A gigantic palm that flowers itself to death and exists as part of an entirely unique genus has been discovered in Madagascar. The mystery palm has a huge trunk which towers over 18m high and fan leaves which are 5m in diameter - among the largest known in flowering plants. This is the most massive palm ever to be found in Madagascar. It's so large it can be seen on Google Earth.

“We are blessed to have each other to depend on. If you have to go through something bad like cancer, you’re glad to have a friend to go through it with,” said one of two brothers from Savannah, Georgia recovering from robotic prostate cancer surgery.

The two siblings flew to The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York to have lifesaving surgery on the same day this week. Dr. David B. Samadi, M.D., Chief of Robotics and Minimally Invasive Surgery in the Department of Urology at Mount Sinai successfully performed the robotic prostate cancer surgeries on the siblings one after another on Monday, January 14th, 2008.

On January 14, 2008, more than three decades after the third Mariner 10 flyby, the last spacecraft visit of Mercury, MESSENGER passed 200 kilometers above Mercury's surface. Extensive scientific observations were executed during this flyby encounter, including imaging a large portion of Mercury's surface that has never before been seen by a spacecraft.

A newly discovered parasite so dramatically transforms its host, an ant, that the ant comes to resemble a juicy red berry, ripe for picking, according to a report accepted for publication in The American Naturalist. This is the first example of fruit mimicry caused by a parasite, the co-authors say.

Presumably, the dramatic change in appearance and behavior tricks birds into eating infected ants - parasites and all - so that the bird can spread the parasite in its feces.

The Sigourney Community School District in southeast Iowa, has been using one of the country's first hybrid school buses since Jan. 3. And they're pretty excited about it.

Dan Taghon, director of transportation and driver, said the V-8 diesel engine and electric motor gave him plenty of acceleration. “It has quite a bit of get up and go,” he said. “You push the pedal and it takes right off.”

Advanced Energy, a nonprofit corporation based in Raleigh, N.C., led the effort to bring the country’s first 19 hybrid school buses to school districts in 11 states.

Researchers at Iowa State’s Center for Transportation Research and Education worked with Advanced Energy for more than two years to bring the hybrid buses to Iowa.

The p53 regulatory network, the 'guardian of the genome' has, during the course of human evolution, created additional safeguards in human genes to further guard against DNA damage that could a variety of genetic diseases, according to an international team of scientists writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ethology is the study of animal behavior, with a focus on behavioral patterns in natural environments. A new paper shows that researchers are now taking a machine-learning approach.

The work by Csaba Molnár from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary and his research team shows that a new piece of software is able to classify dog barks according to different situations and even identify barks from individual dogs, a task humans find challenging.

The aim of Molnár and colleagues’ experiments was to test a computer algorithm’s ability to identify and differentiate the acoustic features of dog barks, and classify them according to different contexts and individual dogs.

All multicellular animals have an innate immune system. When bacteria, parasites or fungi invade the organism, small protein molecules are released that eliminate the attackers. Scientists of the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have now discovered a new molecule that plays an important role in triggering the innate immune response of the fruit fly Drosophila, mice and even humans.

The cells of the innate immune system recognize hostile invaders with the aid of receptors on their surface: The moment these receptors recognize a foreign structure, they send a message, via a complicated signaling pathway, into the cell¡¦s interior. The cell then releases immunologically active proteins.

Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City released an analysis showing that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth’s second warmest year in a century. 2006 was fifth in that period.

There will be some issue with accuracy. The researchers used temperature data from weather stations on land, satellite measurements of sea ice temperature since 1982 and data from ships for earlier years.

The greatest warming in 2007 occurred in the Arctic, and neighboring high latitude regions. Global warming has a larger affect in polar areas, as the loss of snow and ice leads to more open water, which absorbs more sunlight and warmth. Snow and ice reflect sunlight; when they disappear, so too does their ability to deflect warming rays.

This one-day workshop will provide specialized training and information to NCI-supported investigators who plan to undertake clinical development of novel concepts and who are directly involved with implementing translational clinical research.