Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Microbes
Pig farm workers at greater risk for drug-resistant staph
Pig farm workers are six times as likely to carry multidrug-resistant staph than workers who have no contact with pigs.
- Health & Medicine
Kids who have had measles are at higher risk of fatal infections
Measles infection leaves kids vulnerable to other infectious diseases for much longer than scientists suspected.
- Neuroscience
Brain’s grid cells could navigate a curvy world
If we ever need to flee a dying Earth on curved space islands — as humanity was forced to do in 'Interstellar' — our brains will adapt with ease, a new mathematical analysis suggests.
- Genetics
Editing human germline cells sparks ethics debate
Human gene editing experiments raise scientific and societal questions.
- Chemistry
Bacteria staining method has long been misexplained
New research upends what scientists know about a classic lab technique, called gram staining, used for more than a century to characterized and classify bacteria.
- Microbes
Possible nearest living relatives to complex life found in seafloor mud
New phylum of sea-bottom archaea microbes could be closest living relatives yet found to the eukaryote domain of complex life that includes people.
- Animals
Ivory listings found on Craigslist as elephant poaching continues
Elephants are hunted by the thousands to meet demand for ivory products.
- Neuroscience
Stimulating nerve cells stretches time between thinking, doing
A head zap can stretch the time between intention and action.
- Neuroscience
Children with autism excel at motion detection test
Children with autism outperform children without the disorder on a test that requires averaging the movements of lots of dots.
- Paleontology
Oldest known avian relative of today’s birds found in China
Fossil find suggests modern birds’ oldest avian relative lived about 6 million years before previous record holder.
- Animals
Stretchy nerves help some big whales open wide
Blue whales and their closest relatives have stretchy nerves near their mouths so they can open wide and swallow a lot of prey.
- Genetics
‘Brainbow’ illuminates cellular connections
A mouse’s optic nerve fluoresces in a rainbow of colors. The image offers a detailed look at nerve-protector cells called oligodendrocytes.
