Certain species of coral have surprised researchers by showing an unexpectedly successful approach towards survival when seriously bleached.

It is a marvel of nature that a creature such as a caterpillar changes into something quite different, a butterfly. Contrast that with a grasshopper, which looks largely the same from the time it hatches through its adult stage.

A study led by UCL (University College London) scientists has designed a new drug that inhibits the adverse effects of C reactive protein (CRP), a protein that contributes to tissue damage in heart attacks and strokes. The findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that targeting CRP may produce both immediate and long-term clinical benefits following a heart attack.

Scientists have discovered that a dominant hyena puts her cubs on the road to success before they are born by passing on high levels of certain hormones that make her budding young leaders more aggressive and sexually advanced.

Although linguists have argued that certain patterns of language organization are the exclusive province of humans -- perhaps the only uniquely human component of language -- researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of California San Diego have discovered the same capacity to recognize such patterns and distinguish between them in Sturnus vulgaris, the common European starling.

A group of Japanese scientists has discovered that cannabinoids can cause some white blood cells to lose their ability to migrate to the sites of infection and inflammation. These findings, which appear in the May 5 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, could have potential use in the development of novel anti-inflammatory drugs.

A new study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Political Economy, calculates the prospective gains that could be obtained from further progress against major diseases. Kevin M. Murphy and Robert H. Topel, two University of Chicago researchers, estimate that even modest advancements against major diseases would have a significant impact – a 1 percent reduction in mortality from cancer has a value to Americans of nearly $500 billion. A cure for cancer would be worth about $50 trillion.

A promising new technique to ensure complete tumor removal at breast cancer excision is introduced in the May issue of Radiology.

Wake Forest University School of Medicine studies of Hispanic farmworkers in North Carolina found that more than three out of four workers had skin disease and that workers need more information about how to prevent common skin conditions, as well as potentially deadly diseases such as skin cancer.

Chemotherapy drugs, given intravenously, are the mainstay of the fight against cancer. But doctors know that sometimes these drugs effect a complete cure, while other times they can be nearly ineffective. How to turn some of those failures into successes? A team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute, headed by Prof. Hadassa Degani of the Biological Regulation Department, has come up with a non-invasive, magnetic resonance imaging- (MRI-) based method for predicting possible problems. The findings of their studies on animals, which appeared in the journal Cancer Research, may, in the future, influence treatment regimes for millions of cancer patients.