Krill (Euphausia superba) are small, shrimp-like animals that grow up to about 6 cm in length and live for up to 5 years. These are some of the largest members of the plankton, in fact because they swim so well some people think that they are more like little fish than drifting plankton. Credit: Photo: Uwe Kils Source: Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research A ten-week expedition to the Lazarev Sea and the eastern part of the Weddell Sea opens this year's Antarctic research season of the German research vessel Polarstern. On the evening of November 28, just some two hours after an official ceremony at the Berlin Museum of Natural History honouring Polarstern's 25th anniversary of service, the research vessel will begin its 24th scientific voyage to the Southern Ocean from Cape Town.

Statins, the popular class of drugs used to lower cholesterol, are among the most commonly prescribed medications in developed countries. But for some patients, accompanying side effects of muscle weakness and pain become chronic problems and, in rare cases, can escalate to debilitating and even life-threatening damage.

Female G. pallida feeding on the roots of a potato plant The full weight of a consortium of world-leading scientists – including those who helped decode the entire human genome – is being thrown at a parasitic worm less than 1mm long.

More than 30 years in the making, Birds of Peru describes the birds of Peru through 304 color plates, 1,700 species distribution maps, also in color, and concise descriptive text. The first two authors of this landmark publication, Tom Schulenberg, PhD, and Douglas Stotz, PhD, are conservation ecologists and ornithologists in the Field Museum’s Environmental and Conservation Program. Therefore the Museum will host a free public event launching the book on December 5th

A type of bacterium widely found on our skin and in the environment has now become a major threat in hospitals where it can cause serious infections, such as pneumonia in severely ill patients. Like the well known bacterium MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus) the new types of Acinetobacter baumannii are resistant to nearly all antibiotics, so doctors have very few treatments available, and three resistant strains are currently circulating in the UK.

Two studies led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that people infected with HIV in Thailand die from the disease significantly sooner than those with HIV living in other parts of the world. According to the researchers, the shorter survival time measured in the studies suggests that HIV subtype E, which is the most common HIV subtype in Thailand, may be more virulent than other subtypes of the virus. Both studies are published in a special issue of the journal AIDS.