By the time they turn two, most children have had respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and suffered symptoms no worse than a bad cold.

Yet for some children, especially premature babies and those with underlying health conditions, RSV can lead to pneumonia and bronchitis, hospitalization and have long-term consequences.

If you have been to a tomato farm, you know that commercial tomato plants have a very different look from the backyard garden variety. Rather than being tall and lanky plants, tomatoes that will be canned for sauces and juice are harvested from plants that stop growing earlier than classic tomato varieties and are more like bushes. The architecture of these compact bushy plants allows mechanical harvesters to reap the crop, but the early end of growth means that each plant produces fewer fruits than their home garden cousins.

The federal government's proposal to discontinue protection for the gray wolf across the United States could have the unintended consequence of endangering other species, insist academics who don't actually live in places where wolves are running wild, threatening animals and people.

In the last few years it became popular to sell health books blaming fructose for obesity and, more recently, to blame all sugars. Pancake syrup bottle today highlight that they have no high fructose corn syrup on giant labels, while the first ingredient is still corn syrup - which is still fructose, just in random rather than precise amounts.

A new study found that fructose does not have any impact on an emerging marker for the risk of cardiovascular disease known as postprandial triglycerides - beyond the general impact of eating a lot of calories, anyway, but that applies to all foods.

Some bacteria achieve resistance to antibiotics through mutation but other types of bacteria, known as 'persistent' bacteria, are not resistant to the antibiotics but simply continue to exist in a dormant or inactive state while exposed to antibacterial treatment.  

These bacteria later 'awaken' when that treatment is over, resuming their work.

It was known that there is a connection between these kind of bacteria and the naturally occurring toxin HipA in the bacteria, but scientists did not know the cellular target of this toxin and how its activity triggers dormancy of the bacteria.

4 billion ago, during the Archean eon, Earth's mantle temperatures were significantly higher than they are today, according to recent numerical model calculations.

A new paper from researchers at at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz says the Archean crust that formed under these conditions was so dense that large portions of it were recycled back into the mantle. According to the calculations, this dense primary crust would have descended vertically in drip form. In contrast, the movements of today's tectonic plates involve largely lateral movements with oceanic lithosphere recycled in subduction zones.

The findings add to our understanding of how cratons and plate tectonics, and thus also the Earth's current continents, came into being.