After two years of research over five degraded landscapes in the National Park of Sierra Nevada (Granada), scientists have established for the first time that field mice base their diet on holm oak and pine seeds, causing a deterioration of the habitats and an extension of scrubland in the forests.

A specific genetic region that has been increasingly identified as the strongest genetic link to psoriasis has an even more significant role in the chronic skin disease than has been suspected, University of Utah medical researchers show in a new study.

A toxic cocktail of ultrafine particles is lurking inside road tunnels in concentration levels so high they have the potential to harm drivers and passengers, a new study has found.

Variants in just three genes acting in different combinations account for the wide range of coat textures seen in dogs — from the poodle's tight curls to the beagle's stick-straight fur. A team led by researchers from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, reports these findings today in the advance online issue of the journal Science.

Scientific dogma has long asserted that females are born with their entire lifetime's supply of eggs, and once they're gone, they're gone. New findings by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, published online Aug. 27 in Science, suggest that in nematode worms, at least, this does not hold true.

In a vivid illustration of natural selection at work, scientists at Harvard University have found that deer mice living in Nebraska's Sand Hills quickly evolved lighter coloration after glaciers deposited sand dunes atop what had been much darker soil. The work is described this week in the journal Science.

The mainstay immune system protein TRAF6 plays an unexpected, key role activating a cell signaling molecule that in mutant form is associated with cancer growth, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the Aug. 28 edition of Science.