We all know that people can be influenced in complex ways by their peers. But two new studies in the September 11th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, reveal that the same can also be said of fruit flies.

Violence against women in a family also has serious consequences for the children's growth, health, and survival. Kajsa Åsling Monemi from Uppsala University has studied women and their children in Bangladesh and Nicaragua and shows, among other things, that children whose mothers are exposed to violence grow less and are sick more often than other children.

A montage of the skulls of several crurotarsan archosaurs, the "crocodile-line" archosaurs that were the main competitors of dinosaurs during the Late Triassic period (230-200 million years ago). Dinosaurs and crurotarsans shared many of the same ecological niches, and some crurotarsans looked remarkably similar to dinosaurs. However, by the end of the Triassic period most crurotarsans were extinct, save for a few lineages of crocodiles, while dinosaurs weathered the storm and began a 135-million-year reign of dominance. Top (l-r): The rauisuchians Batrachotomus and Postosuchus; middle: the phytosaur Nicrosaurus and the aetosaur Aetosaurus; bottom: the poposauroid Lotosaurus and the ornithosuchid Riojasuchus. Credit: Steve Brusatte In a paper published today in Science, Steve Brusatte and Professor Mike Benton challenge the general consensus among scientists that there must have been something special about dinosaurs that helped them rise to prominence.

After years of working toward this goal, scientists at the OU Cancer Institute have found a way to isolate cancer stem cells in tumors so they can target the cells and kill them, keeping cancer from returning.

Mayo Clinic investigators have demonstrated that stem cells can be used to regenerate heart tissue to treat dilated cardiomyopathy, a congenital defect. Publication of the discovery was expedited by the editors of Stem Cells and appeared online in the "express" section of the journal's Web site at http://stemcells.alphamedpress.org/.

Scientists have developed nanometer-sized 'cargo ships' that can sail throughout the body via the bloodstream without immediate detection from the body's immune radar system and ferry their cargo of anti-cancer drugs and markers into tumors that might otherwise go untreated or undetected.

Scientists at the University of Rochester have shown for the first time that our brains automatically consider many possible words and their meanings before we've even heard the final sound of the word.