Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
Estrogen helps ward off belly fat
Hormone is one reason that men and women carry weight differently
- Life
Fossil find sparks debate on primate origins
A 37-million-year-old jaw suggests the famous fossil Darwinius does not, as had been suggested, fill a gap in human evolution.
- Animals
Junk food turns rats into addicts
Bacon, cheesecake and Ho Hos elicit addictive behavior in rats similar to the behavior of rats addicted to heroin.
- Life
People can control their Halle Berry neurons
Researchers pinpoint individual brain cells that respond to particular people and objects.
- Life
Golgi’s job stretches it thin
Researchers have pinpointed the protein that gives a cell’s control room its shape and also keeps it functioning.
- Chemistry
Tongue’s sour-sensing cells taste carbonation
A protein splits carbon dioxide to give fizz its unique flavor.
- Life
Fly pheromones can say yes and no
A new study begins to decode pheromone messages and finds that the same chemicals that attract can also maintain the species barrier.
- Ecosystems
Windy with a chance of weevils
Scientists have traced the reappearance of cotton pests in west-central Texas to a tropical storm.
- Earth
Darwinopterus points to chunky evolution
A newly discovered pterosaur had the legs of its ancestors and the head of its descendants.
- Life
Paralyzed, then unparalyzed, by the light
Different types of light freeze and then reinvigorate roundworms fed a shape-changing molecule.
- Paleontology
Fungi thrived during mass extinction
Fossil analyses hint that several species thrived during the world’s largest mass extinction.
- Life
Circadian clockwork takes unexpected turns
Some neurons in the brain’s master clock fall silent in the afternoon. The unexpected finding prompts scientists to rethink how the clock works.
