Life
- Brain
Brains may need flexible networks to learn well
New data suggest that brain cells may learn best when they are able to easily make and break off communications with neighbors — or distant brain regions.
- Animals
Three simple rules guide fire ants in building towers
Fire ants build towers of ants to protect themselves during a flood. New research reveals the simple rules that guide how they do this, no foreman needed.
- Chemistry
Scientists Say: Capsaicin
This chemical is produced by pepper plants and gives them their hot flavor.
- Animals
As trees come down, some hidden homes are disappearing
Animals such as frogs, toucans and possums live in tree hollows. But as people have cut down trees, a wildlife housing shortage has developed in some places.
- Animals
Camo might have helped this armored dinosaur avoid becoming lunch
An armored dinosaur the size of a Japanese sedan also wore camouflage, a new analysis of its skin suggests.
- Genetics
Molecular scissors fix disease-causing flaw in human embryos
Researchers moved closer to being able to fix gene-edited embryos in people. They removed a flawed gene that causes heart failure
- Climate
Under Antarctic ice, microbes gobble up greenhouse gas
In a lake far beneath the Antarctic ice sheet, scientists have found bacteria that eat methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
- Animals
Whales feast when hatcheries release salmon
Humpback whales are visiting sites where hatcheries release juvenile salmon in Alaska. It’s a dining bonanza for the huge whales.
- Fossils
T. rex may not have been able to run — but it was still pretty fast
T. rex was fearsome, but its leg bones may not have been strong enough to stand the stresses of running.
- Animals
Scientists Say: Dire wolf
Dire wolves are an extinct species of wolf that roamed North America from about 300,000 to 12,000 years ago.
- Brain
Brain’s immune system can play role in weight gain
Weight isn’t just calories in, calories out. When mice eat a fatty diet, immune cells in their brains become inflamed. That makes the animals gain more weight.
- Animals
These sharks get help swallowing from their shoulders
Some sharks suck in food by snapping open their jaws. But to gulp it all the way down, they’ve got to give their shoulders a workout.
