Life

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

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  1. Plants

    Forest invades tundra

    The Arctic tundra is under assault from trees, with serious implications for global climate change.

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  2. Chemistry

    Catching your breath

    Scientists are investigating how to use the human breath to diagnose diseases and environmental ills.

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  3. Animals

    Peril of play

    A new study shows that playful 2-year-old chimpanzees may be particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases — some caught from humans.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Stomaching diabetes

    A new way to treat diabetes could recruit cells in the gut to make insulin when the pancreas can’t.

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  5. Agriculture

    A vanilla Vanilla

    The orchid that gives us vanilla beans has startlingly low genetic diversity, suggesting crops might be susceptible to pathogens, researchers report.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Where funny faces come from

    Making a face might have helped human ancestors survive.

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  7. Animals

    Squeaky chimp sex, or not

    Female chimps tend toward silent sex when the other girls could overhear.

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  8. Life

    Wine find

    Cell tests suggest that resveratrol, the substance that seems to account for the healthful effects of red wine, might have antiobesity effects, too.

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  9. Archaeology

    Resurrection of a biblical tree

    Date palm pit found at Masada sprouts at age 2,000, becoming the oldest known seed to germinate.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    No babies, no hormones

    A radically different form of contraception would prevent pregnancies with small molecules of RNA.

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  11. Humans

    Wash Your Veggies!

    The lesson in all of these food-poisoning outbreaks is that we must not expect a risk-free food-supply chain.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Virus versus virus

    Customized RNA snippets delivered by a harmless virus could someday provide a new way to combat the hepatitis B virus.

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