grows with arsenic
A microbe appears to substitute a normally toxic element for a basic ingredient of life, raising intriguing questions about the limits of biochemistry.
- Life
Dieting may plant seeds of weight regain
Cutting calories causes changes in the brains of mice that appear to encourage binge eating under stressful conditions years later.
- Chemistry
Snot has the power to alter scents
Enzymes in mice's nasal mucus can alter certain odors before the nose can detect them, a new study finds.
- Life
Getting dissed could be partly genetic
In marmot social networks, victimization may be to some degree heritable.
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- Life
Mammal size maxed out after dinos’ demise
Opening new ecological niches led to a worldwide boom in size, up to a point.
- Life
Big reveals for genome of tiny animal
Tunicates’ scrambled gene order suggests that arrangement may not matter for vertebrate body plan and hints at the origins of mysterious DNA chunks called introns.
- Animals
Island orangs descend from small group
Bornean apes went through a genetic bottleneck when isolated during an ancient glaciation.
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- Paleontology
Ancient trumpets played eerie notes
Acoustic scientists re-create and analyze sounds from 3,000-year-old shell instruments for insight into pre-Inca civilization.
- Life
Genes jump more in one type of autism
A mutation that causes Rett syndrome also increases the activity of retrotransposons in the brain.
