Monsanto's signature herbicide glyphosate, first marketed as "Roundup," is now the most popular weed-killer in the history of chemical agriculture in both the U.S. and globally, according to a paper in Environmental Sciences Europe written by economist Dr. Chuck Benbrook, a staunch opponent of conventional agriculture.

Unlike 2,4-D, smart strategies have limited weed resistance and unlike DDT, glyphosate has never had a 'Rachel Carson event' which has kept it in use.

Logging can encourage black rats to invade tropical rainforests by creating habitats they prefer, giving them the chance to displace native mammals.

Logging stresses animals living in tropical rainforests by disrupting and removing some of their habitat, but a new study shows that logging can cause further problems for the forests' inhabitants - by providing the perfect conditions for invasive species.

Black rats are an invasive species across much of the world, having been introduced via shipping by Europeans since the 1600s. Their invasions have caused bird extinctions and brought new diseases that have infected native mammals.

Cover your coughs in the Carolinas and don't double dip in Denver, because when your team is in the Super Bowl, health can wait.

A new paper in the American Journal of Health Economics found cities with teams in the Super Bowl see a rise in flu deaths. That's right, deaths. 

Lead author Charles Stoecker of Tulane University School of Public Health along with economists Alan Barreca of Tulane and Nicholas Sanders of Cornell University looked at county-level statistics from 1974-2009. The researchers found having a team in the Super Bowl resulted in an average 18 percent increase in flu deaths among those over 65 years old, a population more vulnerable to serious complications from influenza.

Scientists chase unicorns because a world with unicorns, metaphorically speaking, is a better place.

Michigan State University plant biologist Maren Friesem felt like she was on a unicorn hunt searching for bacteria that could fix their own nitrogen. And she found one, as detailed in the current issue of Scientific Reports - the elusive bacteria Streptomyces thermoautotrophicus.  

Most nitrogen-fixing bacteria use an enzyme that does not work when oxygen is present. The heat and toxic gas-loving strain that Friesen studied appeared to have exceptional properties, including harboring a special enzyme that was insensitive to oxygen. So why go on such a quest?

Vice President Joe Biden's 'moonshot' initiative to defeat cancer - an outline which will be written by political staffers and delivered a month before the Obama administration leaves office - received support from 50 percent of Americans, according to a survey funded by Research!America.

Not really a surprise, nearly half of Americans support more taxes on lots of things and may not realize we first began the War on Cancer during the Nixon administration over 40 years ago.

In the survey, support for more taxes to go toward government work on cancer was predictably along political lines, with Democrats 67% for it while Republicans (38%) and Independents (39%) are not.  

In 2010, a research team garnered attention when it published evidence of finding the first animals living in permanently anoxic conditions at the bottom of the sea. But a new study, led by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), raises doubts.

One alternative scenario is that cadavers of multicellular organisms were inhabited by bacteria capable of living in anoxic conditions, and these "bodysnatchers" made it seem that the dead animals were living, said Joan Bernhard, a geobiologist with WHOI and the lead author of the new study published in the December 2015 issue of the scientific journal BMC Biology.

Political journalists will file countless reports from Iowa in the final days leading up to the caucuses, much of based on polls.

Another poll, this one by the Iowa State University/WHO-HD Iowa Caucus Poll, finds that voters rely on a variety of these reports and national television news still leads. 

Historically called the disease of kings, gout was common among wealthy gents who could afford to eat and drink to excess. These days it doesn’t just affect the rich: rates of gout have been increasing globally since the 1960s. It now affects around 70,000 Australians a year and is more common in men aged over 70.

Worldwide, the prevalence is highest in Taiwan (2.6% of the population and 10.4% of Indigenous Taiwanese) and among the New Zealand Maori (6.1%).