Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Psychology
Joint attention provides clues to autism and cooperation
Psychologists and philosophers convene to discuss the roots of shared knowledge at a meeting in Waltham, Mass.
- Health & Medicine
Nobel in medicine honors discoveries of telomeres and telomerase
Three scientists share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of telomeres, which protect the ends of chromosomes, and the enzyme telomerase, which adds the structures to the ends of chromosomes.
- Chemistry
Flowerless plants make fancy amber
A new analysis suggests that ancient seed plants made a version of the fossilized resin credited to more modern relatives
- Life
Mitochondria behind life span extension
Study in flies suggests low-protein diet works through power-producing organelles.
- Chemistry
Earth’s ‘boring billion’ years blamed on sulfur-loving microbes
A new study suggests these organisms could have kept oxygen levels low and waters toxic, stalling the evolution of complex life.
- Paleontology
Parasite may have felled a mighty T. rex
An infection known to afflict modern birds may have led to starvation in several dinosaurs.
- Paleontology
Fish death, mammal extinction and tiny dino footprints
Paleontologists in Bristol, England, at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology report on fish fossils in Wyoming, the loss of Australia’s megafauna and the smallest dinosaur tracks.
- Life
Better sensing through empty receptors
A new model suggests cells may be more sensitive to their environment than previously thought.
- Paleontology
Feather-covered dinosaur fossils found
Scientists have uncovered a feather-laden, peacock-sized dinosaur that predates the oldest known bird.
- Life
Enter the Virosphere
As evidence of the influence of viruses escalates, appreciation of these master manipulators grows.
- Earth
Protected whales found in Japan’s supermarkets
Toothless Asian whales find themselves being protected by fairly toothless regulations.
- Ecosystems
Eels on the move
Study tracks European eels for the first 1,300 kilometers of their migration.
