Biodiversity worldwide may be decreasing, but at smaller scales it is increasing or at least changing in composition, suggesting the need for a dramatic shift in the current focus of ecological research. These changes may undermine the functioning of local ecosystems, according to an article in December’s American Naturalist.
The authors –– Dov F. Sax, assistant research scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Steven D. Gaines, director of the Marine Science Institute and a

Sure Santa Claus asks boys and girls what toys they want, but, why they want them is a better question. The answer may have to do with a biological pre-wiring that influences boys’ and girls’ preferences based on the early roles of males and females, says a Texas A&M University psychologist.

It’s commonly believed that boys and girls learn what types of toys they should like based solely on society’s expectations, but psychologist Gerianne Alexander’s work with verv

Developed at MGH, digital tomosynthesis may better identify malignant lesions

A new approach to mammography, developed by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), holds the potential for greatly improving the detection of breast lesions and the ability to predict whether they are benign or malignant. In a presentation earlier this month at the scientific assembly of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), Elizabeth Rafferty, MD, of the MGH Breast Imaging Service

For every warm-blooded human who has ever taken an online poll or signed up for free web-based email, there are legions of computer-automated Internet robots, or “bots,” trying to do the same thing.

A clever security system designed to stop these bot programs – which contribute to the Internet equivalent of computer-generated telemarketing calls – has now been cracked by a pair of computer scientists from the University of California, Berkeley.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon Unive

Results of a 2 ½ year study led by doctors at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center could have implications for the nation’s decreasing blood supply.

In an article published in the December 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Drs. Howard L Corwin and Andrew Gettinger describe the effects of administering recombinant human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) to critically ill patients. Significantly, they found that use of the hormone, which stimulates red blood

Latest research at Oxford University’s Glycobiology Institute has provided new leads towards the development of an oral contraceptive for men. The advantages of the substance at the centre of the research, an alkylated imino sugar (NB-DNJ), are that it does not affect reproductive hormones, its effects are easily reversed and it is undergoing clinical evaluation in other contexts.

NB-DNJ interferes with the development of sperm cells in such a way that they become very poor swimmers, highly