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Famous for hosting most endemic bird species in Angola, it comes as no surprise that the Kumbira forest in Angola has recently also revealed great botanical diversity. Remaining understudied for a long time, a recent botanical survey in the region revealed impressive numbers of vascular plants including new records for the country and potential new species. The full account of the Kumbira forest diversity is published in the open access journal Phytokeys.

Birds of the species Parus Major (great tit) living in an urban environment are at greater risk of dying young than great tits living outside cities. Research results from Lund University in Sweden show that urban great tits have shorter telomeres than others of their own species living in rural areas. According to the researchers, the induced stress that the urban great tits are experiencing is what results in shorter telomeres and thereby increases their risk of dying young.

While Climate change steadily takes its toll, promising to raise temperatures around the world by at least 1.5 °C within the next 100 years, organisms have already started defending their species' existence in their own ways. Possibly, such is the case of plant lice, which evoked the curiosity of PhD student Jens Joschinski with their reproductive strategy, which shifts from sexual to asexual as the days grow shorter in the autumn.

Rice University scientists have synthesized a novel anti-cancer agent, Thailanstatin A, which was originally isolated from a bacterial species collected in Thailand.

Thailanstatin A fights cancer by inhibiting the spliceosome, the machinery in the cell that edits messenger RNA after transcription from DNA but before its translation into proteins.

Rice synthetic chemist K.C. Nicolaou and his group reported their success in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

• New research has discovered peptides from two crop species that have antimicrobial effects on bacteria implicated in food spoilage and food poisoning
• They are similar in structure to a human peptide used to guard against beer-spoiling bacteria

Dublin, Ireland, Monday June 20th, 2016 - Scientists have isolated peptides (strings of amino acids) with antibiotic effects on bacteria that spoil food and cause food poisoning, after turning to the plant kingdom for help in boosting our arsenal in the ongoing war against antibiotic resistance.

Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report that rising blood levels of a protein called hematoma derived growth factor (HDGF) are linked to the increasing severity of pulmonary arterial hypertension, a form of damaging high blood pressure in the lungs. Their findings, described online June 2 in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, could, they say, eventually lead to a more specific, noninvasive test for pulmonary arterial hypertension that could help doctors decide the best treatment for the disease.

CHARLESTON - The first step of an ongoing-process designed to bring a valuable heirloom wheat back from the brink of extinction has been completed with flying colors.

The results of the largest genetic study on migraine thus far were published online in the journal Nature Genetics today, June 20. The study was based on DNA samples of 375,000 European, American and Australian participants. Almost 60,000 of them suffer from migraine.

Mapping the molecular structure where medicine goes to work is a crucial step toward drug discovery against deadly diseases.

Researchers at Michigan State University have taken that critical first step by providing a crystal structure of the extracellular domain, or ECD, of ZIP4 - the exclusive protein responsible for the uptake of zinc from food. The ZIP family consists of thousands of zinc/iron transporter proteins, and this work represents the first-ever structural information of the ZIP family at the atomic level.

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) develops through chromosomal alterations in blood-forming cells of the bone marrow and usually occurs in older persons. Around 20 percent of adults diagnosed with leukemia suffer from this type of blood cancer. The protein Gab2 works as an enhancer of cancer-causing signals and is often present in larger quantities in CML cells than in healthy cells. In two studies, Freiburg researchers have made new discoveries concerning the relationship between CML and Gab2 and drugs that can break a particular resistance to Gab2 in CML cells. The team, including Dr.

BOSTON -- Surgery to remove a cancerous kidney can often lengthen the lives of patients receiving targeted therapy for metastatic kidney cancer, but only about three in ten such patients undergo the procedure, according to a new study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

CLEMSON, South Carolina -- Clemson University scientists Paul Leonard and Rob Baldwin are part of a collaborative study on how rising sea levels and increased urbanization -- both now and in the future -- are joining forces to fragment habitat connectivity across the region.

Leonard, Baldwin and four other co-authors contributed to the paper, "Landscape Connectivity Losses Due to Sea Level Rise and Land Use Change," about wildlife habitat connectivity in the Southeast that has been published in the journal Animal Conservation.

More gay and bisexual men than ever are getting tested for HIV, according to new data from the National Gay Men's Sex Survey [1]. The survey is the largest of its kind in the UK and sheds light on the sexual health of men who have sex with men.

The survey found that 77% of gay and bisexual men have been tested for HIV, more than in surveys from previous years (in 2010, this stood at 72%). Over half (55%) of gay and bisexual men had been tested in the past 12 months, compared to 36% in the 2010 survey. [2]

DURHAM, N.C. -- DNA molecules don't just code our genetic instructions. They can also conduct electricity and self-assemble into well-defined shapes, making them potential candidates for building low-cost nanoelectronic devices.

A team of researchers from Duke University and Arizona State University has shown how specific DNA sequences can turn these spiral-shaped molecules into electron "highways," allowing electricity to more easily flow through the strand.

Researchers have identified a new signaling pathway that helps cancer cells cope with the lack of oxygen found inside tumors. These are the results of a study published in Nature Cell Biology on June 20, and led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and its Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center, Princess Margaret Cancer Center, the University of Toronto, Harvard Medical School and Oxford University.