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Circling the light trap used to lure insects out of the thick, wet night in Rwanda's mountainous Nyungwe Forest National Park, Riley Tedrow reached to the leaf litter on the ground and nabbed a male and female of what turned out to be a new species of praying mantis.

Tedrow, a third-year student at Case Western Reserve University, was part of a research team led by Cleveland Museum of Natural History's Gavin Svenson, in possibly the first effort to collect mantids in the park. The scientists have found no records of others doing so.

Scientists describe a new species of praying mantis, Dystacta tigrifrutex, or the bush tiger mantis from Rwanda's mountainous Nyungwe National Park. Like all praying mantises the new species is a vicious hunter. The wingless females are adapted for catching prey close to the ground and in the undergrowth, which inspired the name of the species due to the similarities in hunting practices with one of the world's favorite big cats.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014 (Hamilton, ON) – Researchers at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton and McMaster University have successfully tested an antibody that can improve the quality of life for individuals with asthma by relieving inflammation in the lungs. The research was led by Dr. Gail Gauvreau, associate professor at McMaster University and Dr. Paul O'Byrne, executive director of the Firestone Institute of Respiratory Health (FIRH) at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton and chair, Department of Medicine at McMaster University.

New Rochelle, NY, May 20, 2014—Studies have identified mobile phones and related devices as sources of metal sensitization and potential causes of allergic contact dermatitis (ACD). Despite efforts to control allergen release in phones, many phones on the market release levels of metals, such as nickel and chromium, which are sufficient to induce ACD, according to an article in Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

In what is believed to be the largest and most detailed genetic analysis of its kind, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and elsewhere have concluded that 69 percent of healthy American adults are infected with one or more of 109 strains of human papillomavirus (HPV). Only four of the 103 men and women whose tissue DNA was publicly available through a government database had either of the two HPV types known to cause most cases of cervical cancer, some throat cancers, and genital warts.

WASHINGTON, May 20, 2014 – To keep your new car looking sleek and shiny for years, factories need to make certain that the coats of paint on it are applied properly. But ensuring that every coat of paint—whether it is on a car or anything else—is of uniform thickness and quality is not easy.

A substance that comes from pine bark is a potential source for a new treatment of melanoma, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.

Current melanoma drugs targeting single proteins can initially be effective, but resistance develops relatively quickly and the disease recurs. In those instances, resistance usually develops when the cancer cell's circuitry bypasses the protein that the drug acts on, or when the cell uses other pathways to avoid the point on which the drug acts.

AURORA, Colo. (May 20, 2014) – School-based influenza vaccine programs have the potential to reach many children at affordable costs and with parental support, but these programs are limited by low rates of reimbursement from third-party payers, according to recently published study results by researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

A school-based flu vaccine program in the Denver Public Schools was effective at reaching nearly one-third of the students, but billing and reimbursement issues posed significant problems for administrators of the program.

Researchers at Western University (London, Canada) have shown how the bacteria primarily responsible for causing strep throat can be used to fight colon cancer. By engineering a streptococcal bacterial toxin to attach itself to tumour cells, they are forcing the immune system to recognize and attack the cancer.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Parents – especially those of overweight children – give schools a failing grade for efforts to encourage healthy habits that combat childhood obesity, according to a new poll from the University of Michigan.

According to the latest University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, parents with at least one overweight child (25 percent of all parents in the poll) were more likely to give schools a failing grade of D or F for obesity-related efforts than parents of normal-weight children.

PITTSBURGH, May 20, 2014 – Educational campaigns meant to dissuade college students from initiating hookah tobacco smoking may be more successful if they combat positive perceptions of hookah use as attractive and romantic, rather than focusing solely on the harmful components of hookah tobacco smoke, a new University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study found.

Video game-obsessed Scots children are among the least active in the world, research involving a University of Strathclyde academic has suggested.

Out of 15 countries assessed, kids in Scotland came bottom of two league tables – one ranking physical activity, and the other screen-based leisure time, including watching TV and gaming. The findings are being unveiled in Toronto, Canada, in the first "Global Matrix" of children's physical activity, with Scotland's data provided by a Strathclyde-led expert group.

Leipzig. For several decades scientists have been trying to come up with an explanation for the formation of the enigmatic, vegetation-free circles frequently found in certain African grassland regions. Now researchers have tested different prevailing hypotheses as to their respective plausibility. For the first time they have carried out a detailed analysis of the spatial distribution of these fairy circles – and discovered a remarkably regular and spatially comprehensive homogenous distribution pattern.

Research conducted at the University of Granada has shown that the cyclical phenomena that affect the environment, like climate change, in the atmosphere-ocean dynamic and, even, disturbances to planetary orbits, have existed since hundreds of millions of year ago and can be studied by analysing fossils.

This is borne out by the palaeontological data analysed, which have facilitated the characterization of irregular cyclical paleoenvironmental changes, lasting between less than 1 day and up to millions of years.

Disease-causing bacteria can linger on surfaces commonly found in airplane cabins for days, even up to a week, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

"Many air travelers are concerned about the risks of catching a disease from other passengers given the long time spent in crowded air cabins," says Kiril Vaglenov, of Auburn University who presented the data. "This report describes the results of our first step in investigating this potential problem."