Two hundred and fifty-two million years ago, a series of Siberian volcanoes erupted and sent the Earth into the greatest mass extinction of all time. Billions of tons of carbon were propelled into the atmosphere, radically altering the Earth's climate. Yet, some animals thrived in the aftermath and scientists now know why. In a new study published in Scientific Reports, paleontologists from The Field Museum and their collaborators demonstrate that some ancient mammal relatives, known as therapsids, were suited to the drastic climate change by having shorter life expectancies. When combined with results from survivorship models, this observation leads the team to suggest that these animals bred at younger ages than their predecessors.

Engineers have created a new material with an unusual chemical structure that makes it incredibly hard and yet elastic.

The material can withstand heavy impacts without deforming - even when pushed beyond its elastic limits, it doesn't fracture, instead retaining most of its original strength. That makes it potentially useful in a variety of applications from drill bits to body armor for soldiers to meteor-resistant casings for satellites.

In the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from USC; the University of California, San Diego; and Caltech announced the creation of the material, which was produced by heating a powdered iron composite up to exactly 630 degrees Centigrade (1166 degrees Faherenheit) and then rapidly cooling it.

MADISON, Wis. -- A fruit called the noni -- now hyped for a vast array of unproven health benefits -- is distinctly unhealthy for the fruit fly, which has fascinated geneticists for a century. For the species of Drosophila that lives in labs around the world, noni signifies extermination with extreme prejudice: A fly will die if it eats yeast growing on noni.

And yet when collectors swung nets and baited traps with rotting banana on a small island between Madagascar and Africa, they found a close relative, Drosophila yakuba, that merrily gobbles yeast growing on these forbidden fruits.

New Haven, Conn. - Scientists have discovered an ancient animal that carried its young in capsules tethered to the parent's body like tiny, swirling kites. They're naming it after "The Kite Runner," the 2003 bestselling novel.

The miniscule creature, Aquilonifer spinosus, was an arthropod that lived about 430 million years ago. It grew to less than half an inch long, and there is only one known fossil of the animal, found in Herefordshire, England. Its name comes from "aquila," which means eagle or kite, and the suffix "fer," which means carry.

Boston, MA - Colonoscopies, mammograms, and childbirth services are the most searched-for medical services when it comes to cost information--and millennials with higher annual deductible spending are the most frequent comparison shoppers--according to an analysis of a large national health insurance plan database by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The study appears in the April issue of Health Affairs.

Other top searched-for services in the study included MRIs, vasectomies, physician office visits, and other non-emergency services.

At a time when public health agencies and health care providers are striving to make health care and health policy decisions on the basis of evidence, it is important for patients and the public to engage with the production, consumption and evaluation of evidence too. But such engagement is challenging, write Hastings Center scholars in the April issue of Health Affairs, because "evidence alone is never definitive," People will prioritize different values, and weigh risks and benefits differently.

A new paper says that current practices for grouping and evaluating young dancers in ballet can be counterproductive, because it places late-maturing girls at a significant disadvantage during important phases of their development and at greater risk for injury.

The authors endorse an approach to training known as 'bio-banding', which groups individuals by their biological rather than chronological age and is popular in sports like football. 

The first major clinical trial to include a blinded, placebo-controlled "statin re-challenge" in patients with a history of muscle-related side effects sheds new light on statin-associated muscle symptoms, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session. The trial also demonstrates that monthly self-injection of the relatively new non-statin cholesterol-lowering drug evolocumab reduces levels of low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, cholesterol to a greater extent than ezetimibe, a traditional drug used in statin-intolerant patients.

Giving intravenous beta blockers before performing a coronary angioplasty in patients who had experienced the deadliest form of heart attack--ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI)--was safe but did not reduce heart attack severity or improve blood flow from the heart's main pumping chamber, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session.

"A bend and a twist, then stretch and turn, now relax". What sounds like a series of exercise instructions, are also words that describe the various shapes a piece of DNA can assume. The classic double helix structure that one associates with DNA is but an extremely limited view of its physical 'shape'. The molecule that holds the codes of life is capable of further winding itself into myriad complex shapes called 'supercoils' that are capable of affecting gene expression patterns. Now, researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA, have elucidated this pattern of supercoiling across the genome of the much studied bacterium E. coli.