Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Ulcer microbe changes quickly to avoid immune attack
During the initial weeks of infection, Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes stomach ulcers, mutates at a high rate, apparently to evade the body’s defenses.
- Life
Genetic mutation quenches quantum quirk in algae
Studying algae that can and cannot use quantum coherence to harvest light could lead to better organic solar cells and quantum-based electronic devices.
- Neuroscience
Neurons pull together as a brain learns
Learning and memory in rats is linked with increases in cortical oscillations, or brain cells firing off in groups, a new study shows.
- Neuroscience
Brain signal reappears after ADHD symptoms fade
In adults who no longer have ADHD, brain synchrony appears.
- Paleontology
‘Dinosaurs Without Bones’ gives glimpse of long-gone life
Ichnologist Anthony J. Martin explains his research piecing together dinosaurs’ lives from footprints and other traces.
- Animals
Swimming evolved several times in treetop ants
Certain ants living in tropical forest canopies turn out to be fine swimmers.
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- Animals
It’s hard being a sea otter mom
The energy requirements of lactation may explain why some female sea otters abandon their young.
- Life
Dinos straddled line between cold- and warm-blooded
Tyrannosaurus rex and other dinosaurs straddled line between cold- and warm-blood, a new analysis finds.
- Tech
Exoskeleton helps paraplegic kick off World Cup
A paralyzed person wearing a brain-controlled robotic exoskeleton has made the first kick at the 2014 soccer World Cup.
- Life
California mite becomes fastest land animal
Despite being the size of a sesame seed, the Paratarsotomus macropalpis mite can outpace Usain Bolt and even a cheetah in terms of body lengths per second.
- Genetics
Chimp and human lineages may have split twice as long ago as thought
New estimates of chimpanzee mutation rates suggest humans and chimps last shared a common ancestor 13 million years ago.
