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People who wash their hands with contaminated soap from bulk-soap-refillable dispensers can increase the number of disease-causing microbes on their hands and may play a role in transmission of bacteria in public settings according to research published in the May issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

SALT LAKE CITY, May 2, 2011 –- For decades, a 2.3 million- to 1.2 million-year-old human relative named Paranthropus boisei has been nicknamed Nutcracker Man because of his big, flat molar teeth and thick, powerful jaw. But a definitive new University of Utah study shows that Nutcracker Man didn't eat nuts, but instead chewed grasses and possibly sedges –- a discovery that upsets conventional wisdom about early humanity's diet.

Using museum specimens from Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica, a team of researchers from San Francisco State University and University of California at Berkeley has documented evidence of a Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) epidemic wave that wiped out native amphibians, according to research to be published on May 3 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (PNAS).

In modern ecology, the removal or addition of a predator to an ecosystem can produce dramatic changes in the population of prey species. For the first time, scientists have observed the same dynamics in the fossil record, thanks to a mass extinction that decimated ocean life 360 million years ago.

A team of researchers has identified a cellular protein that acts as a receptor for Ebola virus and Marburg virus. Furthermore, the team showed that an antibody, which binds to the receptor protein, is able to block infection by both viruses.

An ancient, bipedal hominid sporting a set of powerful jaws and huge molars that earned it the nickname "Nutcracker Man" likely didn't crack nuts at all, preferring instead to slurp up vast quantities of grasses and sedges, says a new study.

On land, being small and lurking at the bottom of the food chain is a far better strategy for species survival than being big, fierce and perched on top, at least when humans are after you – just ask the mice and grizzly bears.

But talk to sharks and anchovies and they'll tell you a different story, according to a new study of fisheries collapses led by Stanford researchers.

There's a crisis among the world's amphibians—about 40 percent of amphibian species have dwindled in numbers in just three decades. Now, museum jars stuffed full of amphibians may help scientists decide whether this wave of extinctions was caused by a fungal infection.

Rice originated in China, a team of genome researchers has concluded in a study tracing back thousands of years of evolutionary history through large-scale gene re-sequencing. Their findings, which appear in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), indicate that domesticated rice may have first appeared as far back as approximately 9,000 years ago in the Yangtze Valley of China. Previous research suggested domesticated rice may have two points of origin—India as well as China.

In 2009, the United States was gripped by concern for a new winter threat: the H1N1 strain of influenza. According to research conducted through that winter, pregnant women were right to be concerned.

(Boston) – Researchers from Boston University's Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) have demonstrated that induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can differentiate into definitive endoderm cells, in vitro, with similar functional potential when compared to embryonic stem cells (ESCs), despite minor molecular differences between the two cell types.

Scientists have discovered that drugs used to treat HIV may also one day become lifesaving drugs targeted at parasitic diseases such as leishmaniasis and malaria. According to new research published in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), scientists have identified the target of action for some anti-HIV drugs with known abilities to kill serious pathogenic parasites. While scientists have long known that these HIV drugs can kill parasites, exactly how they work was previously unknown.

Manhood is a "precarious" status—difficult to earn and easy to lose. And when it's threatened, men see aggression as a good way to hold onto it. These are the conclusions of a new article by University of South Florida psychologists Jennifer K. Bosson and Joseph A. Vandello. The paper is published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

A new study finds important differences in math curricula across U.S. states and school districts. The findings, published in the May issue of the American Journal of Education, suggest that many students across the country are placed at a disadvantage by less demanding curricula.

Researchers from Michigan State University and the University of Oklahoma used data from the 1999 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which included 13 school districts and nine states in the U.S., as well as nearly 40 other nations.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- By all counts, the 54-year-old man who collapsed on a recent winter night in rural Minnesota would likely have died. He'd suffered a heart attack, and even though he was given continuous CPR and a series of shocks with a defibrillator, the man was without a pulse for 96 minutes.