Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
Hawaii’s honeyeater birds tricked taxonomists
DNA from old museum specimens reveals evolutionary look-alikes.
- Life
Study raises worries for zoo-born elephants
Study of captive-born females finds big survival gap between zoo natives and elephants in native ranges.
- Health & Medicine
Gene could drive species separation
Newly identified fruit fly gene provides evidence for “cheating genes” that may cause species schisms
- Animals
Dolphins wield tools of the sea
A long-term study of dolphins living off Australia’s coast finds that a small number of them, mostly females, frequently use sea sponges to forage for fish on the ocean floor.
- Chemistry
Engineered bacteria create high-energy biofuel
Scientists alter E. coli microbes to make a high-energy alcohol not produced naturally
- Health & Medicine
Malaria vaccine closer to reality
The success of two trials sets the stage for a final, large-scale trial that could mean approval of what would be the first vaccine against Malaria.
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- Space
Meteorites could have thickened primordial soup
New experiments show that extraterrestrial impacts that occurred early in our planet's history could have created the raw materials for life.
- Health & Medicine
Honeybee CSI: Why dead bodies can’t be found
Virus could explain one symptom of colony collapse.
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- Ecosystems
Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet by Oliver Morton
HarperCollins, 2008, 460 p., $28.95.
- Life
Fat cells also linked to prion infection
Disease-causing misfolded proteins at home in a growing list of tissues, organs.
