Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Neuroscience
Sounds and glowing screens impair mouse brains
Too much light and noise screws up developing mice’s brains.
- Climate
There’s something cool about Arctic bird poop
Ammonia from seabird poop helps brighten clouds in the Arctic, slightly cooling the region’s climate.
- Neuroscience
Infant brains have powerful reactions to fear
Babies can recognize facial emotions, especially fear, as early as 5 months old.
- Life
Lichens are an early warning system for forest health
Lichens, fascinating mosaics of fungi and algae or cyanobacteria, are made for sensing environmental change.
- Neuroscience
Zap to the head leads to fat loss
Stimulating the vestibular nerve led people to shed fat in a small trial.
- Life
Website turns Alzheimer’s research into a game
A new game assists Alzheimer’s researchers in the hunt for stalled blood vessels in the brains of mice.
- Animals
Narwhals are really, really good at echolocation
Audio recordings from the Arctic suggest that narwhals take directional sonar to the extreme.
- Animals
Narwhals are really, really good at echolocation
Audio recordings from the Arctic suggest that narwhals take directional sonar to the extreme.
- Life
British red squirrels serve as leprosy reservoir
Red squirrels in the British Isles can harbor the bacteria that cause leprosy.
- Neuroscience
Giggling rats help reveal how brain creates joy
Rats relish a good tickle, which activates nerve cells in a part of the brain that detects touch.
- Life
Protein mobs kill cells that most need those proteins to survive
A protein engineered to aggregate gives clues about how clumpy proteins kill brain cells.
- Paleontology
Dragon dinosaur met a muddy end
‘Mud dragon’ fossil discovered in China suggests that dinosaurs’ last days were an active time of evolution.
