Life
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
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- Animals
Twee Twee Tweetle
Bird brains have a separate pathway for the babbling nonsense of baby talk.
- Animals
Sexy side of UV-B
The first evidence of ultraviolet-B courtship in animals comes from jumping spiders.
- Life
Bring out your dead cells
A protein called Six-Microns-Under turns certain fruit fly brain cells into undertakers to clear away dead neighbors.
- 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.
- Humans
Bear deadline
Court calls for the already overdue decision on listing polar bears as a threatened species.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
