Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Plants
Don’t Touch That: The Book of Gross, Poisonous, and Downright Icky Plants and Critters by Jeff Day
Chicago Review Press, 2008, 108 p., $9.95.
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- Chemistry
Nicotine’s new appeal
Mimicking the addictive compound’s action in the brain could lead to new drugs for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and schizophrenia.
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- Health & Medicine
Closest look yet at lung cancer genes
A large study offers clues to the genetics behind lung cancer.
- Neuroscience
Selective memory
Using genetic engineering and chemical manipulation, scientists erased the memory of a stressful experience from a mouse’s brain.
- Animals
Spider males good for mating, food
Expectant mothers, including spiders, need to eat well. For Mediterranean tarantulas, a male suitor tastes just fine.
- Life
Heat sensors guide insects to a hot meal
Bugs home in on seeds by detecting infrared radiation.
- Life
Avian airlines: Alaska to New Zealand nonstop
Tracked bar-tailed godwits break previous nonstop flight record for birds.
- Humans
Elephants’ struggle with poaching lingers on
Even as African elephants struggle to recover from decades-old poaching, the animals face new and renewed threats today.
- Life
A more fearsome saber-toothed cat
Analyses of fossils reveal that a third, newly recognized type of saber-toothed cat — one that killed by biting large chunks of flesh from its victim instead of biting its neck and slashing the major blood vessels there —roamed the Americas about a million years ago.
- Paleontology
How pterosaurs took flight
Extinct flying reptiles known as pterosaurs may have taken to the air with a technique akin to leapfrogging, new research suggests.
