For the first time, scientists are able to predict where the next pandemic might occur. Scientists from four well-known institutions say the next major disease like HIV/AIDS or SARS could occur in any of a number of developing countries concentrated along the equator. They encourage increased surveillance to prevent the spread of a potential outbreak.

Without a ripple in the water, alligators dive, surface or roll sideways, even though they lack flippers or fins. University of Utah biologists discovered gators maneuver silently by using their diaphragm, pelvic, abdominal and rib muscles to shift their lungs like internal floatation devices: toward the tail when they dive, toward the head when they surface and sideways when they roll.

A new study examining social behaviour suggests certain individuals are genetically programmed to cheat and often will do… providing they can get away with it.

Microbial profiles serve as the ecological version of the human genome project. Nowhere is the principle of "strength in numbers" more apparent than in the collective power of microbes: despite their simplicity, these one-cell organisms -- which number about 5 million trillion trillion strong (no, that is not a typo) on Earth -- affect virtually every ecological process, from the decay of organic material to the production of oxygen.

In 2005, NSF, DOE, and USDA funded the sequencing of the corn genome. A consortium of researchers led by the Genome Sequencing Center (GSC) at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., announced today the completion of a draft sequence of the corn genome.

The organic soup that spawned life on Earth may have gotten generous helpings from outer space, according to a new study. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have discovered concentrations of amino acids in two meteorites that are more than ten times higher than levels previously measured in other similar meteorites. This result suggests that the early solar system was far richer in the organic building blocks of life than scientists had thought, and that fallout from space may have spiked Earth’s primordial broth.

Mark Hoddle, a biological control specialist at UCR, during a field survey in French Polynesia. A research team led by Mark Hoddle, a biological control specialist at UC Riverside, has nearly eradicated the glassy-winged sharpshooter, a major agricultural pest, from the island of Tahiti and several other French Polynesian islands in the South Pacific Ocean. To achieve total pest suppression, the researchers used biological control, an inexpensive method that provides permanent control and can be applied to areas where the sharpshooter has become a nuisance.

Success in the laboratory suggests that a new compound can point the way to preventing active tuberculosis in people infected with the latent form of the bacterium, says a team led by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. A drug with such properties could also be useful in treating people who already have tuberculosis by shortening the lengthy treatment period. The discovery also points to new ways of thinking about fighting bacterial infection, which is becoming increasingly resistant to traditional antibiotics.

Scientists may gain a new insight into the relationship between viruses and their environments thanks to a new computational technology developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. This technology has already been used to identify subtle differences in the metabolic processes of microbial communities.

Men and women who worked in a plant that processed vermiculite tainted with asbestos-like fibers that originated from a mine in Libby, Montana, show high prevalence of scarring and thickening of the membrane that lines the chest wall some 25 years after the plant stopped using the material—even those who were exposed at or below current legal levels.

Research at the University of Chicago shows that young squirrels learning to survive in their environment need a moderate level of stress hormones. The study points toward the role of stress hormones on early learning in humans. Credit: University of Chicago Tests on the influence that a stress-related hormone has on learning in ground squirrels could have an impact on understanding how it influences human learning, according to a University of Chicago researcher.

Scientists at the University of Leicester have uncovered a dramatic new twist in the battle against TB.

Crop scientists have cloned a gene that controls the shape of tomatoes, a discovery that could help unravel the mystery behind the huge morphological differences among edible fruits and vegetables, as well as provide new insight into mechanisms of plant development.

Nature is full of examples of creatures that try to look as big as possible in an effort to scare away potential predators. But to avoid being eaten alive the larvae of sand dollars appear to have a different strategy, in a way exchanging a dollar for a couple of dimes.