A tiny parasite named Pleistophora mulleri not only significantly increases cannibalism among the indigenous shrimp Gammarus duebeni celticus but made infected shrimp more voracious, taking much less time to consume their victims. 

Cannibalism is fairly common in nature but the belief was always that it is practical - meat is meat. Consumption of juveniles by adults is a normal feature of the shrimp's feeding patterns, but this is the first paper to show parasites cause it and even alter the feeding patterns -  shrimp infected with the parasite ate twice as much of their own kind as uninfected animals. They attacked juvenile shrimp more often and consumed them more quickly than did uninfected shrimp.

Astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets in our Milky Way galaxy using the Kepler satellite and many of them have multiple planets orbiting the host star.

By analyzing these planetary systems, researchers from the Australian National University and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen have calculated the probability for the number of stars in the Milky Way that might have planets in the habitable zone.

The calculations show that billions of the stars in the Milky Way will have one to three planets in the habitable zone, where there is the potential for liquid water and where life could exist. The results are published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 

Metastatic melanoma is the leading cause of skin cancer deaths in the United States; once melanoma has spread (metastasized), life expectancy for patients can be dramatically shortened. At present, the reference therapy for patients diagnosed with metastatic melanoma is Dacarbazine (DTIC), which is associated with poor patient outcomes.

An FDA-approved drug for high blood pressure, guanabenz, prevents myelin loss and alleviates clinical symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) in animal models, according to a new study. The drug appears to enhance an innate cellular mechanism that protects myelin-producing cells against inflammatory stress. These findings point to promising avenues for the development of new therapeutics against MS, report scientists from the University of Chicago in Nature Communications on Mar. 13.

Our skeletons hold tell-tale signs that show that human bipedalism - walking upright and on two feet - are unique to humans especially when compared to our closest living relatives, apes. Exactly when these signs first appear in our evolutionary history is one of the fundamental questions driving the study of human evolution, or Palaeoanthropology, today.

An interdisciplinary team led by scientists at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, has combined visualisation techniques, engineering principles, and statistical analysis into a powerful new way of analysing the structure of long bones.

A work group of physicians has developed new quality measures for the detection and treatment of childhood obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a potentially morbid, life-altering condition that affects hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents nationwide. The measures, commissioned and endorsed by the American Association of Sleep Medicine (AASM), are published on March 15 in a special section of The Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.