Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Ecosystems
Athlete’s foot therapy tapped to treat bat-killing fungus
Over the past four years, a mysterious white-nose fungus has struck hibernating North American bats. Populations in affected caves and mines can experience death rates of more than 80 percent over a winter. In desperation, an informal interagency task force of scientists from state and federal agencies has just launched an experimental program to fight the plague. Their weapon: a drug ordinarily used to treat athlete’s foot.
- Life
Hawaiian caterpillars are first known amphibious insects
Developing underwater or above, it’s all good for moths that evolved new lifestyle in the islands
- Health & Medicine
Ingredient of dark roasted coffees may make them easier on the tummy
A compound generated in the roasting process appears to reduce acid production in the stomach.
- Plants
Bees face ‘unprecedented’ pesticide exposures at home and afield
Honey bees are being hammered by some mysterious environmental plaque that has a name — colony collapse disorder – but no established cause. A two-year study now provides evidence indicting one likely group of suspects: pesticides. It found “unprecedented levels” of mite-killing chemicals and crop pesticides in hives across the United States and parts of Canada.
- Life
There are rules in fiddler crab fight club
Territorial crustaceans will defend their own rivals, but only to keep stronger ones out.
- Paleontology
Fossilized poop bears tooth marks
Shark-bitten fecal matter probably came from an assault on an ancient croc.
- Earth
Ice drilling nets shrimpy surprise
Underwater camera captures an Antarctic crustacean, as a serendipitous part of a larger ice shelf study.
- Life
Who reined the dogs in
New genetic data reveals that Fido likely originated in the Middle East.
- Chemistry
Methane-making microbes thrive under the ice
Antarctica’s ice sheets could hide vast quantities of the greenhouse gas, churned out by a buried ecosystem.
- Life
To catch a thief, follow his filthy hands
Bacteria from a person’s hands may provide a new type of fingerprint.
- Ecosystems
Iron fertilization in ocean nourishes toxic algae
Efforts to prevent global warming by fertilizing the oceans with iron could trigger harmful algal blooms.
- Plants
Chemists pin down poppy’s tricks for making morphine
Scientists have figured out two of the final key steps in the chain of chemical reactions that the opium poppy uses to synthesize morphine, suggesting possible signaling strategies for new ways of making the drug and its cousin painkillers.
