A study of microbes that thrive in hot, acidic conditions has overturned a long-held view that species of micro-organisms do not differ by geographic location like other forms of life. The research by the University of Cincinnati and the University of California-Berkeley has just been published online by the journal Science.

When it comes to plant life and animal life, a species usually shows genetic differences in different parts of the world. For the tiny form of life known as micro-org

Some thirty million species now live on Earth, but their spatial distribution is highly uneven. Biologists since Darwin have been asking why. Now, scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), have discovered part of the answer: how plant and animal communities originally assembled is a predictor of future biodiversity and ecosystem productivity.

“Despite its importance, species diversity has proven difficult to understand, in large part because multiple processes operating at

Scientists at the MPI-CBG in Dresden and EMBL in Heidelberg map forces that help cells divide

“Cells obey the laws of physics and chemistry,” begins a famous biology textbook, and one of the main goals of molecular biology is to link the properties of single molecules to the behavior of cells and the lives of organisms. So it is probably no surprise that an important new discovery about the physical forces that underlie cell division comes from a physics student-turned biologist, usi

Computer Researchers Find Critical Flaws in Popular Software Produced for U.S. Elections

The software believed to be at the heart of an electronic voting system being marketed for use in elections across the nation has weaknesses that could easily allow someone to cast multiple votes for one candidate, computer security researchers at The Johns Hopkins University have determined.

The researchers reached this conclusion after studying computer code believed to be for Ohio-base

A new study by gene therapy scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill may lead to an effective long-term treatment for preventing seizures associated with a common form of epilepsy. The study appears this week in the Internet edition of the journal Nature Medicine and will appear in the Aug. 1 print edition of the journal. The research provides an important foundation for the development of new gene therapies to treat focal seizure disorders, the authors said.

As the name

A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has found genetic differences in a sampling of a species of hot spring-loving microbes from around the world.

The findings, published by the journal Science, at the Science Express website, challenges the prevailing theory of microbial biodiversity.

It is well accepted in evolutionary science that species of animals and plants are more closely related when they are geographically near each other. When