Plight of the condor
Despite making a modest recovery in recent years, condors in California still suffer from chronic lead poisoning and the population cannot survive without human help. The birds eat lead when they feed on animals killed by lead shot. The problem persists even though the state banned lead shot in 2008 ().
Resigned to the truth
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Social psychologist Dirk Smeesters, who studied consumer behaviour, has resigned after in the Netherlands that he had “selected data so that the sought-after effects were statistically significant”.
Oxytocin’s new skill
Daily injections of the “cuddle chemical” oxytocin caused obese mice to eat less and lose weight. The results could lead to new obesity treatments, says Yuko Maejima of the Jichi Medical University in Shimotsuke, Japan, who reported the finding this week at the annual meeting of the US Endocrine Society in Houston, Texas.
Nicotine Pac-Man
Mice addicted to nicotine kicked the habit after getting genes for making constant supplies of antibodies that capture nicotine molecules before they reach the brain (Science Translational Medicine, ).
Super solar tornadoes
Tornadoes of plasma more than 1,600 kilometres wide could funnel heat to the sun’s outer atmosphere, solving the mystery of why it is hotter than the sun’s surface. Sven Wedemeyer-Böhm at the University of Oslo in Norway and colleagues detected the tell-tale swirls using NASA’s space-based Solar Dynamics Observatory (Nature, ).