Today's Globe: phylogeny of sleep, amputation, 'Methusaleh' tree, Woods Hole explorer, language change, Patrick on biotech, healthcare overhaul

Scientists are comparing the snoozing habits of different animals to better understand how sleep evolved over time.

When Bonnie Denis walks, her right foot feels "like there are a bunch of knives stabbing me," she said. So about three years ago, after a host of surgeries and years using a wheelchair, Denis, 30, made a decision. The foot was coming off. She would find a doctor to amputate it. But it was not that simple.

The 4-foot-tall sapling looks just like any other young date palm. But the tree, growing in a laboratory in Jerusalem, is anything but ordinary. Named "Methuselah" by one of its cultivators, the sapling grew from a 2,000-year-old seed - the oldest scientifically dated seed to ever be germinated.

Susan Avery (left) is the first woman to hold the position of director in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's 78-year-history; and, though she's running one of the world's leading oceanographic research institutes, she is not an oceanographic scientist.

Exposing dementia patients to about nine hours of daily bright light improved their brain function as well as some Alzheimer's medicines, a study of Dutch nursing-home patients found.

Also in Health/Science, is there any safe way to grill foods and what are imaginary numbers?

In Business and Innovation, a growing body of research shows electronic communications channels like instant messaging have created a kind of semi-speech -- language that is between talking and writing. Some say it is evidence of evolution, not of decay.

When the world's biggest biotechnology trade show opened in Boston last year, Governor Deval L. Patrick (left) unveiled a bold proposal to pump $1 billion into the state's growing life sciences industry over the next decade. Today, Patrick is headed to this year's convention in San Diego to tell biotech executives he is finally delivering on that promise.

On the op-ed page: "No single reform would do as much to improve the wealth of our nation and the lives of Americans as a comprehensive overhaul of our healthcare system," Ellen Lutch Bender, president and CEO of Boston-based healthcare consulting firm Bender Strategies LLC, writes. "But the best chance of swift and major reform may have died with the end of Hillary Clinton's run for the White House."