Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Genetics
Number of species depends how you count them
Genetic evidence alone may overestimate numbers of species, researchers warn.
- Ecosystems
Zika virus ‘spillback’ into primates raises risk of future human outbreaks
Spillback of Zika virus into monkeys may complicate eradication efforts.
- Neuroscience
Mysteries of time still stump scientists
The new book "Why Time Flies" is an exploration of how the body perceives time.
- Climate
Hot nests, not vanishing males, are bigger sea turtle threat
Climate change overheating sea turtle nestlings may be a greater danger than temperature-induced shifts in their sex ratios.
- Animals
A diet of corn turns wild hamsters into cannibals
Female European hamsters fed a diet of corn eat their young — alive. They may be suffering from something similar to the human disease pellagra.
- Animals
Pectoral sandpipers go the distance, and then some
Even after a long migration, male pectoral sandpipers keep flying, adding 3,000 extra kilometers on quest for mates.
- Earth
Oxygen flooded Earth’s atmosphere earlier than thought
The Great Oxidation Event that enabled the eventual evolution of complex life began 100 million years earlier than once thought, new dating of South African rock suggests.
- Animals
For calmer chickens, bathe eggs in light
Shining light on incubating eggs leads to calmer adult chickens, a study suggests.
- Animals
‘Cannibalism’ chronicles grisly science of eating your own
In "Cannibalism", a zoologist explores a grisly topic that scientists have only recently begun to study seriously.
- Neuroscience
Artist’s amnesia could help unlock mysteries of memory
In "The Perpetual Now", journalist Michael Lemonick looks at what an artist’s memory loss can teach neuroscientists about the brain.
- Anthropology
DNA points to millennia of stability in East Asian hunter-fisher population
Ancient hunter-gatherers in East Asia are remarkably similar, genetically, to modern people living in the area. Unlike what happened in Western Europe, this region might not have seen waves of farmers take over.
- Paleontology
Pinhead-sized sea creature was a bag with a mouth
Dozens of tiny fossils discovered in 540-million-year-old limestone represent the earliest known deuterostomes, a diverse group of animals that includes humans and sea cucumbers.
