This is professor Andrew Lowe, Director of the Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, University of Adelaide. Advances in DNA 'fingerprinting' and other genetic techniques led by Adelaide researchers are making it harder for illegal loggers to get away with destroying protected rainforests.

A sizzling genetic discovery by Chinese scientists may one day allow pig tissue to be transplanted successfully into humans. Their research presented in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org) represents a major step forward toward filling the shortage of vital organs for human transplantation. At the core of their work, they showed that altering or overexpressing the human programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) molecule in the endothelial cells of pig arteries reduces the conditions that lead to rejection. This strongly suggests that humans could receive altered porcine organs with fewer complications.

Northwestern University researchers have provided new biological evidence suggesting that the brain works differently when memorizing the face of a person from one's own race than when memorizing a face from another race.

These are sea urchins. Many animals have eyes that are incredibly complex – others manage without. Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have shown that sea urchins see with their entire body despite having no eyes at all. The study has been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

This image shows fluorescent staining of abnormal telomere DNA in pancreatic neuroectodermal tumors. Scientists at Johns Hopkins have provided more clues to one of the least understood phenomena in some cancers: why the "ends caps" of cellular DNA, called telomeres, lengthen instead of shorten.