A major cause of hospital-acquired infections can persist for days and even weeks on environmental surfaces found in healthcare settings, including bed linens, computer keyboard covers and acrylic fingernails, according to research presented today at the 105th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

A major cause of hospital-acquired infections can persist for days and even weeks on environmental surfaces found in healthcare settings, including bed linens, computer keyboard covers and acrylic fingernails, according to research presented today at the 105th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

Last year, the World Conservation Union reported an unprecedented decline in biodiversity, with nearly 16,000 species facing extinction. The biggest threat to most species is loss of habitat. And as habitat loss and degradation proceed nearly unabated, the need to accurately predict the population dynamics and extinction risk of potentially endangered species has never been greater. In a new study, John Drake tests models traditionally used to estimate the likelihood of extinction and shows that because they ignore a critical parameter in projecting risk, they underestimate extinction rates.

By observing how tiny specks of crystal move through the layers of a biological membrane, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison electrical and computer engineers has devised a new method for investigating living systems on the molecular level. The discovery could lead to an entirely new level of manipulation, imaging and understanding of the inner workings of cells.

Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Danish Committee of Pig Breeding and Production (DCPBP) jointly announce the public release of pig genomic sequences. The released sequence data include 3.84 million pieces of the genomes of five different domestic pig breeds from Europe and China. The data are generated from the first large scale pig genome sequencing effort, the Sino-Danish Pig Genome Project, started in 2001 on the basis of a long standing collaboration of scientists and research institutions from China and Denmark.

IBM and The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) are today announcing a major joint research initiative -- nicknamed the Blue Brain Project -- to take brain research to a new level.

Over the next two years scientists from both organizations will work together using the huge computational capacity of IBM's eServer Blue Gene supercomputer to create a detailed model of the circuitry in the neocortex -- the largest and most complex part of the human brain. By expanding the project to model other areas of the brain, scientists hope to eventually build an accurate, computer-based model of the entire brain.

For most of us, the word “citrus” conjures up images of oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes -- and possibly citrons or blood oranges, if you’re a true connoisseur of fruit.

But for ARS horticulturalist Robert R. Krueger, the genus Citrus includes at least 16 species, with hundreds of distant relatives, including lesser-known, peelable oddities like pummelos, trifoliate oranges, and kumquats.

Yale biologists have managed to extract and analyze DNA from giant, extinct lemurs, according to a Yale study published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.