Oil fields are highly specific ecosystems - they contain no oxygen and the temperature, pressure and salinity are often high, which makes them home to a very particular community of bacteria.

Geert van der Kraan, a doctoral student who received his Ph.D. from TU Delft on the subject, says using bacterial changes as a biomonitoring tool in oil fields can be a way of keeping tabs on the state of the oil field itself - and increase its yield.

Ultrasound can speed the healing of fractures, according to results of a randomized, controlled trial published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders.

The researchers found that the use of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) in patients with tibial fractures which showed inadequate progress toward healing resulted in 34% greater bone mineral density (BMD) in the fracture area after 16 weeks than use of a sham device.

Jon E. Block, Ph.D. worked with a team of researchers from University Hospital Marburg and the University of Ulm, Germany, to test LIPUS in 51 patients and 50 controls.

Some females will do anything to land a mate.   

Biologists have described the evolution of the size of a female trait which males prefer when choosing a partner. The study in Evolutionary Biology shows that male cichlid fish prefer females with a larger pelvic fin and that this drives females to grow fins out of proportion with their body size.

Sebastian Baldauf from the University of Bonn, Germany, worked with a team of researchers to study the effects of female ornamentation in the African cichlid fish Pelvicachromis taeniatus. He said, “In contrast to the well-known phenomenon of sexual selection influencing male traits, the expression of female ornaments in relation to body size is almost completely unexplored.”