Science

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Here are some illuminating scientific discoveries from the week to help you live better and maybe even turn water into wine, and then turn the empty bottle into a hangover remedy.

Orcas were seen using tools in a first for ocean mammals. Seaweed spa treatments are a universal language: Marine biologists witnessed a group of killer whales off the coast of Washington state exfoliating each other with kelp, a practice similar to grooming behaviors that were previously thought to be mostly unique to primates. In the first-ever observed instance of mutual marine grooming, the orcas bit off pieces of seaweed, placed the strips between themselves and another pod member, and then rubbed their bodies together, seemingly to get rid of dead skin and parasites (and to bond). “These are probably the most monitored marine mammals in the world,” the study’s lead author said, so it’s surprising that it took so long to catch them grooming.

E. coli can convert plastic into acetaminophen. Your empty Poland Spring could be upcycled into a headache reliever, according to a new report published this week in Nature Chemistry. In a lab experiment, it took less than 24 hours for a genetically-engineered strain of E. coli to chemically convert 92% of a broken-down plastic water bottle into acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. If you’re wondering why anyone would do this, you may not know that acetaminophen (also known as paracetamol outside the US and Japan) is primarily manufactured from chemicals found in crude oil. Chemists have, in recent years, found greener ingredient alternatives in some trees, and this new discovery could help offset plastic waste.

Mice with two dads have kids of their own. In a major reproductive milestone that could one day help same-sex human couples start their own genetically related family tree, lab mice that were grown from an egg and two different sperm cells have fathered mouse children of their own. The babies were born to female mice that mated with the lab-grown dads. Earlier this year, another research team created mice with two fathers, but they didn’t grow up to be fertile like the new mouse dads. Human applications are unknowably far away because the success rate was very low, but this accomplishment was still a long time coming: Scientists created the first fertile offspring of two mother mice in 2004. Replicating the process for males was more of a challenge.—ML

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