Summary: Up to 90% of patients report experiencing a diminished sense of smell, even prior to the onset of other symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. A new study reveals the mechanism…
Category: Life
Reality or Illusion? The Human Battle with Distinguishing Imagination from Reality
Summary: The more vividly we imagine something, the more likely we are to believe it’s real, a new study reports. Researchers found the brain encodes the vividness of perceived and…
Foraging for efficiency—morphological traits provide support for variations in performance of the feeding apparatus in coexisting Neotropical bats – Functional Ecologists
In this new post, David Villalobos Chaves, a PhD student at Department of Biology and Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA, discusses his…
This elephant peels bananas, but only slightly ripe ones
Do you peel bananas from the top or bottom? One elephant goes with a third option. When handed a slightly browning banana, Pang Pha, an Asian elephant at Zoo Berlin,…
A massive cavern beneath a West Antarctic glacier is teeming with life
The coastal plain of the Kamb Ice Stream, a West Antarctic glacier, hardly seems like a coast at all. Stand in this place, 800 kilometers from the South Pole, and…
Does IVF increase the risk of breast or ovarian cancer by as much as 65%, as some studies claim?
Statistics related to medical risks and care can often unnecessarily frighten people, and questionable journalism doesn’t help. Take the case of the ongoing debate bout the alleged dangers of in…
Comb jellies have a bizarre nervous system unlike any other animal
Shimmering, gelatinous comb jellies wouldn’t appear to have much to hide. But their mostly see-through bodies cloak a nervous system unlike that of any other known animal, researchers report in…
Northern elephant seals sleep just two hours a day at sea
Northern elephant seals are the true masters of the power nap. On long trips out to sea, the seals snooze less than 20 minutes at a time, researchers report in…
Surprise! Rapid heritable adaptation can occur without initial standing genetic variation – Functional Ecologists
In this new post, Kimberley Lemmen—a post-doc working at the University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland—discusses her paper: Experimental evidence of rapid heritable adaptation in the absence of initial standing genetic…
