Life

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Neuroscience

    How to make a mouse smell a smell that doesn’t actually exist

    The ability to create a perception might lead to a deeper understanding of how the brain makes sense of the world.

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  2. Genetics

    DNA from a 5,200-year-old Irish tomb hints at ancient royal incest

    Ruling families in Ireland may have organized a big tomb project, and inbred, more than 5,000 years ago, a new study suggests.

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  3. Animals

    Barn owlets share food with their younger siblings in exchange for grooming

    Scientists weren’t sure why elder barn owlets would give away meals to their younger kin, a rare example of sibling cooperation in birds.

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  4. Animals

    Larvaceans’ underwater ‘snot palaces’ boast elaborate plumbing

    Mucus houses have valves and ducts galore that help giant larvaceans extract food from seawater.

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  5. Life

    Fossil footprints show some crocodile ancestors walked on two legs

    The 106-million-year-old tracks suggest that other puzzling nearby fossils were also likely made by a bipedal croc ancestor, not a giant pterosaur.

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  6. Neuroscience

    The way the coronavirus messes with smell hints at how it affects the brain

    Conflicting reports offer little clarity about whether COVID-19 targets the brain.

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  7. Ecosystems

    Bringing sea otters back to the Pacific coast pays off, but not for everyone

    Benefits of reintroducing sea otters in the Pacific Northwest, such as boosting tourism, vastly outweigh the costs, a new analysis shows.

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  8. Life

    Scientists want to build a Noah’s Ark for the human microbiome

    Just as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault protects global crop diversity, the Microbiota Vault may one day protect the microbes on and in our bodies.

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  9. Animals

    A nose-horned dragon lizard lost to science for over 100 years has been found

    It’s now known that a Modigliani’s lizard, first found in 1891 in Indonesia, is bright green but can shift shades like a chameleon.

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  10. Life

    Fish poop exposes what eats the destructive crown-of-thorns starfish

    During population booms, crown-of-thorns can devastate coral reefs. Identifying predators of the coral polyp slurpers could help protect the reefs.

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  11. Animals

    5 reasons you might be seeing more wildlife during the COVID-19 pandemic

    From rats and coyotes in the streets to birds in the trees, people are noticing more animals than ever during the time of the coronavirus.

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  12. Life

    These tube-shaped creatures may be the earliest known parasites

    Fossils from over 500 million years ago might be the first known example of parasitism in the fossil record, though the evidence isn’t conclusive.

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