Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
Fruit flies can be alcoholics too
Drinking behavior of Drosophila shows similarities to human addiction.
- Life
When feminine beauty thrives on competition
Gorgeous plumage for both starling sexes comes from rivalry in co-op nests
- Ecosystems
Greening Christmas
I love the smell of balsam and firs and decorating holiday cookies – preferably with the sound of popular holiday standards in the background. I even enjoy shopping for and wrapping carefully chosen presents in seasonal papers festooned with huge bows. So when my hosts, this week, asked what I wanted to see during my visit, the answer was simple. Take me to one of Germany’s famed Christmas markets. And literally within a couple hours of my plane’s landing, they were already ushering me into the first of what would be a handful of such seasonal fairs. But as I also quickly learned, this first was an unusual one: a "green" bazaar.
- Humans
Another livestock drug endangers vultures
After one veterinary NSAID almost wiped out vultures in South Asia, one of the possible replacements turns out to be toxic too.
- Life
Model for powerful flu fighters from existing drugs
Computer screening mines inventory of existing drugs to find possible new drugs that the H1N1 and H5N1 flu viruses just wouldn’t be able to resist.
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- Life
Bacteria seen swimming the electron shuffle
Researchers have captured the bacterium Shewanella’s behavior on film, and the microbes didn’t behave as expected
- Life
Bird feeding, migration could be splitting a species
German birds that spend the off-season at U.K. birdfeeders now look slightly different from neighbors that migrate to Spain
- Health & Medicine
Targeting microRNA knocks out hepatitis C
Blocking a small molecule, a new drug reduces levels of the virus, chimp study shows.
- Life
Gene stops tumors, but only when it’s gone
When a single copy of the microRNA processor Dicer is disabled, cancer can become more deadly. Removing Dicer completely, though, stops tumors.
- Life
Poached hammerhead fins traced to endangered populations
Mapping populations with DNA comparisons offers possible tool for conservation of hammerhead sharks.
- Paleontology
Major eruption cooled the climate but went unnoticed
Ice-core records suggest that a major 1809 eruption cooled Earth even before the Tambora eruption and ‘the year without a summer’.
