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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Planetary Science

    Ingenuity is still flying on Mars. Here’s what the helicopter is up to

    NASA’s Ingenuity craft was originally planned to operate only 30 Martian days.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Tiny living machines called xenobots can create copies of themselves

    When clusters of frog cells known as xenobots form a Pac-Man shape, they are especially efficient at replicating in a new way, researchers say.

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  3. Physics

    New high-speed video reveals the physics of a finger snap

    Inspired by the infamous snap of the Avengers rival Thanos, scientists set out to investigate the physics behind finger snapping.

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  4. Animals

    Huge numbers of fish-eating jaguars prowl Brazil’s wetlands

    Jaguars in the northern Pantanal ecosystem primarily feed on fish and caiman, living at densities previously unknown for the species.

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  5. Animals

    Bloodthirsty vampire bats like to drink with friends over strangers

    Cooperation among vampire bats extends beyond the roost. New research suggests that bonded bats often drink blood from animals together.

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  6. Agriculture

    Potty-trained cattle could help reduce pollution

    About a dozen calves have been trained to pee in a stall. Toilet training cows on a large scale could cut down on pollution, researchers say.

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  7. Earth

    How AI can help forecast how much Arctic sea ice will shrink

    Trained on sea ice observations and climate simulations, IceNet is 95 percent accurate in forecasting sea ice extent two months in advance.

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  8. Animals

    A giant tortoise was caught stalking, killing and eating a baby bird

    Video captures the first documented instance of a tortoise hunting another animal.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    What science tells us about reducing coronavirus spread from wind instruments

    Performers struggled to find evidence that would free them from musical lockdown, so they partnered with researchers to get some answers.

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  10. Animals

    Squirrels use parkour tricks when leaping from branch to branch

    Squirrels navigate through trees by making rapid calculations to balance trade-offs between branch flexibility and the distance between tree limbs.

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  11. Space

    How do scientists calculate the age of a star?

    There are a few different methods to determine the age of a star, but none are perfect.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    The coronavirus cuts cells’ hairlike cilia, which may help it invade the lungs

    Images show that the coronavirus clears the respiratory tract of hairlike structures called cilia, which keep foreign objects out of the lungs.

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