Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Animals
Hawaiian crows ace tool-user test
The almost-extinct Hawaiian crow joins the small, select flock of birds shown to use sticks tools routinely and well to wiggle bits of food out of crevices.
- Life
Color vision strategy defies textbook picture
Cone cells in the retina see in black and white and color.
- Animals
Sandboxes keep chicken parasites at bay
Fluffing feathers in sand and dust prevents severe mite infections in cage-free hens.
- Animals
Kauai’s native forest birds are headed toward extinction
Kauai’s honeycreepers are losing their last refuges from mosquito-borne diseases that are spreading due to climate change. Some could become extinct within a decade.
- Paleontology
Pterosaurs weren’t all super-sized in the Late Cretaceous
A 77-million-year-old flying reptile may be the smallest pterosaur of the Late Cretaceous.
- Animals
As IUCN votes on ivory trade, elephants’ future looks bleak
As the IUCN prepares to debate an end to the ivory trade, two new reports show just how poorly Africa’s elephant species are faring.
- Animals
Tiny structures give a peacock spider its radiant rump
Peacock spiders use pigments and complex nanostructures to achieve bright dance costumes.
- Neuroscience
Brain training can alter opinions of faces
Covert neural training could shift people’s opinions of faces.
- Life
Scientists watch as bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance
A giant petri dish exposes the evolutionary dynamics behind antibiotic resistance.
- Life
Fossils hint at India’s crucial role in primate evolution
Ancient fossils from coal mine in India offer clues to what the common ancestor of present-day primates might have looked like.
- Genetics
Genetic surgery is closer to reality
A molecular scalpel called CRISPR/Cas9 has made gene editing possible.
- Health & Medicine
Readers contemplate aging research
Aging research, dino guts and Earth's quasisatellite in reader feedback.
