Dispelling years of anecdotes in travelogues, the popular press, and scholarly works, biologists from the University of Bristol argue that it is nearly impossible for elephants to become intoxicated from eating the fruit of the marula tree.

Strongylocentrotus purpuratus(Nudibranch, or Spanish Dancer). Credit: Dr. Susan Fuhs in Southern California on SCUBA.Inside that seemingly docile sea urchin there's a surprisingly active innate immune system, probably utilizing previously unrecognized immune mechanisms, that may also actively function in vertebrates, including humans, according to researchers at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C.

The stress a typical married couple feels during an ordinary half-hour argument is enough to slow their bodies' ability to heal from wounds by at least one day, a new study has shown.

Scanning electron micropgaph of Vibrio cholerae. (Photo: Hartley et al.)Cholera remains a public health problem in countries without access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Researchers are trying to come up with theoretical models for cholera that allow them to understand how an outbreak happens, how it can best be contained, and how it might be prevented. Until now, the existing cholera models have not been able to describe and explain actual outbreaks very well. Taking new experimental data into account, David Hartley and colleagues (of the University of Maryland) now report a major advance in cholera modelling in the international open-access medical journal PLoS Medicine.

Tourists in Spain often stop to ogle the country's many saltwater lagoons, used to produce salt since Roman times. Scientists, too, admire these saltern crystallizers--and even more so, the microbes that manage to survive in such briny environs. Now, reporting in the November 28-December 2 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at The Institute for Genomic Research and collaborators reveal the genome of one bacterium at home in the salty Spanish ponds.

Tropical areas of south and central America such as the Amazon rainforest are home to some 7500 species of butterfly compared with only around 65 species in Britain. UCL scientists have ruled out the common theory that attributed this richness of wildlife to climate change, in a paper published on 7th December by the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences).

Using tiny semiconductor crystals, biological probes and a laser, Johns Hopkins University engineers have developed a new method of finding specific sequences of DNA by making them light up beneath a microscope.

As global populations swell, farmers are cultivating more and more land in a desperate bid to keep pace with the ever-intensifying needs of humans.

What would the Earth be like if one fine day all the snow melted away?