Why is biodiversity is higher in the tropics than in colder regions? It's one of ecology’s unsolved puzzles and has been since the European explorers and naturalists of the 17th and 18th centuries discovered there is a stunningly rich biodiversity in the tropics compared to the temperate regions of the world.

A research effort led by University of Arizona ecologists has now unearthed unexpected answers and helped found a new discipline, they call it functional biogeography, in the process.

Though health care is free, it doesn't always come without a cost. The United Kingdom is behind most countries in lung cancer survival and the big reason is because it goes undiagnosed.

It isn't that people won't go to the doctor due to cost, so it must be that doctors don't pick up the signs of lung cancer and investigate them, say the authors of a new study who analyzed family doctors' (GPs') investigation of lung cancer between 2000 and 2013, using data from The Health Improvement Network (THIN), which contains the anonymized health records of millions of primary care patients across the UK.

Four urban sections of the San Andreas Fault system in Northern California have stored enough energy to produce major earthquakes, according to a new study of 'fault creep', and three fault sections, near Hayward, Rodgers Creek and Green Valley, are nearing or past their average recurrence interval. 

More than 2,000,000 people are incarcerated in the United States, the highest incarceration rate in the world - little surprise when abusing a dog is a felony, there are different penalties for attacking a person of one color over another, and judges are given no sentencing leeway in many cases.

Given American willingness to put everyone in jail for whatever cultural lobbyists are advocating this year, it was only a matter of time before Sesame Street introduced a character that has an incarcerated father.

With expensive clinical trials, lawyers waiting to sue, and long approval times unless a disease makes it into the New York Times, pharmaceutical companies are leaving the antibiotic space behind.

If you have read mainstream media reports on suicides, you recognize a common theme: men are painted as angry and rejected, while women are regarded as sociable and mentally ill.

A new analysis of daily newspaper coverage of suicide has far-reaching consequences, write scholars from Medical University of Vienna, because when it comes to suicidal behavior, there is a clear gender paradox: the ratio of men to women who actually commit suicide is three to one, but with attempted suicides it is just the opposite - three women for every one man. 

The authors say the findings demonstrate that the cultural script that bears partial responsibility for this is also found in the reports by Austrian daily newspapers.