Seven days, lots of science in the news. Here’s our roundup of some of the week’s most notable and quotable items. Scientists discovered how chameleons change colors: by controlling the spacing of tiny crystals in their skins. The star US708 is zooming through space at 746 miles per second—the fastest star observed in our galaxy; at that pace, it will exit the Milky Way in a mere 25 million years. (If we could attain that speed, we could make it from the Earth to the moon in five minutes.) NASA confirmed there is a water ocean on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Saturn’s moon Enceladus seems to have hydrothermal activity going on in the southern reaches of its ocean. A newly discovered galaxy is spewing way more gamma rays than expected, raising the possibility that it could point the way towards confirming the existence of dark matter. People with gout are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Rare photos of a tiger family out in the wild captured something even rarer: a tiger dad who helps out with raising the cubs. Channel Islands foxes in California may have recovered enough to be removed from the endangered species list. A solar-powered plane took off …

Seven days, lots of science in the news. Here’s a roundup of some of the week’s most notable and quotable items: Cats prefer listening to music that’s made for them—with the same frequency range they use to communicate and a tempo similar to purring. Scientists managed to capture an image of light that shows it behaving as both a particle and a wave at the same time. This may be the tiniest living thing ever captured in an image. A volcano in Chile erupted spewing lava with a vigor not seen in 20 years and possibly helping produce “shocking” lightning. Climate change may have helped to spark the Syrian civil war. A whopping 60 of ~760 plants in the Everglades are at risk, a new study finds. Biggest culprits: poaching and climate change changes. The last ice age was too cold even for emperor penguins. A 2.8-million-year-old jawbone unearthed in Ethiopia suggests that members of the human genus (Homo) arose in East Africa nearly half a million years earlier than previously thought. In the jungles of Honduras, archaeologists discovered the fabled “White City,” built by a culture contemporaneous with the Maya but somewhat lost to history. Heartening news in the search for extraterrestrial life: a …

Seven days, lots of science in the news. Here’s our roundup of some of the week’s most notable and quotable items: The waves of bubonic plague that washed through medieval Europe might have been driven by gerbils, not rats. Doses of the “love hormone” oxytocin kept rats from getting drunk, suggesting a possible treatment for alcoholism. Dragonflies have superior color vision, thanks to eyes containing up to 30 different kinds of opsins, a group of light-sensitive proteins; humans, by comparison, possess merely three types of opsins. The ideal length of eyelashes is one-third the width of the eye. It’s 12 billion times larger than the sun—this newly discovered black hole is so big that it’s challenging theories about how black holes grow. After leaving Africa, groups of ancient humans lingered in Arabia for much longer than initially thought based on the trail of stone tools throughout the region. A Google artificial intelligence program has learned to play Atari video games—and it’s already starting to beat people at them. Physicists figured out why a cup of coffee is more likely to spill than a foamy latte. Swedish children from families with a dishwasher are more likely to develop allergies. Likewise, kids who don’t eat peanuts …

Seven days, lots of science in the news. Here’s our roundup of some of the week’s most notable and quotable items: Scientists think a mysterious plume seen above Mars might be a large cloud or an aurora—but neither of these explanations squares with what we think we know about the Martian upper atmosphere. Scientists now think sea snail teeth (not spider silk) are the strongest natural material. A red dwarf star passed through the edge of our solar system a mere 70,000 years ago. The tails on the wings of a luna moth may serve as decoys to divert the sonic tracking of predatory bats. Researchers created a protein that is extremely effective at blocking the AIDS virus from attaching to cells, making it an attractive candidate for an HIV vaccine. Contaminated medical instruments may have contributed to the outbreak of a drug-resistant superbug in California that has killed at least two patients. Adding human DNA to mice increases the size of their brains. The U.S. National Park Service mapped the noisiest and quietest places in the country. Study finds people tend to spend more when they’re hungry. Record numbers of stranded sea lion pups are showing up on the beaches of California, …

Seven days, lots of science in the news. Here’s this week’s roundup. A new study finds that teenage girls vaccinated against HPV are no more likely to engage in risky sex than unvaccinated teens. Attractive men, according to a new study out of Brunel University in London, tend to be less egalitarian, more selfish than their homelier peers. They can’t read a book, but apparently dogs can read you. New research finds that our beloved canines can tell if you’re happy or angry just by looking at (part of) your face. Here’s one to make you happy: a space smile caught by the Hubble telescope. There’s probably dark matter in the core of the Milky Way. Around half the world in 100 minutes: European Space Agency plane the size of a car flies 250 miles above Earth in test flight. Federal health officials are renaming chronic fatigue syndrome to “systemic exertion intolerance disease” as well as simplifying the diagnostic criteria for the condition—changes that are stirring up a bit of controversy. A series of storms appears to have helped reduce California’s extreme drought conditions from covering 77 percent of the state to just um 67 percent. Researchers pinpointed a gene behind the rapid evolution of different beaks …