The advent of online social networks has led to the rapid development of tools for understanding the interactions between members of the network, their activity, the connections, the hubs and nodes. Science 2.0 was founded with that as one of its four pillars. But any relationship between lots of entities, be it users of Facebook or the genes and proteins in our bodies, can be analyzed with the same tools.

Now a paper shows how social network analysis can be used to understand and identify the biomarkers in our bodies for diseases, including different types of cancer.

Housing improvements could reduce malaria cases by half in some settings, according to research published in the open access Malaria Journal.

As mosquitoes become resistant to insecticides and malaria parasites become resistant to drugs, researchers looked at how making changes to houses might contribute to tackling the deadly disease.

Researchers reviewed 90 studies in Africa, Asia and South America comparing malaria cases in traditional houses (mud, stone, bamboo or wood walls; thatched, mud or wood roofs; earth or wood floors) and modern houses (closed eaves, ceilings, screened doors and windows).

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have shown that the most complete giant sauropod dinosaur, Dreadnoughtus, discovered by palaeontologists in South America in 2014, was not as large as previously thought.

Found in Patagonia, the huge fossil had almost all of the major bones intact, allowing scientists to confidently estimate its overall size - measuring in at 26 meters long. Preserved in rock, it is thought that the animal was close to maturity but not fully grown when it died, and may have grown to be even larger. The long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur was the biggest to ever walk the earth.

A research group has developed an assay whereby cultured human breast epithelial cells rebuild the three-dimensional tissue architecture of the mammary gland.

A transparent gel is used in which cells divide and spread, similar to the developing mammary gland during puberty. Specifically, cells divide and generate hollow ducts that form a network of branches and terminate in grape-like structures. Throughout the reproductive lifespan of a woman, the mammary gland is constantly remodeled and renewed in order to guarantee milk production even after multiple pregnancies.

If an extraterrestrial race - or indeed later civilization on the Earth looks at the relics of our space explorations - one thing they might notice is our fondness for placing flags and pennants in space. All the space faring nations have signed the Outer Space Treaty. So these are not claims of territory (forbidden by the treaty) but rather, celebrations of national pride and accomplishment.

The return of diphtheria in Spain after nearly three decades highlights the challenges posed by infectious diseases that had been mostly eliminated from Europe.

Falling vaccination rates, complex population movements, and the disappearance of international health practices perceived as redundant, all contribute to the emergence and spread of infectious diseases that were thought forgotten.

At the same time, such public health crises throw light on the delicate relationship between state and citizens, and competing concepts of responsibility for health.

A variety of factors including questions about risk and reluctance to offend patients limits clinician willingness to prescribe a potentially life-saving medication that counteracts the effects of an opioid overdose, according to a Kaiser Permanente Colorado study published today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

The number of fatal overdoses from opioid medications has quadrupled in the U.S. since 1999. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each day 44 people die of prescription painkiller overdoses. In the event of an overdose, opioids depress respiration until breathing stops. The drug naloxone reverses these effects on the body and can be life-saving.

The park is almost open. Two decades on and Jurassic Park has morphed into Jurassic World, the one and only dinosaur theme park.

Science has apparently evolved too: the genetically-engineered dinosaurs are to take a secondary role to a new star of the show, a genetically-engineered hybrid, worryingly named Indominus Rex.

Undoubtedly, chaos will ensue.

Researchers have discovered that a rabbit virus can deliver a one-two punch, killing some kinds of cancer cells while eliminating a common and dangerous complication of bone marrow transplants. For patients with blood cancers such as leukemia and multiple myeloma, a bone marrow transplant can be both curative and perilous. It replenishes marrow lost to disease or chemotherapy but raises the risk that newly transplanted white blood cells will attack the recipient's body.

Now researchers say the myxoma virus, found in rabbits, can do double duty, quelling the unwanted side effects of a bone marrow transplant and destroying cancer cells.

New research has revealed that parasitic 'vampire' plants that attach onto and derive nutrients from another living plant may benefit the abundance and diversity of surrounding vegetation and animal life.

By altering the densities of the hemiparasite (a parasitic plant that also photosynthesises) Rhinanthus minor, in the Castle Hill National Nature Reserve in Sussex, ecologists from the Universities of York, Sussex and Lincoln were able to assess the impacts of the 'vampire' plants on the biodiversity of a species-rich semi-natural grassland. The scientists compared the plant and invertebrate communities in areas where R. minor was removed, left at natural densities, or increased in abundance.