Ants are capable of complex problem-solving strategies that could be widely applied as optimization techniques. An individual ant searching for food walks in random ways, biologists found. Yet the collective foraging behaviour of ants goes well beyond that, as a mathematical study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals: The animal movements at a certain point change from chaos to order. This happens in a surprisingly efficient self-organized way. Understanding the ants could help analyze similar phenomena - for instance how humans roam in the internet.

Soil from thousands of years ago that is now deeply buried has been found to be rich in carbon, adding a new dimension to figuring out the planet's carbon cycle.

The element carbon comes in many forms and cycles through the environment – land, sea and atmosphere – just as water in various forms cycles through the ground, oceans and the air. Scientists have long known about the carbon storage capacity of soils, the potential for carbon sequestration, and that carbon in soil can be released to the atmosphere through microbial decomposition.

A signal that promotes insulin secretion and reduces hyperglycemia in a type 2 diabetes animal model is enhanced by the inhibition of a novel enzyme discovered by researchers at NuChem Therapeutics of Montreal and the Montreal Diabetes Research Center.

Feed a cold, starve a...cancer?

 A new paper in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment says that the triple negative subtype of breast cancer – one of the most aggressive forms – is less likely to spread, or metastasize, to new sites in the body when mice were fed a restricted diet. 

Years ago, calorie restriction was touted as a way to live longer - left out of media stories on the subject were details like that it only worked in mice that were weaned on a starvation diet from birth - but claiming an epigenetic treatment for cancer is relatively new. This decade, everything is attributed to epigenetics so calibrate accordingly.

This news release is available in French.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — As the largest purchaser of wholesale produce in Santa Barbara County, UC Santa Barbara's residential dining services provided the perfect avenue for a pilot project incorporating local pesticide-free or certified organic produce into an institutional setting.

The idea was conceived almost 10 years ago, when a group of students approached environmental studies professor David Cleveland about becoming a faculty adviser for student-led sustainable living classes. The group wanted to explore how to bring more local organic food in the dining halls. In 2010 Cleveland and a group of student researchers began documenting the process, which led to the publication of a paper in the Journal of Rural Studies.

ATS 2014, SAN DIEGO ─Both high and low frequency hearing impairment have been linked with sleep apnea in a new study of nearly 14,000 individuals.

"In our population-based study of 13,967 subjects from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos, we found that sleep apnea was independently associated with hearing impairment at both high and low frequencies after adjustment for other possible causes of hearing loss," said lead author Amit Chopra, MD, currently at the Albany Medical Center in New York.

The study was presented at the 2014 American Thoracic Society International Conference.

Exercise is a valuable yet underused component for post-stroke care, according to an American Heart Association/American Stroke Association scientific statement.

The statement, published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke, suggests that stroke survivors should be prescribed exercise because they experience physical deconditioning and lead inactive lifestyles after stroke. That decreases their ability to perform daily living activities and increases their risk of having another stroke.

If you're in a country that has a Vitamin D Winter - 2 to 6 months without sunshine - there may be good news on the way.

Vitamin D is essential. Without it, kids are  at risk of bone diseases like rickets and older children and adults are at risk of bone softening. Some European countries have inadequate sunlight for extended periods, during which time vitamin D cannot be made in the skin. Not many foods are rich in vitamin D so it can be difficult to make up the shortfall through diet.

A new paper from the University of Münster finds that religious communities had a much greater influence on the formation of European welfare states than has previously been known.

This not a secret, churches cared for poor people when European monarchies simply claimed a divine right. But the extent of the welfare state's legacy in religion was not well known. Europeans love the welfare state and are less religious than ever, even though religion is what got the welfare state for them.