Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Mountain lions pushed out by wildfires take more risks
A study tracking mountain lions showed that after an intense burn, the big cats crossed roads more often, raising the risk of becoming roadkill.
- Psychology
A new treatment for debilitating nightmares offers sweeter dreams
A new study combines standard nightmare disorder therapy with a memory-enhancing technique to create happier dreams and bring greater, lasting relief.
- Health & Medicine
Need a fall read? ‘The Song of the Cell’ offers tales from biology and history
Siddhartha Mukherjee’s new book, The Song of the Cell, explores the world of cell biology through the lens of scientists, doctors and patients.
- Microbes
How fungi make potent toxins that can contaminate food
Genetically engineering Aspergillus fungi to delete certain proteins stops the production of mycotoxins that can be dangerous to human health.
- Environment
Heat waves in U.S. rivers are on the rise. Here’s why that’s a problem
In recent years, heat waves in U.S. rivers have gotten more frequent, causing trouble for fish, plants and water quality.
- Genetics
Black Death immunity came at a cost to modern-day health
A genetic variant that boosts Crohn’s disease risk may have helped people survive the 14th century bubonic plague known as the Black Death.
- Genetics
Ancient DNA unveils Siberian Neandertals’ small-scale social lives
Females often moved into their mate’s communities, which totaled about 20 individuals, researchers say.
- Animals
Honeybees order numbers from left to right, a study claims
In experiments, bees tend to go to smaller numbers on the left, larger ones on the right. But the idea of a mental number line in animals has critics.
- Animals
Some seabirds survive typhoons by flying into them
Streaked shearwaters off the coast of Japan soar for hours near the eye of passing cyclones as a strategy to weather the storm.
- Life
This ancient worm might be an important evolutionary missing link
A roughly 520-million-year-old fossil may be the common ancestor of a diverse collection of marine invertebrates.
- Paleontology
Dinosaur ‘mummies’ may not be rare flukes after all
Bite marks on a fossilized dinosaur upend the idea that exquisite skin preservation must result from a carcass's immediate smothering under sediment.
- Neuroscience
Clumps of human nerve cells thrived in rat brains
New results suggest that environment matters for the development of brain organoids, 3-D nerve cell clusters that grow and mimic the human brain.
