Zombie fire ants may not sound like a cool thing, but wait a minute, said a Texas AgriLife Extension Service expert.

Researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia have found a traditional extract of Kava, a medicinal plant from the South Pacific, to be safe and effective in reducing anxiety.

Early findings about the emerging pandemic of a new strain of influenza A (H1N1) in Mexico are published today in Science.

Photosynthesis is a remarkable biological process that supports life on earth. Plants and photosynthetic microbes do so by harvesting light to produce their food, and in the process, also provide vital oxygen for animals and people.

Using a new technique for cDNA preparation combined with the latest sequencing methods, researchers have uncovered the larval transcriptome of a reef-building coral (Acropora millepora). Their study, described in the open access journal BMC Genomics, features the most extensive database of genes and genetic markers currently available for any coral.

A nearly complete collection of genes for a species of reef-building coral has been assembled by a team led by biologists from The University of Texas at Austin.

Nearly one-third of cancer research published in high-impact journals disclosed a conflict of interest, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

UCLA scientists report for the first time on the only known frog species that can communicate using purely ultrasonic calls, whose frequencies are too high to be heard by humans. Known as Huia cavitympanum, the frog lives only on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo.

The effects of H1N1 swine flu have been investigated in a group of piglets. Scientists writing in BioMed Central's open access Virology Journal studied the pathology of the virus, finding that all infected animals showed flu-like symptoms between one and four days after infection and were shedding virus two days after infection.

An international team of scientists has proposed a set of basic rules to help save the world's imperiled coral reefs from ultimate destruction.

In a study led by Akiko Hata, PhD, of Tufts University School of Medicine, researchers have shown that a protein expressed in the heart, FHL2, inhibits the genes necessary for the quiescence of vascular smooth muscle cells (vSMCs), which line blood vessels. Vascular smooth muscle cells undergo a process in diseases such as atherosclerosis or normal tissue damage caused by balloon angioplasty where they transition between a resting and proliferative state. The ability to transition between the two states is necessary for the normal development of blood vessels, regulating blood pressure, and repairing vessels that suffer from injury.