EUGENE, Ore. -- Dec. 14, 2015 -- Evolution is usually thought of as occurring over long time periods, but it also can happen quickly. Consider a tiny fish whose transformation after the 1964 Alaskan earthquake was uncovered by University of Oregon scientists and their University of Alaska collaborators.

The fish, seawater-native threespine stickleback, in just decades experienced changes in both their genes and visible external traits such as eyes, shape, color, bone size and body armor when they adapted to survive in fresh water. The earthquake -- 9.2 on the Richter scale and second highest ever recorded -- caused geological uplift that captured marine fish in newly formed freshwater ponds on islands in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska south of Anchorage.

Stories about lap dogs are everywhere, but researchers at the Virginia Tech College of Engineering can tell the story of dog lapping.

Using photography and laboratory simulations, researchers studied how dogs raise fluids into their mouths to drink. They discovered that sloppy-looking actions at the dog bowl are in fact high-speed, precisely timed movements that optimize a dogs' ability to acquire fluids.

Their discovery appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It has been estimated that if every nutritional measure known to be helpful were applied to every child in the world, global malnutrition would be decreased by only a third. New research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, the University of Vermont and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh sheds light on why: Damage to the gut from infection explains why food alone is not a solution to malnutrition. To be effective, nutritional therapy will need to include measures to prevent or treat the damage to the gut of infants.

Role of Gut Health

While prescriptions for opioid pain relievers were concentrated in specialties for pain, anesthesia, and physical medicine and rehabilitation, it was general practitioners who dominated total prescriptions among Medicare prescribers based on sheer volume, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine.

Researchers have suggested small groups of prolific prescribers and pill mills drive the opioid overdose epidemic. Medicare data provide an opportunity to examine prescribing patterns across a national population.

What is a catalyst? A material that facilitates (increases the speed and likelihood of) a chemical reaction. In general, catalysts are rare metals (platinum, for example), which are often used in the form of nanoparticles. In the field of renewable energy, catalysts are crucial, and scientists are striving to maximize their efficiency (in part also to avoid wasting these precious materials).

Contrary to claims by vegetarians and the activist groups that promote their world view, eating a vegetarian diet could add to climate change rather than reduce it.

The link between the gut microbiome and obesity seems clear, but just how changes to gut bacteria can cause weight gain is not.

A new University of Iowa study in mice shows that drug-induced changes to the gut microbiome can cause obesity by reducing the resting metabolic rate - the calories burned while sleeping or resting. The findings, published in the journal eBiomedicine, highlight the critical role of gut microbes in energy balance and suggest that unhealthy microbiome shifts can lead to weight gain and obesity by altering resting metabolism.

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 14, 2015 -- In a biological system, the ratio of water-to-non-water molecules, known as the hydration level, influences both the arrangement of biomolecules and the strength of the electric interactions that occur between biomolecules, free ions, and functional groups, which are groups of atoms within molecules that strongly influence the molecules' chemical properties. To isolate the contribution of water to the vibrational fluctuations that occur between DNA, bulk water, and the charged biomolecular interface between the two, researchers at the Max-Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy in Berlin have performed two-dimensional spectroscopic analyses on double-stranded DNA helices at different hydration levels.

How are insomniacs able to function well with less sleep than others? It may be a beneficial biological trait.

With the release of a study that found gender bias in federal agencies that fund Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) research, Congresswomen Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) are demanding immediate action to ensure gender equality in publicly funded research.