Some urban performing monkeys in Indonesia are carrying several retroviruses that are capable of infecting people, according to a new study led by University of Washington researchers. The results indicate that contact with performing monkeys, which is common in many Asian countries, could represent a little-known path for viruses to jump the species barrier from monkeys to humans and eventually cause human disease. Performing monkeys are animals that are trained to produce tricks in public.

The Johns Hopkins scientists who first created "mighty mice" have developed, with pharmaceutical company Wyeth and the biotechnology firm MetaMorphix, an agent that's more effective at increasing muscle mass in mice than a related potential treatment for muscular dystrophy now in clinical trials.

The world's smallest elephant species, the newly described Bornean elephant, will be the focus of a Cardiff University study in Sabah, Malaysia for the next three years.

A team of ASU researchers led by Nongjian Tao and Peiming Zhang has developed a new, breakthrough technique for the detection of DNA mutations.

Duke University biochemists aided by Duke computer scientists and computational chemists have identified the likely way two key enzymes dock in an intricate three-dimensional puzzle-fit to regulate cell division. Solving the docking puzzle could lead to anticancer drugs to block the runaway cell division behind some cancers, said the researchers.

It's a scene football fans will see over and over during the bowl and NFL playoff seasons: a player, often the quarterback, being slammed to the ground and hitting the back of his head on the landing.

A large portion of plant seeds is endosperm. It has the important task of nourishing the plant embryo during the early stages of its development. In flowering plants, there is a complicated double-fertilisation mechanism that arises among embryos and endosperm.