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If there is anything common among the 1.1 million firefighters -- both career and volunteer -- serving in the United States, it's that at any moment, they may be required to put their lives on the line to protect people and property from disaster. But who helps protect these dedicated public servants from the on-the-job dangers they face?

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Are employees more likely to help co-workers above them or beneath them in the corporate pecking order?

A new study suggests that may be the wrong question to ask. Researchers found that workers are most likely to help colleagues who are moderately distant from themselves in status -- both above and below them.

The results offer a new way to think about how status affects workplace relationships, said Robert Lount, co-author of the study and an associate professor of management and human resources at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.

In a study published online by JAMA Surgery, Thomas G. Peters, M.D., of the University of Florida College of Medicine, Jacksonville, and colleagues examined the willingness of voting U.S. citizens to become living kidney donors and to determine the potential influence of compensation for donation.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center seeking a way to combat the growing epidemic of obesity have found that deleting microRNA-155 in female mice prevents diet-induced obesity.

The findings are published online in the journal Scientific Reports.

DETROIT - A newly published national study by the Children's Hospital of Michigan and Wayne State University School of Medicine researchers shows that "parental impact and family functioning" become increasingly abnormal when children with cardiomyopathy-related chronic heart disease are more severely ill than children less affected by the disease.

UCF biologist Anna Savage is obsessed with frogs and figuring out why they are dying at an unprecedented rate around the world.

Her latest research, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggests that natural selection as well as other evolutionary forces have shaped the evolution of immune genes in lowland leopard frog populations helping them survive a deadly fungus that's killing off many other species worldwide.

And the die-off isn't just of concern to biologists.

The internal movements of proteins can be important for their functionality; researchers are discovering more and more examples of this. Now, with the aid of neutron spectroscopy, dynamic processes have also been detected in so-called "LOV photoreceptors" by scientists from Jülich, Aachen, Dusseldorf and Garching near Munich. These proteins are widely distributed throughout nature and are of biotechnological relevance. The results highlight the immense potential of neutron scattering experiments for the analysis of cellular processes.

Malaria affects close to 500 million people every year, but we're not the only ones--different species of malaria parasite can infect birds, bats, and other mammals too. A Field Museum study published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution reveals a new take on the evolution of different malaria species and contributes to the ongoing search for the origins of malaria in humans."We can't begin to understand how malaria spread to humans until we understand its evolutionary history," explained lead author Holly Lutz, a Ph.D.

New research from the University of Copenhagen reveals that bacteria which agglutinate before entering the body are far more resistant than single-celled bacteria. This may be the cause of chronic infections.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Proteins play a large role in DNA regulation, but a new study finds that DNA molecules directly interact with one another in a way that's dependent on the sequence of the DNA and epigenetic factors. This could have implications for how DNA is organized in the cell and even how genes are regulated in different cell types, the researchers say.

Researchers from New Zealand's University of Otago studying chinook salmon have provided the first evidence that "cryptic female choice" (CFC) enhances fertilisation success and embryo survival.

Cryptic female choice involves females using physical or chemical mechanisms to control which male fertilises their eggs after mating, and is known to occur in a number of species.

Like the phenomena of flocking birds and shoaling fish, the dance of molecules across a cell's surface has long fascinated theorists, physicists and biologists alike. Unlike bird and fish behaviour, however, cell surface dynamics cannot be observed and studied easily. However, it is important to understand these processes as they are crucial for cells to gain information about their environment and respond. So how does one understand the rules that govern movement of molecules across this arena? By reconstructing the cell surface from scratch, perhaps?

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered a new and more accurate way to distinguish between harmful and harmless plaque in the blood vessels by using ultrasound. This can help healthcare providers determine the risk of strokes and heart attacks - which means avoiding unnecessary surgery for many patients.

In many parts of the world, atherosclerosis is one of the diseases responsible for a large number of cases of premature death.

EAST LANSING, Mich. - What does Brad Pitt have in common with a fruit fly? His Hollywood hairstyles cover a prominent cowlick - the swirl of hair that that is caused by a patterning mechanism also active in our two-winged friends -- that similarly feature "polarized" hair patterns.

Plants prepare for cold evenings by triggering biological processes, such as closing of their stomata and synthesizing wax to prevent water loss. Biologists have shown that these processes, which are induced by genes expressed in the evening, are actually regulated by clock proteins that are produced during sunrise. Further understanding of these clock-mediated processes could promote growth of plants in climates that are different from their origin.