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As our ability to assess the pandemic risk from strains of influenza virus increases with the latest scientific developments, we must not allow ourselves to become complacent that the most substantial threats have been identified, argue an international consortium of scientists.

By using fruit fly as a model system, Minna Poukkula working at the Institute of Biotechnology, University of Helsinki, has now elucidated how actin-rich protrusions contribute to cell migration in animal tissues. She revealed that GMF, a protein that promotes the disassembly of branched actin filament networks, controls the size and lifetime of protrusions in border cell clusters migrating in fruit fly egg chambers. Importantly, diminished protrusion dynamics in GMF-deficient flies correlated with problems in border cell cluster migration.

Crocodiles which roamed the world's seas millions of years ago developed in similar ways to their modern-day relatives, a study has shown.

Fresh research into a group of prehistoric marine crocs known as Machimosaurus reveals key details of how and where they lived.

Each species adapted features that enabled them to live and hunt in a range of habitats, just like modern-day crocodiles. They varied in body length, body skeleton, skull and lower jaw shape, and in their teeth.

ANN ARBOR—Lake Erie has become increasingly susceptible to large blooms of toxin-producing cyanobacteria since 2002, potentially complicating efforts to rein in the problem in the wake of this year's Toledo drinking water crisis, according to a new study led by University of Michigan researchers.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Since the first undersea methane seep was discovered 30 years ago, scientists have meticulously analyzed and measured how microbes in the seafloor sediments consume the greenhouse gas methane as part of understanding how the Earth works.

Just 14 per cent of the population has an Advance Directive, or "living will", detailing their end of life treatment and care preferences, according to an article led by QUT Australian Centre for Health Law Research director Professor Ben White.

This research is from a joint University of Queensland, QUT and Victoria University study, supported by the Australian Research Council in partnership with seven public trustee organisations across Australia.

PULLMAN, Wash. – With global food demand expected to outpace the availability of water by the year 2050, consumers can make a big difference in reducing the water used in livestock production.

"It's important to know that small changes on the consumer side can help, and in fact may be necessary, to achieve big results in a production system," said Robin White, lead researcher of a Washington State University study appearing in the journal Food Policy.

More than 100 years since they were first discovered, some of the world's most bizarre fossils have been identified as distant relatives of humans, thanks to the work of University of Adelaide researchers.

The fossils belong to 500-million-year-old blind water creatures, known to scientists as "vetulicolians" (pronounced: ve-TOO-lee-coal-ee-ans).

Philadelphia, PA, October 15, 2014 – Are deficits in attention limited to those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or is there a spectrum of attention function in the general population? The answer to this question has implications for psychiatric diagnoses and perhaps for society, broadly.

DURHAM, N.C. – Like discriminating thieves, prostate cancer tumors scavenge and hoard copper that is an essential element in the body. But such avarice may be a fatal weakness.

Researchers at Duke Medicine have found a way to kill prostate cancer cells by delivering a trove of copper along with a drug that selectively destroys the diseased cells brimming with the mineral, leaving non-cancer cells healthy.

A new study published in Cancer Research shows SIRT6—a protein known to inhibit the growth of liver and colon cancers—can promote the development of skin cancers by turning on an enzyme that increases inflammation, proliferation and survival of sun-damaged skin cells.

New research led by the University of Exeter has found that species that live in and erode coral reefs will play a major role in determining the future of reefs.

The research, which is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, highlights the delicate balance that exists between bioerosion and carbonate production on coral reefs.

Given a critical change in the environment, how exactly, do species adapt?

Professor Tom Vogwill and colleagues wanted to get at the heart of this evolutionary question by measuring the growth rates and DNA mutations of 8 different species of Pseudomonas bacteria. They controlled a single but vital variable during growth, the dose of the antibacterial drug rifampicin.

ITHACA, N.Y. – Scientists have sequenced the house fly genome for the first time, revealing robust immune genes, as one might expect from an insect that thrives in pathogen-rich dung piles and garbage heaps.

The research, published Oct. 14 in the journal Genome Biology, will increase understanding of house fly genetics and biology and of how flies quickly adapt to resist insecticides, which could lead to novel control methods.

This week, an international team of researchers, led by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing, published in the journal Nature Genetics a brief genomic history of tomato breeding, based on sequencing of 360 varieties of the tomato plant.

The C.M. Rick Tomato Genetics Resource Center at UC Davis played an important role in this study by providing seed of both cultivated tomato varieties and related wild species.