Life

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We summarize the week's science breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Life

    Giant honeybees do the wave

    Giant bees coordinate and make waves that would rival those in any football stadium. Predators of the bees don’t find it cheering.

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  2. Life

    Female frogs play the field

    A female frog insures a safe home for her young by mating with many males.

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  3. Neuroscience

    Highly wired

    Men’s brain tissue shows higher density of neuron connections than similar tissue from women.

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  4. Life

    Birds duet to fight and seek

    The first study to track birds in the forest via microphone arrays shows that birds double up on fight songs, or play Marco Polo in tropical shrubbery.

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  5. Life

    Robot spider vs. bee

    Learning about predators’ tricks can make a bee paranoid.

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  6. Life

    Gene regulation makes the human

    The regulation of genes, rather than genes alone, may have been crucial to primate evolution.

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  7. Earth

    Mammoth migrations

    Ancient DNA shows North American woolly mammoths migrated back to Asia and displaced Siberian mammoths.

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  8. Life

    Gene linked to commitment-phobia

    A common gene variation in men is linked to marital crises and less bonding in a study of more than 500 long-term couples.

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  9. Neuroscience

    New insights on new neurons

    Neurogenesis works differently in two parts of the brain. New neurons are necessary for making memories and keep the olfactory bulb’s structure but aren’t needed for smelling, study in mice shows.

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  10. Life

    Pollinator manipulators

    Manipulating floral chemistry of a type of wild tobacco reveals push-and-pull strategy.

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  11. Life

    Live long and alter

    Yeast cells fed a calorie-restricted diet live longer and have just as much energy as those fed a normal diet.

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  12. Life

    Compass creatures

    Herds of grazing and resting deer and cattle tend to align themselves with the Earth’s magnetic field, a hint that the large mammals can somehow sense the invisible field.

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