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Biology

Defrosting the Crests of Inca City, LAT: -81.5° LONG: 296.3° “The nature of this polygonal network, unique on Mars, remains poorly understood, but seems to be linked to volcanic dykes covered by eolian sand. These terrains are close to the South pole and undergo springtime defrosting in dark patches that become progressively larger as temperatures climb,” writes geophysicist Nicolas Mangold in This is Mars.

This Is Mars in Extremely High Resolution

French designer Xavier Barral pored over 30,000 images taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera, selecting the most appealing for his book

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Times of Famine Linked to Disproportionate Number of Female Births

Cultural factors like selective abortions de not explain the trend, rather it seems evolutionary biology does

Cockroaches Stick to Different Neighborhoods Just Like New Yorkers Do

Cockroaches from the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side and nearby Roosevelt Island all have a distinctly different genetic makeup from one another

Centipede Venom Is a More Potent Pain Killer Than Morphine

Of the nine possible sodium ion channels the centipede venom could have affected, it happened to correspond with just the right one for numbing pain

These Jellyfish-Mulching Robots Could Be the Savior of the Seas

These new robots can chew up nearly a ton of jellyfish per hour

How Do Canada Geese Get Ready to Fly?

In the movie Fly Away home that involved a goose shaped plane, but in the wild it’s just a few flicks of the neck.

These Mice Sing to Mark Their Territory

A lot of things sing to mark their territory - birds, wolves, howler monkeys. But you can now add mice to that list

The computing power of an infant's brain still astounds.

Sleeping Babies Can Sense When Mommy and Daddy Are Fighting

The infant brain is even more impressionable than previously thought

Lysol’s Vintage Ads Subtly Pushed Women to Use Its Disinfectant as Birth Control

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Lysol isn’t even an effective contraceptive

Coastal Animals Have Two Internal Clocks, One for the Sun And One for the Tide

When researchers tamped with sea lice’s internal clocks, the crustaceans were unruffled by the unwinding of their circadian cycles

Football helmet of the late Owen Thomas, a former University of Pennsylvania football player, brought to the hearing on H.R 6172, Protecting Student Athletes from Concussions Act by his mother, Rev. Katherine E. Brearley, Ph.D.

Just Learning About Concussions Doesn’t Make Kids Report Them

How effective are concussion awareness programs at actually getting kids to report their symptoms?

Researchers Hope a Treatment that Creates New Hair Follicles Cures Male Baldness

A specific protein called fibroblast growth factor 9, when overstimulated in mice, increased new hair follicle formation by a factor of two or three

Microbes Can Tell Scientists Exactly How Long a Body’s Been Decaying

In addition to helping determine time of death, microbes may be able to tease out causes of death and place of death

There Are Obese Dogs, So, Naturally, There Are Dog Weight Loss Camps

For these companions, shedding hair is easy, shedding the pounds, not so much

These Tattoos Honor Lost, Not-So-Loved Species

To overcome how people tend to care only about cute endangered animals, Samantha Dempsey designed and distributed temporary tattoos of ugly extinct species

Almaty, Kazakhstan, will be home to a new $102 million dollar biosecurity lab.

This U.S.-Backed Lab Is Meant to Keep Talented Kazakh Scientists From Making Biological Weapons

The unassumingly-named Central Reference Laboratory is slotted to open in 2015 and will securely store and study highest risk diseases

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The Smell of Newborn Babies Triggers the Same Reward Centers as Drugs

When women catch the scent of a newborn baby, their dopamine pathways in a region of the brain associated with reward learning light up

Medical Instruments Spread a Deadly Brain Disease to Surgery Patients

Doctors in New Hampshire recently confirmed that fifteen people have possibly be exposed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease - an often deadly brain disease

This Guy’s Stomach Made Its Own Beer

At first doctors thought he was lying and drinking in private, but it turns out that his stomach was actually brewing beer

Why Some Autistic Kids Don’t Catch Yawns

Researchers once thought it had something to do with their troubles empathizing with others, but new research suggests something different

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