Purdue researchers found that honeybees collect pollen from a wide range of plants, even in areas dominated by corn and soybeans. A Purdue University study shows that honeybees collect the vast majority of their pollen from plants other than crops, even in areas dominated by corn and soybeans, and that pollen is consistently contaminated with a host of agricultural and urban pesticides throughout the growing season.

New research by Steven Laviolette's research team at Western University is contributing to a better understanding of the ways opiate-class drugs modify brain circuits to drive the addiction cycle. Using rodent models of opiate addiction, Dr. Laviolette's research has shown that opiates affect pathways of associative memory formation in multiple ways, both at the level of anatomy (connections between neurons) and at the molecular levels (how molecules inside the brain affect these connections). The identification of these opiate-induced changes offers the best hope for developing more effective pharmacological targets and therapies to prevent or reverse the effect of opiate exposure and addiction. These results were presented at the 10th Annual Canadian Neuroscience Meeting, taking place May 29 to June 1 2016, in Toronto, Canada.

Researchers from Bochum have engineered a hydrogen-producing enzyme in the test tube that works as efficiently as the original. The protein - a so-called hydrogenase from green algae - is made up of a protein scaffold and a cofactor. The latter is the reaction centre where the substances that react with each other dock. When the researchers added various chemically synthesised substances to the protein scaffold, the cofactor spontaneously assembled.

A benign virus normally found in the skin can lead to a type of rare, lethal skin cancer. Specifically, infection by the Merkel cell polyomavirus can lead to Merkel cell carcinoma in immune-compromised individuals. Researchers have now identified a type of skin cell as the target of the virus in humans. This study, from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, establishes a new way to investigate this type of oncogenic viral infection and identifies a potential therapeutic agent against Merkel cell polyomavirus infection.

Hemiphlebia mirabilis is a rare species in every sense: it is the most primitive dragonfly known to man, it has unique reproductive behaviors and was believed to be extinct. The dragonfly considered the most primitive in the world lives in Australia and Tasmania, and was believed to be extinct four decades ago. But it is far from being so. A Spanish researcher has observed thousands of these insects in one of the few habitats in which it has been detected and it displays sexual behaviour that is unique, not only directed towards reproduction.

This is the male fiddler crab Uca lactea. The vibrations and pulses that male fiddler crabs produce when they are trying to lure females into their burrows to mate are surprisingly informative. These signals serve as a type of "Morse code" that the females decipher to learn more about the size and stamina of their suitors. This is according to a study by Japanese researchers Fumio Takeshita of Nagasaki University and Minoru Murai of the University of the Ryukyu, published in Springer's journal The Science of Nature.

This is the herringbone structure of the outer layer (impact region) of the mantis shrimp dactyl club. The next generation of airplanes, body armor and football helmets crawled out from under a rock--literally.