Tel Aviv University Professor (and alumnus) Hudi Benayahu, head of TAU's Porter School of Environmental Studies, has found that soft corals, an integral and important part of reef environments, are simply melting and wasting away. And Prof. Benayahu believes this could mean a global marine catastrophe.

The Zaire species of Ebolavirus (ZEBOV) remains the most virulent of the various known species. It alone is responsible for 88% of human deaths from haemorrhagic fever recorded since Ebola’s discovery in 1976. It was moreover the species involved in the two-month long epidemic which raged in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) .In spite of the mass of scientific data collected during previous epidemics, the international scientific community has still not succeeded in determining the evolutionary development of the Ebolavirus and more particularly that of ZEBOV. Investigations were restricted by the scarcity of available data. Only 12 gene sequences coding for the glycoprotein (GP), a molecular structure that enables the virus to penetrate a cell before infecting it, have currently been identified. Furthermore, these sequences, isolated from infected humans between 1976 and 2001, appear to belong to a single genetic lineage originating from the first epidemic documented in the DRC in 1976. This apparent genetic uniformity therefore suggested that epidemics that broke out after 1976 all stemmed from the very first one. However, recent discoveries by a joint IRD-CIRMF team have called this hypothesis into question.

It may not rank among the top 10 causes of death, but decompression sickness can be fatal. Instead of waiting for symptoms to appear, a University of Houston professor is developing a laser-based system that can diagnose the sickness in a matter of seconds.

Molecular biologists at Jefferson’s Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia have detailed the cascade of cellular events behind some potentially dangerous autoinflammatory diseases. In doing so, they not only have gained a greater understanding of the disease process, but have also identified new potential drug targets for diseases ranging from arthritis to cancer.

The syrupy soup of proteins, ribosomes and membranes inside a living cell is so tightly packed it may increase the structural content of proteins by as much as 25 percent, according to new research from Rice University and the University of Houston (UH). The study is one of the first aimed at determining how the crowded environment inside a living cell affects protein structure.

A population study of microbes in Yellowstone National Park hot pools suggests viruses might be buoyed by steam to distant pools. The result, to be published online next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help to answer some fundamental questions about how microbes, and the viruses that infect them, impact their environment. Researchers at Montana State University and Idaho National Laboratory embarked on one of the first comprehensive, long-term characterizations of hot pool ecosystems in Yellowstone National Park. The results help shed light on how viruses survive in hostile surroundings, migrate from pool to pool, and may help control hot pool environments.

A new study led by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) identifies how genes are silenced in cancer cells through distinct changes in the density of nucleosomes within the cells.

Heather Hallen spent eight years looking for poison in all the wrong places.

Chimpanzees inhabiting a harsh savanna environment and using bark and stick tools to exploit an underground food resource are giving scientists new insights to the behaviors of the earliest hominids who, millions of years ago, left the African forests to range the same kinds of environments and possibly utilize the same foods.