Life

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Plants

    Putrid plants can reek of hot rotting flesh with one evolutionary trick

    Some stinky plants independently evolved an enzyme to take the same molecule behind our bad breath and turn it into the smell of rotting flesh.

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  2. Oceans

    Before altering the air, microbes oxygenated large swaths of the sea

    Hundreds of millions of years before oxygen surged in the atmosphere 2.4 billion years ago, swaths of oxygen winked in and out of existence in the ocean.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    Lining medical stents with hairlike fuzz could fend off infections

    Implanted tubes that transport bodily fluids can get gross. A lab prototype suggests a new vibration-based way to keep them clean and prevent infection.

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  4. Animals

    Ancient poems document the decline of the Yangtze finless porpoise

    The porpoise is critically endangered. Ancient Chinese poems reveal the animal’s range has dropped about 65 percent over the past 1,400 years.

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  5. Animals

    Frog ribbits erupt via an extravagant variety of vocal sacs

    Shape matters as well as size in the great range of male frog show-off equipment for competitive seductive serenades.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    A man let snakes bite him 202 times. His blood helped create a new antivenom

    A new antivenom relies on antibodies from the blood of Tim Friede, who immunized himself against snakebites by injecting increasing doses of venom into his body.

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  7. Animals

    Cool water could protect sea stars from a mysterious disease

    Sunflower sea stars discovered taking refuge in fjords may offer clues to saving the critically endangered species from sea star wasting disease.

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  8. Animals

    The axolotl is endangered in the wild. A discovery offers hope

    Introducing captive-bred axolotls to restored and artificial wetlands may be a promising option for the popular pet amphibian.

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  9. Archaeology

    A Pueblo tribe recruited scientists to reclaim its ancient American history

    DNA supports modern Picuris Pueblo accounts of ancestry going back more than 1,000 years to Chaco Canyon society.

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  10. Paleontology

    These crocodile-like beasts reached the Caribbean, outlasting mainland kin

    Knife-toothed reptiles called sebecids went extinct on the mainland 10 million years ago. New fossil evidence puts them on an island 4 million years ago.

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  11. Oceans

    How will the LA fires affect the ocean? These researchers are racing to find out

    Scientists aboard a research vessel near Los Angeles collected ash, air and water samples as fire blazed on the hills before them in January.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Bird flu in cows shows no signs of adapting to humans — yet

    Easy replication in cattle mammary glands means H5N1 bird flu is under no evolutionary pressure to adapt to spread easily in humans.

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