When fire burns down a forest, nitrate levels go up, and the effects are persistent, according to recent research from University of Montana scientists. They found that charcoal deposited during fire events has the potential to stimulate the conversion of ammonia to nitrates, an important step in the nitrogen cycle.

Duke University physicists have developed a way to produce sharp fluid jets with enough precision that they can inject material into a single, living cell. The technique promises a way to deliver drugs to cells one at a time, which is likely to be very valuable for research involving stem cells and other cellular-level studies. The research appears in the current issue of the APS journal Physical Review Letters.

A new study co-authored by professor Kam Tang of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science reveals that tiny aquatic organisms known as "water fleas" play an important role in carrying hitchhiking bacteria to otherwise inaccessible lake and ocean habitats.

Though a valuable weapon against cancerous tumors, radiation therapy often harms healthy tissue as it tries to kill malignant cells. Now, Prof. Israel Gannot of Tel Aviv University's Department of Biomedical Engineering is developing a new way to destroy tumors with fewer side effects and minimal damage to surrounding tissue.

When plant-eating mammals such as goats chomp on a sprig of alfalfa, they could easily gobble up some extra protein in the form of insects that happen to get in their way. But a new report in the August 10th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, shows that plant-dwelling pea aphids have a strategy designed to help them avoid that dismal fate: The insects sense mammalian breath and simply drop to the ground.

In one of the first efforts of its kind, UCLA researchers have taken mammalian genome maps, including human maps, one step further by showing not just the order in which genes fall in the genome but which genes actually interact.

After more than a decade of development at the National Institutes of Health, a vaccine to prevent infection by the mosquito-borne dengue virus has begun human clinical testing. The vaccine was developed by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and is undergoing clinical study at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

The brain has been mapped to the smallest fold for at least a century, but still no one knows how all the parts talk to each other.