Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
How some beetles ‘drink’ water using their butts
Red flour beetles, a major agricultural pest, suck water out of the air using special cells in their rear ends, a new study suggests.
- Life
Capybaras thrive, even near humans, because they’re not picky eaters
Scientists didn’t expect capybaras to eat both grasses and forest plants. The rodents’ flexible diet helps them live everywhere from cities to swamps.
- Anthropology
Native Americans corralled Spanish horses decades before Europeans arrived
Great Plains groups incorporated domestic horses into their cultures by the early 1600s, before Europeans moved north from Mexico.
- Life
T. rex may have had lips like a modern lizard’s
Dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus have long been portrayed as lipless, but new research suggests this wasn’t so.
- Neuroscience
Scientists triggered the flow of spinal fluid in the awake brain
If future studies confirm these waking waves wash away toxic proteins from the brain, the finding could lead to new treatments for brain disorders.
- Plants
Stressed plants make ultrasonic clicking noises
Tomato and tobacco plants emit high frequency sounds, which could one day find a use in agriculture, as a way to detect thirsty crops.
- Neuroscience
Your brain wires itself to match your native language
MRI scans of nearly 100 native speakers of either German or Arabic revealed differences in how the language circuits of their brains are connected.
- Animals
Volcanic sulfur may make barn owls grow redder feathers
Barn owls on volcanic islands tend to have redder plumage than those on nonvolcanic islands, possibly due to an influx of sulfur in the environment.
- Math
Chia seedlings verify Alan Turing’s ideas about patterns in nature
New experiments confirm that complex patterns in plants emerge from a model proposed by mathematician Alan Turing.
- Animals
These transparent fish turn rainbow with white light. Now, we know why
Repeated structures in the ghost catfish’s muscles separate white light that passes through their bodies into different wavelengths.
- Animals
Scientists have now recorded brain waves from freely moving octopuses
The data reveal some unexpected patterns, though it’s too early to know how octopus brains control the animals’ behavior, a new study finds.
- Genetics
DNA from Beethoven’s hair hints at what killed the composer
Many historians suspect Beethoven died from liver failure. A new analysis shows he had a heightened genetic risk for liver disease, researchers say.
