Bethany Brookshire
Staff Writer, Science News for Students, 2013–2021
Bethany Brookshire was the staff writer at Science News for Students from 2013 to 2021. She has a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in philosophy from The College of William and Mary, and a Ph.D. in physiology and pharmacology from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. She is also a host on the podcast Science for the People, and a 2019-2020 MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow.
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All Stories by Bethany Brookshire
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Neuroscience
By studying the eyes, a researcher explores how the brain sorts information
Freek van Ede seeks to understand how the brain selects information to plan for the future. He’s finding clues in the tiny movements people make with their eyes.
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Animals
Nasty-tasting cane toads teach crocodiles a lifesaving lesson
After tasting nausea-inducing toad butts, crocodiles in Australia learned to avoid the poisonous live version. Crocodile deaths dropped by 95 percent.
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Ecosystems
How an invasive ant changed a lion’s dinner menu
An invasive ant is killing off ants that defend trees from elephants. With less cover, it’s harder for lions to hunt zebras, so they hunt buffalo instead.
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Animals
The right bacterial mix could help frogs take the heat
Wood frog tadpoles that receive a transplant of green frog bacteria can swim in warm waters, revealing another role for microbiomes: heat tolerance.
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Plants
The fastest-evolving moss in the world may not adapt to climate change
The genus Takakia has the largest number of fast-evolving genes of any moss, a study finds. But it’s losing ground in the warming Himalayas.
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Animals
Camouflaging wheat with a wheat smell could be a new approach to pest control
Wheat fields coated in wheat germ oil confuse the noses of mice, reducing seed loss by more than 60 percent, a new study finds.
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Animals
Freshwater leeches’ taste for snails could help control snail-borne diseases
A freshwater leech species will eat snails, raising the possibility that leeches could be used to control snail-borne diseases that infect humans and livestock.
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Health & Medicine
A new battery starves cancer cells of oxygen in mice
When a self-charging battery is placed on a mouse’s tumor and combined with anticancer drugs, it reduced tumor size by 90 percent.
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Neuroscience
In mice, anxiety isn’t all in the head. It can start in the heart
Scientists used optogenetics to raise the heartbeat of a mouse, making it anxious. The finding could offer a new angle for studying anxiety disorders.
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Animals
A natural gene drive could steer invasive rodents on islands to extinction
A few genetic tweaks to a readily passed-on chunk of DNA could sterilize a mouse population, eliminating them in as little as 25 years.
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Animals
Deer-vehicle collisions spike when daylight saving time ends
In the week after much of the United States turns the clock back, scientists found a 16 percent increase in crashes between vehicles and deer.
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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.