Life
- Life
Scientists Say: Autophagy
Cells can break down and recycle their parts for later use. This process — called autophagy — won a scientist a Nobel Prize in 2016.
- Animals
Surprising primate fossils found in an Indian coal mine
Bones of a 54.5-million-year-old primate suggest India might have been a hotbed of early primate evolution.
- Animals
Earthworms: Can these gardeners’ friends actually become foes?
Asian jumping worms can strip leaf litter from floor of U.S. forests, new data show. Many native plants need that leaf litter for their seeds to germinate.
- Brain
Cool Jobs: Video game creators
Meet an engineer who worked on StarCraft II, an expert building a new kind of reality and a neuroscientist who uses games as brain therapy.
- Animals
Giant slugs snack on baby birds
When they accidentally run into bird nests sitting on the ground, some slugs help themselves to a free, easy meal of bird chicks.
- Health & Medicine
Nobel awarded for unveiling how cells recycle their trash
Cell biologist Yoshinori Ohsumi has won the 2016 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for discovering how cells take care of housekeeping.
- Animals
Mini pterosaur from the age of flying giants
Not all pterosaurs flying the Cretaceous skies had a wingspan as wide as a school bus is long. Some, new fossils show, were smaller than modern eagles.
- Plants
Scientists Say: Bromeliad
Bromeliads are plants with long spiky leaves. They are common houseplants, and we even see one in the grocery store — the pineapple.
- Health & Medicine
Measles in the Americas: Going, going — gone!
The Americas have at last shed a major childhood scourge: measles. The viral infection used to kill hundreds of children each year. Now the hemisphere only sees cases spread by travelers.
- Health & Medicine
Zebra finches can ‘drink’ water from their own fat
When water is scarce, thirsty zebra finches can produce their own water. They do it by breaking down their body fat.
- Earth
Houseplants suck up air pollutants that can sicken people
Certain indoor air pollutants can sicken people. But some houseplants can remove those chemicals from a room’s air, new data show.
- Animals
Good dog! Canine brains separate tone of speech from its meaning
Dogs brains divide up the tasks of interpreting words and interpreting emotion. It’s a skill that may have evolved even before people did.
