Researchers have discovered a new SARS-like virus that can jump directly from its bat hosts to humans without mutation. 

Good news for space travelers on medication - expiration dates aren't different in the low orbit of the International Space Station (ISS). 

While the ISS is regularly resupplied with medicines to replace those which have passed their expiry date, this may not be possible on exploration missions that travel to more distant points. On Earth, medicines degrade over time, particularly when exposed to light, oxygen, or humidity. Although temperature and humidity conditions on board the ISS are generally within ideal ranges for medicine storage on Earth, until now, there has been little evidence of how medicines might react to factors unique to spaceflight, such as microgravity and constant exposure to elevated radiation levels.

The extinction of one carnivore species can trigger the demise of fellow predators - a phenomenon called horizontal extinction cascades, where extinctions of carnivore species can have a ripple effect across species triggering further unexpected extinctions of other carnivores.

Using insects, the research team Frank van Veen, Dirk Sanders and Rachel Kehoe from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University's Penryn campus in Cornwall, set up experimental communities with complex food webs in 40 four-square metre outdoor field-cages which they observed over a spring and summer season. These communities consisted of several species of aphids and their natural enemies, parasitoid wasps.

The rainwater that fell in some of the villages of Zamora, Spain last autumn brought along a green microalgae that turns a reddish color when in a state of stress.  Blood rain. It is not an isolated phenomenon.  Kerala, India got a blood rain in the summer of 2001 and since then so has the southern part of the country and Sri Lanka. Scientific studies have confirmed that the algae Trentepohlia was responsible for those events. 

PENSACOLA, Fla. - An increasing amount of drugs taken by humans and animals make it into our streams and waterways, and pharmaceutical pollution has had catastrophic ecosystem consequences despite low levels of concentration in the environment. The effect of pharmaceuticals and other contaminants of emerging concern on the environment will be addressed in a special issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (ET&C). Much progress has been made in the recent years on the topic and this special issue will illustrate the state of the science. Several preview articles are now available, and the complete issue will be online in spring 2016.

November 12, 2015 - A new study may alleviate concerns regarding increased cancer risk for patients undergoing spinal fusion surgery with recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein (rhBMP). The study appears in November 15 issue of Spine, published by Wolters Kluwer.

Were ancient bees specialists, devoting their pollen-collecting attentions to very specific plant partners? Or were they generalists, buzzing around to collect pollen from a variety of flowers in their midst? Researchers who've studied an ancient lineage of bees now say in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on November 12 that the answer to both questions is yes. Bees living some 50 million years ago simultaneously relied on both strategies in foraging for pollen.

Zachariæ Isstrøm, a glacier in northeast Greenland, began a rapid retreat in recent years, a new study reports. The glacier helps to drain 12 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet and has the potential to raise sea level significantly if it were to melt, according to a study based on 40 years of glacier data including satellite observations.

CRISPR-Cas9 is a hybrid of protein and RNA, the cousin to DNA, that functions as an efficient search-and-snip system in bacteria. It arose as a way to recognize and kill viruses, but then was adopted in other cells, including humans, to facilitate genome editing. The Cas9 protein, obtained from the bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes, functions together with a "guide" RNA that targets a complementary 20-nucleotide stretch of DNA. Once the RNA identifies a sequence matching these nucleotides, Cas9 cuts the double-stranded DNA helix.

If you are apathetic, it would be a surprise to know your brain is making more effort, but a new study finds that some people traditionally perceived as lazy have a biology problem and not an attitude one.

Forty healthy volunteers completed a questionnaire that scored them on how motivated they were. They were then asked to play a game in which they were made offers, each with a different level of reward and physical effort required to win the reward. Unsurprisingly, offers with high rewards requiring low effort were usually accepted, while low rewards requiring high effort were less popular.