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A team of scientists led by the University of Bath has developed a new technique to predict the toxicity of an MRSA infection from its DNA sequence. With the MRSA superbug an increasing problem in hospitals and communities, this new technique could soon help clinicians better decide the best course of treatment for infections.

Although researchers have known for decades that many seabirds are in trouble, it is surprisingly hard to put a number on how fast populations decline. "Those species that are most vulnerable to rats are often the ones that are the most difficult to count" says Steffen Oppel, a Conservation Scientist with the RSPB who recently tested a new approach to count the invisible birds with colleagues from SPEA in Portugal.

In the fight against "superbugs," scientists have discovered a class of agents that can make some of the most notorious strains vulnerable to the same antibiotics that they once handily shrugged off. The report on the promising agents called metallopolymers appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

JILA researchers have engineered a short, flexible, reusable probe for the atomic force microscope (AFM) that enables state-of-the-art precision and stability in picoscale force measurements. Shorter, softer and more agile than standard and recently enhanced AFM probes, the JILA tips will benefit nanotechnology and studies of folding and stretching in biomolecules such as proteins and DNA.

As unlikely as it sounds, green tomatoes may hold the answer to bigger, stronger muscles.

Using a screening method that previously identified a compound in apple peel as a muscle-boosting agent, a team of University of Iowa scientists has now discovered that tomatidine, a compound from green tomatoes, is even more potent for building muscle and protecting against muscle atrophy.

About 100.000 thyroid operations are performed in Germany each year, a large percentage of them for the treatment of benign thyroid disease (euthyroid nodular goiter). In the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2014; 111 (10): 161-8), Nada Rayes and colleagues suggest a paradigm shift in the treatment of such lesions. The article is accompanied by an editorial by Roland Gärtner.

When Liberia enters the news it is usually in the context of civil war, economic crisis, poverty or a disease outbreak such as the recent emergence of Ebola in West Africa. Liberia's status as a biodiversity hotspot and the fact that it is home to some of the last viable and threatened wildlife populations in West Africa has received little media attention in the past. This is partly because the many years of violent conflict in Liberia, from 1989 to 1997 and from 2002 to 2003, thwarted efforts of biologists to conduct biological surveys.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Rabbits that remain indoors may suffer from a lack of vitamin D, researchers report in a new study. In rabbits kept as pets or used in laboratory studies, the deficiency could lead to dental problems, undermine their cardiovascular health, weaken their immune systems and skew scientific findings.

PRINCETON, N.J.—Stressful upbringings can leave imprints on the genes of children as young as age 9, according to a study led by Princeton University and Pennsylvania State University researchers. Such chronic stress during youth leads to physiological weathering similar to aging.

Smallholder farmers often face the challenge of accessing markets and selling their produce at competitive prices because they produce in small quantities that may not be commercially viable.

The farmers are now being advised to adopt market interventions such as 'collective action' where they can come together as a group to pool their harvests and sell it in bulk.

New Rochelle, NY, April 9, 2014—The increased risk of death associated with alcohol intake is not the same for men and women. A study that compared the amount of alcohol consumed and death from all causes among nearly 2.5 million women and men showed that the differences between the sexes became greater as alcohol intake increased, as described in an article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

The California condor was one of the first species to be listed under the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1966 when the population was reduced to a handful of birds. Through a massive collaborative effort that included fieldwork and breeding in zoos, the condor population has grown to more than 400 birds, more than half of which are now free-flying in the wild.

In the study published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI), one of the journals with highest impact in experimental medicine, the researchers associate the activity of the DOR protein with muscle atrophy and point to DOR as a plausible target against which to develop a drug to prevent muscle deterioration in certain diseases.

April 9, 2014 The push and pull of physical force can cause profound changes in the behavior of a cell. Two studies from researchers working at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center reveal how cells respond to mechanical manipulation, a key factor in addressing the underlying causes of cancer and other diseases.

What happens when physicists play (using mathematical instruments) with the genetics of populations? They may discover unexpected connections between migration and biodiversity, for example, as recently done by a group of researchers from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste and the Polytechnic University in Turin in a study published in the journal Physical Review Letters.