University of Florida scientists have discovered how HIV evolves over the course of a person’s lifetime into a more deadly form that heralds the onset of full-blown AIDS. The findings could pave the way for new therapeutic agents that target the virus earlier in the disease process, before it takes a lethal turn, researchers say.

It may be news to its bankers, but Charlotte, the biggest city in North Carolina and a major center of the American financial industry, is actually an old growth forest.

Blocking transmission of respiratory viruses is an important part of halting spread of disease if an epidemic breaks out. A Cochrane Review has found that good hand-washing with normal soap and water are effective ways of containing respiratory virus epidemics. This is particularly important for children because it will help to protect them as well as reduce the chance of passing viruses to other household members.

Schizophrenia may occur, in part, because of a problem in an intermittent on/off switch for a gene involved in making a key chemical messenger in the brain, scientists have found in a study of human brain tissue. The researchers found that the gene is turned on at increasingly high rates during normal development of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in higher functions like thinking and decision-making – but that this normal increase may not occur in people with schizophrenia.

In the jungles of Central and South America, a group of birds has evolved a unique way of finding food – by following hordes of army ants and letting them do all the work.

Thirty years ago this month, researchers at the University of Illinois published a discovery that challenged basic assumptions about the broadest classifications of life. Their discovery – which was based on an analysis of ribosomal RNA, an ancient molecule essential to the replication of all cells – opened up a new field of study, and established a first draft of the evolutionary “tree of life.”