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The sudden emergence of the Zika virus epidemic in Latin America in 2015-16 has caught the scientific world unawares. A little known disease that was first diagnosed in the Zika forest environment of Uganda in 1947, the disease largely affected populations in Africa until its emergence in French Polynesia a few years ago and then in Brazil and South America last year. The Zika virus is spread mainly by the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and, like the dengue virus, belongs to the flaviviridae family along with Japanese encephalitis and West Nile virus.

Wiley has made available all of its published Zika content on one site http://www.wiley.com/go/zika to coincide with events in Brazil, a territory that has seen increased cases of Zika Virus recently. Access will be freely available until 30 September. New research from medicine, entomology, obstetrics, neuroscience and more will be added to Wiley's Zika page as it becomes available along with interactive content such as interviews, podcasts and videos, providing the latest updates on Zika virus.

BAR HARBOR, MAINE -- Many lower organisms retain the miraculous ability to regenerate form and function of almost any tissue after injury. Humans share many of our genes with these organisms, but our capacity for regeneration is limited. Scientists at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, are studying the genetics of these organisms to find out how regenerative mechanisms might be activated in humans.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - In contrast to the general belief that the airways of an infant are sterile until after birth, University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers and colleagues have found that the infant airway is already colonized with bacteria or bacterial DNA when a baby is born -- and this is true for infants born as early as 24 weeks gestation.

How microbes get into the airways and the purpose of this pre-birth colonization are still unclear, but the pattern of colonization appears to have an important link to later severe neonatal lung disease.

To address the recent drought in California, policymakers have created incentives for homeowners to replace existing lawns with drought tolerant vegetation. However, new research from George Ban-Weiss, an assistant professor in the Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, has found that these efforts might have some hidden consequences on local climate.

Air pollution may shorten the survival of patients with lung cancer, suggests a population based study, published online in the journal Thorax.

The trends were most noticeable for early stage disease, particularly adenocarcinoma--the most common type of non-small cell lung cancer, which accounts for 80% of lung cancer cases--the findings show.

Air pollution has been linked to a higher incidence of lung cancer and death, but little is known about its potential impact on an individual's chances of survival after diagnosis.

Cancer is a disease of our genes - yet our understanding of how our genetic makeup affects our risk of cancer is still rudimentary.

Now, that's set to change, following pioneering work by Australian researchers to understand the genetics of risk in sarcoma. In a landmark study of over 1000 sarcoma patients, the researchers uncovered numerous new genetic risk factors for the cancer - and, in a world first for any cancer type, they showed that carrying two or more of these rare mutations increases an individual's cancer risk.