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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Animals

    These adorable Australian spike-balls beat the heat with snot bubbles

    An echidna’s snot bubbles coat the spiny critter’s nose with moisture, which then evaporates and draws heat from the sinus, cooling the blood.

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  2. Life

    Long genital spines on male wasps can save their lives

    A male wasp’s genital spines can save his life in an encounter with a scary tree frog, a new study shows.

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  3. Life

    Video reveals that springtails are tiny acrobats

    Poppy seed–sized cousins of insects, famed for wild escape leaping, right themselves in mid-falls faster than cats.

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  4. Animals

    Tree-climbing carnivores called fishers are back in Washington’s forests

    Thanks to a 14-year reintroduction effort, fishers, or “tree wolverines,” are once again climbing and hunting in Washington’s forests after fur trapping and habitat loss wiped them out.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    This robotic pill clears mucus from the gut to deliver meds

    A whirling robotic pill wicks mucus from the gut, allowing intravenous drugs such as insulin to be given orally, experiments in pigs suggest.

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  6. Particle Physics

    How ghostly neutrinos could explain the universe’s matter mystery

    If neutrinos behave differently from their antimatter counterparts, it could help explain why our cosmos is full of stuff.

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  7. Animals

    Need to keep cockatoos out of your trash? Try bricks, sticks or shoes

    In Sydney, humans may be in an escalating arms race with cockatoos. People are trying new tools to keep the pesky parrots out of their trash.

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  8. Animals

    Zoo gorillas use a weird new call that sounds like a sneezy cough

    A novel vocalization made by the captive great apes may help them draw human attention.

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  9. Life

    Sea sponges launch slow-motion snot rockets to clean their pores

    Sea sponges rely on a sneezing mechanism to clear their pores, using mucus to flush out debris. This mucus provides food for other marine life.

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  10. Astronomy

    How James Webb Space Telescope data have already revealed surprises

    A distant galaxy cluster’s violent past and the onset of star formation in the more remote universe lie buried in the observatory’s first image.

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  11. Life

    The top side of an elephant’s trunk stretches more than the bottom

    New research on elephant trunks could inspire different artificial skins for soft robots.

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  12. Tech

    This octopus-inspired glove helps humans grip slippery objects

    The human hand, for all its deftness, is not great at grasping slippery stuff. A new glove aims to change that.

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