According to statistics released in January 2006, the year 2005 was the second deadliest on record for Florida's endangered manatee population. One of the leading causes of fatalities was the toxins produced by "red tide" blooms of the alga Karenia brevis, which appear to be growing increasingly common in Florida. A recently completed collaborative study now suggests a surprisingly tight connection between the effects of the toxins on manatees and on humans, and potential implications for human impacts.

UCSF and Cleveland Clinic scientists have discovered a new virus in human prostate tumors. The type of virus, closely related to viruses typically found in mice, has never been detected in humans. The virus's link to human disease is still unclear, and more study is needed to determine the relationship between the virus and cancer, if any, the scientists say.

Drawing on lab experiments and computer studies, Johns Hopkins researchers have learned how a common protein delivers its warning message to cells when an infectious agent invades the body. The findings are important because this biological intruder alarm causes the body's immune system to leap into action to fight the infection. Learning more about how this process works, the researchers said, could lead to better treatments for diseases that occur when the immune system overreacts or pays too little attention to the infection alarm.

Discoveries made during the first large-scale analysis of interactions between proteins in our cells hold promise for identifying new genes involved in genetic diseases, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins and the Institute of Bioinformatics (IOB) in Bangalore.

As of 2006 more than 130 environmental journals from the scientific publisher Springer will be part of the initiative Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE), a digital library for developing countries. Public and non-profit institutions in underdeveloped nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe will have free access to the peer-reviewed scientific literature of Springer and other leading international publishing houses.