CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- The smallest, most abundant marine microbe, Prochlorococcus, is a photosynthetic bacteria species essential to the marine ecosystem. An estimated billion billion billion of the single-cell creatures live in the oceans, forming the base of the marine food chain and occupying a range of ecological niches based on temperature, light and chemical preferences, and interactions with other species. But the full extent and characteristics of diversity within this single species remains a puzzle.

Approved in 2012, Brazil's new Forest Code has few admirers. Agricultural interests argue that it threatens the livelihoods of farmers. Environmentalists counter that it imperils millions of hectares of forest, threatening to release the billions of tons of carbon they contain. A new study, co-authored by Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) scientists Michael Coe, Marcia Macedo and Brazilian colleagues, published this week in Science, aims to clarify the new law. Entitled "Cracking Brazil's Forest Code," the article is the first to quantify the implications of recent changes to the Forest Code and identify new opportunities and challenges for conservation.

Washington, DC (April 24, 2014) — Many kidney failure patients in Australia who could benefit from undergoing dialysis at home are being treated in hospitals and dialysis units, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). This is creating significant costs for healthcare providers and causing unnecessary disruptions to patients' lives.

If you really care about the climate, you can stop filling out surveys and complaining about what people believe and do something more meaningful than buy carbon credits - you can give up meat. 

And 11 other things that can separate you from the pack that are more interested in uniform bans and mitigation. Those won't work. Take the initiative and it doesn't matter what anyone else does.

A new report, Strategies for Mitigating Climate Change in Agriculture by Mitigation 2014, says it can eliminate the climate nosedive that will occur if people continue to eat meat and use air conditionin. It just needs people in richer countries who claim they care about emissions to show it.

A research team lead by Academy Professor Kari Rissanen at the University of Jyväskylä has discovered a new water-soluble fluorescent detection system that is extremely sensitive to pyrophosphate (PPi).

Pyrophosphate has a key role in energy transduction, DNA replication and other metabolic processes that are dysregulated in cancer cells.

The discovery might lead to the development of a method for early detection of cancer cells.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have been part of a ten-year project which has successfully sequenced the genetic code of the tsetse fly – making major advances in disease control possible.

Tsetse flies are unique to Africa and can infect people bitten by them with sleeping sickness, a disease which damages the nervous system and is fatal if untreated. This kills over 250,000 people each year.

Traditional methods of control such as releasing sterile males, trapping and pesticide spraying are expensive and difficult to implement. Sleeping sickness can also evade the immune system, making a vaccine hard to create, so the genetic information will allow researchers to develop alternative strategies to control the disease.

Modesto, CA (April 25, 2014) - Six new almond-related research studies will be presented next week in San Diego at the American Society of Nutrition (ASN)'s Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting, held in conjunction with Experimental Biology 2014 (EB). The conference attracts an international audience of approximately 13,000 leading scientists specializing in various health disciplines.

The science presented will reveal new insights on the effects of almond consumption on overall diet quality and health status, abdominal adiposity, measures of appetite and satiety, and cardiovascular risk factors.

A "brown dwarf" star with the catchy name of  WISE J085510.83-071442.5 appears to be the coldest of its kind.

When people think of stars, they think of hot fusion plasma bubbling and erupting.  WISE J085510.83-071442.5,  7.2 light-years away, making it the fourth closest system to our sun, is instead as frosty as Earth's North Pole.

PHILADELPHIA - Sometimes a full-on assault isn't the best approach when dealing with a powerful enemy. A more effective approach, in the long run, may be to target the support system replenishing the supplies that keep your foe strong and ready for battle. A group of researchers from the Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania is pursuing this strategy by employing a novel DNA vaccine to kill cancer, not by attacking tumor cells, but targeting the blood vessels that keep them alive. The vaccine also indirectly creates an immune response to the tumor itself, amplifying the attack by a phenomenon called epitope spreading. The results of the study were published this month in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The Dead Mouse Argument

By whatever choice of words it is often argued that because one thing leads to another, adverse consequences must inevitably follow if the opponent's proposed course of action is taken.

By whatever choice of words, the above purely rhetorical "proof" is a complete load of codswallop.