Life as We Made ItBeth ShapiroBasic Books, $30 With genetic engineering, humans have recently unleashed a surreal fantasia: pigs that excrete less environment-polluting phosphorus, ducklings hatched from chicken eggs, beagles…
Category: Life
Are viruses alive, not alive or something in between? And why does it matter?
Villain. Killer. Menace. Since 2020, scientists and public officials have used these words to describe SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. News articles, research papers and tweets repeatedly personify the…
A hit of dopamine sends mice into dreamland
A quick surge of dopamine shifts mice into a dreamy stage of sleep. In the rodents’ brains, the chemical messenger triggers rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, researchers report in the March…
Americans tend to assume imaginary faces are male
There may be a reason we see a man, rather than a maiden, in the moon. When people spot facelike patterns in inanimate objects, those faces are more likely to…
A faulty immune response may be behind lingering brain trouble after COVID-19
A tussle with COVID-19 can leave people’s brains fuzzy. SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19, doesn’t usually make it into the brain directly. But the immune system’s response to even mild…
50 years ago, scientists were on the trail of ‘memory molecules’
Learning and memory transfer: More experimental evidence — Science News, November 6, 1971 The first memory molecule has been isolated, characterized and synthesized … [from the brains of] rats that had been…
‘Feeling & Knowing’ explores the origin and evolution of consciousness
Feeling & KnowingAntonio DamasioPantheon, $26 Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio believes that the link between brain and body is the key to understanding consciousness. In his latest book, Feeling & Knowing: Making…
See stunning fossils of insects, fish and plants from an ancient Australian forest
A new trove of plant, insect, fish and other fossils offers an unprecedented snapshot of Australia’s wetter, forest-dominated past. McGraths Flat in New South Wales contains thousands of beautifully preserved…
This dinosaur had a weapon shaped like an Aztec war club on its tail
A newly discovered species of ankylosaur had a bizarre club on its tail unlike that of any known dinosaur. With its flat surface and sharp blades along the sides, this…
‘Penis worms’ may have been the original hermits
Hermit crabs have been taking shelter in abandoned shells for millions of years, but scientists now have evidence suggesting that the “hermit” lifestyle has existed far longer than that. Besides…
