The bacterium Escherichia coli, one of the best-studied single-celled organisms around, is a master of industrial efficiency. This bacterium can be thought of as a factory with just one product: itself. It exists to make copies of itself, and its business plan is to make them at the lowest possible cost, with the greatest possible efficiency. Efficiency, in the case of a bacterium, can be defined by the energy and resources it uses to maintain its plant and produce new cells, versus the time it expends on the task.

Two newly described fossil whales--a pregnant female and a male of the same species--reveal how primitive whales gave birth and provide new insights into how whales made the transition from land to sea.

Scientists have recovered fossils of a 60-million-year-old South American snake whose length and weight might make today's anacondas and reticulated pythons seem a bit cuter and more cuddly.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – An international team of scientists from UC Riverside, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other institutions has found the oldest evidence for animals in the fossil record.

A new study shows that osteoporotic fractures increase a person's risk of dying, even after relatively minor fractures if that person is elderly. With hip fractures, there is double the risk of death for women, three times the risk for men.