Life

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Animals

    Diving marine mammals take deep prey plunges to heart

    In spite of their diving prowess, Weddell seals and bottlenosed dolphins experience irregular heart rates when they venture beyond 200 meters under the sea.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Immune system ‘reset’ may give MS patients a new lease on life

    With the help of their own stem cells, MS patients can stop the disease in its tracks in many cases.

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  3. Animals

    Cringe away, guys — this spider bites off his own genitals

    After sex, a male coin spider will chew off his own genitals, an act that might help secure his paternity.

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  4. Neuroscience

    Newly identified brain circuit hints at how fear memories are made

    A newfound set of brain connections appears to control fear memories, a finding that may lead to a better understanding of PTSD and other anxiety disorders.

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  5. Animals

    Cone snail deploys insulin to slow speedy prey

    Fish-hunting cone snails turns insulin into a weapon that drops their prey’s blood sugar and eases capture.

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  6. Life

    Human evolution tied to a small fraction of the genome

    Natural selection has concentrated on a small portion of the human genome, and mostly not on genes themselves.

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  7. Animals

    Lemurs aren’t pets

    The first survey of lemur ownership in Madagascar finds that thousands of the rare primates are held in households.

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  8. Life

    Fossilized fish skull shakes up the evolutionary history of jaws

    Analysis of a 415-million-year-old fossilized fish skull suggest that the earliest jawed vertebrates probably looked a lot like modern bony fish.

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  9. Animals

    Mountain migration is a roller coaster for bar-headed geese

    Bar-headed geese rise and fall to match terrain below them when migrating over the Himalayas.

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  10. Life

    In battle to shape immunity, environment often beats genes

    The environment, especially microbes, shapes immune system reactions more than genes do.

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  11. Animals

    Earth’s magnetic field guides sea turtles home

    Over 19 years, geomagnetic fields changed slightly and so did loggerheads’ nesting sites.

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  12. Neuroscience

    Brain’s plumbing may knock out blood test for brain injury

    The brain's waste-removal system may complicate scientists' attempts to create a blood test to diagnose traumatic brain injury.

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