Many men have been a little overexcited on the dance floor and showed off moves that have never been seen before. Blame alcohol. 

Testosterone has a similar effect. A little too much and the frequency of overzealous wooing behavior may increase, but the quality won't go up with it.

For the male canary, the ability to sing a pitch-perfect song is critical to wooing female canaries and as the seasons change, so does song quality and frequency. 

According to a paper in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, obesity may be a socially transmitted disease. Something has to explain why Samoa leads the world in obesity at 75 percent of the population - and they are proud of it

A previous study of European Caucasian patients with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis demonstrated that a polymorphism in the microtubule-associated protein Tau (MAPT) gene was significantly associated with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis pathogenesis. To examine this in a different population, Daojun Hong and colleagues from Nanchang University further investigated the association of the MAPT gene with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the Chinese Han population. Researchers detected two genetic variations in MAPT (105788 A > G in intron 9 and 123972 T > A in intron 11) in sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients but not controls.

Following its recent synonymisation with Meloidogyne ulmi, a species known to parasitize elm trees in Europe, it has become clear that M. mali has been in the Netherlands for more than fifty years.

Evidences given by the authors suggest that M. mali was probably introduced during the breeding program on Elms against the Dutch Elm Disease (DED) during which large numbers of Elm rootstocks and seeds were imported from several different countries. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

This news release is available in Spanish.

A study begun in Mexico with the collaboration of university students analysed the effect of weekend alcohol consumption on the lipids comprising cell membrane and its genetic material, i.e. DNA. Until now, the damage to the packaging of nuclear material in the early stages of alcohol abuse has never been documented, perhaps because most of the studies are done at later stages with people who have been consuming alcohol in an addictive way for many years. The results have been published in the journal Alcohol.

When you think of crocodiles, you usually envision them climbing trees.

Probably not. Most people imagine them in water or waddling on the ground, but a study has found that the reptiles can climb trees as far as the crowns. 

Vladimir Dinets, a research assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, says he is the first to thoroughly study the tree-climbing and basking behavior.