URBANA, Ill. - Last summer, the Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone" spanned more than 6,400 square miles, more than three times the size it should have been, according to the Gulf Hypoxia Task Force. Nitrogen runoff from farms along the Mississippi River winds up in the Gulf, feeding algae but depriving other marine life of oxygen when the algae decomposes. The 12 states that border the Mississippi have been mandated to develop nutrient reduction strategies, but one especially effective strategy has not been adopted widely: bioreactors.

People are fascinated by the unknown, by the possibility that there are things out there that are yet to be discovered.

We think that most of our planet has been mapped by satellites and continents have been thoroughly explored. Although scientists estimate that millions of species are yet to be discovered, these are mostly assumed to be very small animals, especially invertebrates.

Long gone are the days of famous explorers, when the borders of uncharted lands were marked with warnings such as “here be dragons”. And yet, many of us, still hope that some amazing, unexpected creatures may be hiding somewhere.

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Around the world, especially in developing nations, counterfeit medicines are a real problem. Until now, in many countries there hasn't been a standard protocol to conduct investigations and pursue prosecution.

New research, led by Michigan State University and featured in the current issue of the Journal of Forensic Science and Criminology, is providing the foundation to apply criminology theory to preventing the production and sale of fake and substandard medicines.

EUGENE, Ore. -- April 25, 2016 -- Open the box of that new smartphone. Oops, it feels differently from expectations based on what you'd seen. Embrace it or be disappointed? Your reaction is likely tied to your perception of the brand, says Aparna Sundar of the University of Oregon.

A brand viewed as exciting has wiggle room to introduce innovations that don't match consumers' expectations, said Sundar, a professor of marketing in the Lundquist College of Business. Not so for a brand seen as sincere, she said.

Researchers working in the field of synthetic biology use components that occur in nature and combine them in a new way. This is how bacteria acquire functions that they hadn't previously possessed. This offers great potential for biotechnology.

Bacteria respond to temperature and metabolic products

Johanna Roßmanith and her doctoral supervisor Prof Dr Franz Narberhaus from the Chair of Microbial Biology carried out a successful study where they controlled the type of proteins a bacterium would manufacture and its behaviour. This is how they have made a bacterium swim that hadn't previously had the ability to move. The researchers made that possible by combining various modules from the bacterium's RNA in a new way.

A lost Nazi gold train was discovered in Poland. At least, that’s what a couple of treasure hunters told the world last year. Like all lost treasures, the search for this one had been going on for many years, usually without success.

Rice and rice products are typical first foods for infants in some countries and a new study found that infants who ate rice and rice products had higher urinary arsenic concentrations than those who did not consume any type of rice.

There have been increases in prevalence of food allergies over the past several decades but a debate over why; some fundraising groups and websites claim it is due to science changing food while some say it is simply better diagnosis and others say it could be a changing relationship between the presence of food-specific immunoglobulin E (IgE) -- a blood marker associated with food allergy -- in children's blood between the 1980s and the 2000s.

A new study using 5,000 stored blood samples in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found no increase in the presence of IgE.

With a cure rate approaching 90 percent, acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common type of childhood cancer, is one of the big "success stories" of modern cancer treatment.

Yet up to 20 percent of patients with a high risk of relapse are not cured, which could change with the results from a clinical trial showing that high doses of the commonly-used chemotherapy drug methotrexate increases the survival rate for these patients. 

After menopause, a decline in estrogen levels is linked to increases in inflammation that can cause osteoporosis. Intestinal bacteria have been shown to influence inflammation by modulating immune responses, and a new study suggests that differences in gut microbial populations may determine the extent of post-menopausal bone loss. In this month's issue of the JCI, a research team led by Roberto Pacifici at Emory University demonstrates a link between gut bacteria and the bone loss induced by estrogen deficiency. Mice lacking gut bacteria were protected against the estrogen deficiency-induced inflammation, gut permeability, and bone loss that occurred in mice with normal gut bacteria.