Life

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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.

More Stories in Life

  1. Plants

    Trees ‘remember’ times of water abundance and scarcity

    Spruce trees that experienced long-term droughts were more resistant to future ones, while pines acclimatized to wet periods were more vulnerable.

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  2. Animals

    Aussie cockatoos use their beaks and claws to turn on water fountains

    Parrots living in Sydney have learned how to turn on water fountains for a drink. It's the first such drinking strategy seen in the birds.

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  3. Animals

    How luna moths grow extravagant wings

    Warm temperatures, not just predator pressure, may favor luna moths’ long bat-fooling streamers, a geographic analysis of iNaturalist pics shows.

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  4. Animals

    Genetics might save the rare, elusive saola — if it’s not already extinct

    A new genetic study could help saolas survive by enabling better searches through environmental DNA. But some experts fear they may be extinct already.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Personalized gene editing saved a baby, but the tech’s future is uncertain

    The personalized CRISPR treatment could be the future of gene therapy, but hurdles remain before everyone has access.

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  6. Neuroscience

    ‘Silent’ cells play a surprising role in how brains work

    New studies show that astrocytes, long thought to be support cells in the brain, are crucial intermediaries for relaying messages to neurons.

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  7. Animals

    Bedbugs may have been one of the first urban pests

    Common bedbugs experienced a dramatic jump in population size about 13,000 years ago, around the time humans congregated in the first cities.

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  8. Life

    The first cicada concert was 47 million years ago

    A 47-million-year-old cicada fossil from Germany’s Messel Pit could teach us about the evolution of insect communication.

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  9. Paleontology

    Sloths once came in a dizzying array of sizes. Here’s why

    A new fossil and DNA analysis traces how dozens of sloth species responded to climate shifts and humans. Just two small tree-dwelling sloths remain today.

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