Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Mice with mutation feel the burn
Instead of becoming obese, mice with a mutation in an immune gene burn off the fat they eat.
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- Animals
Play that monkey music
Man-made music inspired by tamarin calls seems to alter the primates’ emotions, a new study suggests.
- Earth
Oh, rats — there go the snails
A food fad among introduced rats has apparently crashed a once-thriving population of Hawaii’s famed endemic tree snails.
- Animals
Oops, missed that fossil iridescence
Nanostructures on a preserved feather offer the first fossil evidence of bird colors not from pigments, a new study says.
- Earth
A trip to the garbage patch
Scientists bring back samples from the oceanic garbage patch off the coast of California.
- Life
Domesticated silkworms’ secrets
After mapping the genetic book of instructions for wild and domesticated silkworms, scientists identify changes associated with the taming of these caterpillars.
- Animals
Fruity whiff may inspire new mosquito repellents
Odors from ripening bananas can jam fruit flies’ and mosquitoes’ power to detect carbon dioxide, a new study finds.
- Life
Mitochondrial DNA replacement successful in Rhesus monkeys
New procedure may halt some serious inherited diseases, a study suggests.
- Chemistry
Leptin leads to hamster baby boom
High levels of leptin may tell mother hamsters to invest in larger litters, a new study suggests.
- Life
Excess folic acid sits idle
Humans metabolize folic acid at a slow rate, suggesting that additional folic acid may yield no more benefits than recommended doses do, researchers report.
- Life
Bomb-tastic new worms
Scientists find previously unknown deep-sea species that launch bioluminescent packets.
