Life
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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
Leaf clippings as protein factories
Using plants to mass produce proteins for vaccines and other purposes may soon be possible without genetically engineering whole plants.
- Life
Bat that roared
Although the human ear can't detect it, bats make astonishingly loud noises while hunting.
By Susan Milius - Humans
Bear deadline
Court calls for the already overdue decision on listing polar bears as a threatened species.
By Susan Milius - Ecosystems
Building Homes Where the Buffalo Roamed
A new study finds that being environmentally conscious is no guarantee you’ll put your home where you mouth is.
By Janet Raloff - Ecosystems
Eight-legged bags of poison
Birds eating arachnids get high dose of toxic metal as mercury climbs up the food chain.
- Ecosystems
Beetle attack overturns forest carbon regime
Ravaged Canadian region switches from carbon sink to net carbon source.
By Susan Milius - Agriculture
Study decodes papaya genome
Scientists have added another plant to the genome-sequencing roster: the tropical fruit tree papaya.
- Life
Elephant kin liked the water
Moeritherium, ancient relatives of modern elephants, may have spent much of their time in lakes, rivers or swamps.
By Sid Perkins - Paleontology
China was an ancient-ape paradise
Fossil dig uncovers the oldest known remains of ancestral gibbons
By Bruce Bower - Life
Twin Fates
Animal and human studies suggest that a girl with a twin brother may never completely escape the influence of her opposite-sex womb-mate.
By Deborah Blum - Life
Pockets of Poor Health
The trend towards longer life expectancy plateaued or reversed in some parts of the U.S., a new study finds.
By Nathan Seppa - Life
Rest in peace nanobacteria, you were not alive after all
New studies bid a fond farewell to nanobacteria -- the extremely tiny “microorganisms” that have sparked controversy and may cause disease.