Life

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

  1. Life

    Rock-hard evidence

    Newly discovered dinosaur tracks, the first ever reported from the Arabia Peninsula, indicate that a part of the now-arid region was teeming with dinosaurs about 150 million years ago.

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Vacillating stem cells

    Unsuspected, ever-changing variation among stem cells in bone marrow helps determine the development path the cells will follow during differentiation.

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  3. Animals

    Courting both ways

    Some extra dopamine, and male fruit flies like boys too.

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  4. Life

    These colors don’t run

    A chameleon employs different color-changing defenses depending on its predator.

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  5. Life

    Reviving extinct DNA

    For the first time, scientists have resurrected a piece of DNA from an extinct animal — the Tasmanian tiger. The researchers engineered mice with a piece of the long-gone marsupial's DNA that turns on a collagen gene in cartilage-producing cells.

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  6. Life

    For bacteria, it’s a hard-knock life

    Bacteria stick better to rigid surfaces.

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  7. Physics

    Catching the cell in action

    A light microscope with high resolution may enable scientists to view the 3-D structures within living cells.

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  8. Life

    Sepsis buster

    The Ashwell receptor, a sugar-binding protein on liver cells, helps fight sepsis by clearing blood-clotting factors. The discovery clears up years of mystery surrounding the receptor’s function.

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  9. Earth

    Froggie Needs a Name – and Help

    To help raise awareness about the plight of frogs and toads, which are disappearing globally, Amphibian Ark is selling formal naming rights to an unusual frog.

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  10. Life

    Protective protein

    Discovering how bacteria defend themselves from foreign DNA might improve techniques for using microbes as little factories to make human proteins.

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  11. Animals

    Wild innovation

    Researchers have published a rare description of a wild chimpanzee devising and modifying a novel form of tool use.

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  12. Animals

    Polar bears listed

    Polar bear declared "threatened," but Secretary limits decision's impact.

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