Sterile Mosquitoes and Screaming Mummies: Science News Highlights

This brief covers recent science news, including a Spanish lab sterilizing mosquitoes to combat dengue fever due to climate change, the analysis of an ancient Egyptian 'screaming' mummy, and the discovery of a primordial spiny slug in China offering insights into mollusk evolution.

A Spanish laboratory is combatting the spread of dengue fever, exacerbated by climate change, by breeding and sterilizing thousands of tiger mosquitoes. The government-funded Biological Pest Control Centre in Valencia releases about 45,000 sterilized male mosquitoes weekly to mate with females, aiming to decrease the mosquito population.

New insights have emerged from a 1935 discovery of an ancient Egyptian mummy, known as the 'Screaming Woman,' found at Deir el-Bahari near Luxor. CT scans reveal the woman may have died in agony, experiencing a rare form of muscular stiffening, a cadaveric spasm, at her moment of death.

Fossils unearthed in southern China are shedding light on the early evolutionary stages of mollusks. The remains of a spiny slug from the Cambrian Period, around 514 million years ago, provide clarity on the lineage of mollusks, which includes species like clams, snails, and cephalopods.