Ant colonies are always used as the model for working together rather than for individual gain but that isn't so, say researchers from the University of Leeds and the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Bill Hughes and Professor Jacobus Boomsma say they have found evidence that, far from being a model of social cooperation, the ant world is riddled with cheating and corruption – and it goes all the way to the top.

Certain ants, they say, are able to cheat the system, ensuring their offspring become reproductive queens rather than sterile workers.

It's Gattaca, except with ants.

In the largest and longest study to date of weight loss maintenance strategies, researchers at Duke University Medical Center found that personal contact – and, to a lesser extent, a computer-based support system – were helpful in keeping weight off.

“The results of this study send a strong signal to those who seem to believe that obesity is such an intractable problem that nothing can be done about it,” says Dr. Laura Svetkey, professor of medicine at Duke and the lead author of the study. “Our research shows that is not true. A large majority of the participants in the Weight Loss Management study lost weight and kept weight off for two and one-half years.”

Rather than improving motorist safety, red-light cameras significantly increase crashes and are a ticket to higher auto insurance premiums, researchers at the University of South Florida College of Public Health conclude.

“The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don’t work,” said lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health. “Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections. If used in Florida, cameras could potentially create even worse outcomes due to the state’s high percent of elderly who are more likely to be injured or killed when a crash occurs.”

Science has developed sophisticated models of the atmosphere and instruments can help make detailed weather forecasts but to truly understand global climate change, scientists need more than just a one-day forecast or a seven-day guess. They need a deeper understanding of the complex and interrelated forces that shape climate.

They need applied mathematics, says Brad Marston, professor of physics at Brown University. He is working on sets of equations that he says can be used to more accurately explain climate patterns.

“Climate is a statement about the statistics of weather, not the day-to-day or minute-by-minute fluctuations,” Marston said. “That’s really the driving concept. We know we can’t predict the weather more than a couple of weeks out.

Snakes don't eat fugu, the seafood delicacy prepared from blowfish meat and famed for its poisonous potential. However, should a common garter snake wander into a sushi restaurant, it could fearlessly order a fugu dinner.

The snakes have evolved resistance to the blowfish poison, tetrodotoxin (TTX), by preying on rough-skinned newts, which also secrete the toxin. Some newts are so poisonous that they harbor enough TTX to kill a roomful of adult humans.

Why would a small animal produce such an excessive amount of poison" The answer lies in the evolutionary back-and-forth between newts and garter snakes.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland have developed a new optical method that can detect individual neutrons and record them over a range of intensities at least a hundred times greater than existing detectors.

The new detector, described at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society by Charles Clark, a Fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute of NIST and the University of Maryland, promises to improve existing neutron measurements and enable tests of new phenomena beyond the Standard Model, the basic framework of particle physics.