A national workplace ban on smoking in Ireland resulted in an 83 percent reduction in air pollution in pubs, an 80 percent decrease in airborne carcinogens for patrons and staff, and an improvement in the respiratory health of bar workers, according to a one-year follow-up study.

Climate change could trigger "boom and bust" population cycles that make animal species more vulnerable to extinction. , according to Christopher C. Wilmers, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Why have large outbreaks of Ebola virus killed tens of thousands of gorillas and chimpanzees over the last decade? Observations published in the May issue of The American Naturalist provide new clues, suggesting that outbreaks may be amplified by Ebola transmission between ape social groups. The study provides hope that newly developed vaccines could control the devastating impact of Ebola on wild apes.

Ancient aquatic amphibians developed the ability to feed on land before completing the transition to terrestrial life, researchers from Harvard University report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

There is a scene in the animated blockbuster "Finding Nemo" when a school of fish makes a rapid string of complicated patterns—an arrow, a portrait of young Nemo and other intricate designs. While the detailed shapes might be a bit outlandish for fish to form, the premise isn’t far off. But how does a school of fish or a flock of birds know how to move from one configuration to another and then reorganize as a unit, without knowing what the entire group is doing? New research by University of Alberta scientists shows that one movement started by a single individual ripples through the entire group—a finding that helps unravel the mystery that has plagued scientists for years.

In the May 1st issue of G&D, Drs. Yong Sun Lee and Anindya Dutta (UVA) reveal that microRNAs can function as tumor suppressors in vitro.

Just a few months after their landmark article in Science magazine reporting the discovery of strong links between variations in a gene that codes for a cellular receptor involved in controlling inflammation and Crohn's disease, a consortium of U.S. and Canadian researchers is reporting in today's online issue of Nature Genetics that they have discovered several more genetic variations that are strongly linked to an increased risk for the disease. The discovery of these Crohn's disease-associated genetic variants has identified several key biological pathways that will be the focus of further research to understand how the debilitating inflammatory process is initiated and maintained in many cases of the disease.

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have discovered how a defect in a single master gene disrupts the process by which several genes interact to create myelin, a fatty coating that covers nerve cells and increases the speed and reliability of their electrical signals.