Life
- Brain
Routine hits in a single football season may harm players’ brains
A group of college football players underwent brain scans after a season of play. The results suggest playing the sport could harm neural signaling.
- Animals
Scientists Say: Extinction
When the last member of a species dies, it’s gone forever. That species is extinct.
- Animals
Mystery disease is killing Caribbean corals
Scientists are racing to pin down a new coral disease that’s “annihilating” whole species from Caribbean reefs.
- Microbes
Obesity in mice caused by defects in their immune system
Subtle defects in T cell function alter rodents’ microbiome and fat absorption, providing hints of what might also be going on in people.
- Agriculture
As infections ravage food crops, scientists fight back
Diseases threaten important food crops like cocoa beans, wheat and citrus. Scientists are working to understand these infections — and fight back.
- Animals
Giving cats a special food may one day help people with cat allergies
Research by pet-food maker Purina aims to disable the major allergen carried in cat saliva. It’s a protein called Fel d1.
- Fossils
A flexible bone that aids mammals in chewing arose during the Jurassic
A flexible bony structure that helps with chewing may have helped give rise to the Age of Mammals, a new fossil suggests.
- Brain
Lasers make mice hallucinate
Scientists used a technique called optogenetics to make mice “see” vertical or horizontal lines that didn’t actually exist.
- Animals
Scientists Say: Hertz
Frequency is how often something repeats over a period of time. Frequency is often measured in hertz, the number of times a cycle repeats each second.
- Health & Medicine
Measles can harm a child’s defense against other serious infections
Getting the measles can leave the body vulnerable to other infections months or even years later, scientists are finding.
- Brain
This brain region may make lifelike robots creep you out
Robots that look too much like real people can be unsettling. Scientists identified a brain region that may be behind these uneasy feelings.
- Animals
Ancient crocodiles may have preferred chomping plants, not meat
Fossil teeth of ancient crocodilians suggest that some ate plants and that such green diets evolved in crocs at least three times more than 60 million years ago.
