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Scientists describe and name a new genus of tree hole breeding frogs from India, according to a study published January 20, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by S. D. Biju from the University of Delhi and colleagues.

A Neolithic Spanish burial site contains remains of a closely-related local community from 6000 years ago, according to a study published January 20th, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kurt W. Alt from Danube Private University, Austria, and colleagues.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers at Duke Health are fine-tuning a test that can determine whether a respiratory illness is caused by infection from a virus or bacteria so that antibiotics can be more precisely prescribed.

The team of infectious disease and genomics experts at Duke has developed what they call gene signatures, patterns that reflect which of a patient's genes are turned on or off, to indicate whether someone is fighting infection from a virus or bacteria. Results can be derived from a small sample of the patient's blood.

Brightly coloured sea slugs are slurping deadly chemicals and stockpiling the most toxic compounds for use on their enemies.

While the phenomenon sounds like the stuff of horror films, it is common practice for these "butterflies of the ocean", a new University of Queensland-led study published today in PLOS One has found.

Dr Karen Cheney of UQ's School of Biological Sciences said the multi-disciplinary study examined five closely-related nudibranchs (sea slugs) collected from the Great Barrier Reef and from South East Queensland, Australia.

If there's one word that describes the squash bug (Anasa tristis), it is frustrating, according to Hélène Doughty, the lead author of an article that appears in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management.

"It's just a very difficult pest to control," she said. "It's definitely been a frustrating pest and a frustrating area of study."

EAST LANSING, Mich. - A new species of bird has been discovered in northeastern India and adjacent parts of China by a team of scientists from Sweden, China, the U.S., India and Russia.

The bird, described in the current issue of the journal Avian Research, has been named Himalayan forest thrush Zoothera salimalii. The scientific name honors the great Indian ornithologist Sálim Ali, in recognition of his contributions to the development of Indian ornithology and nature conservation.

COLUMBIA, Mo. (Jan. 20, 2016) -- In use for more than 20 years, the varicella zoster virus vaccine for chickenpox and shingles is considered an essential medicine by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine have found, in rare instances, a link between the vaccine and corneal inflammation. It is a finding the researchers say should be discussed by primary care physicians and patients with a history of eye inflammation before getting vaccinated.

University of California, Berkeley, researchers have made a major improvement in CRISPR-Cas9 technology that achieves an unprecedented success rate of 60 percent when replacing a short stretch of DNA with another.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Approximately half of the companies listed with Standard & Poor have adopted policies mandating retirement based on age. A new study from the University of Missouri has found that although these mandatory retirement polices represent an effective way to address underperforming CEOs, accumulated job experience improves performance and counters age-related declines.

The consolidation of the ancient supercontinent Pangea 300 million years ago played a key role in the formation of the coal that powered the Industrial Revolution and that is still burned for energy in many parts of the world today, Stanford scientists say.

The fossilised bones of a group of prehistoric hunter-gatherers who were massacred around 10,000 years ago have been unearthed 30km west of Lake Turkana, Kenya, at a place called Nataruk.

Researchers from Cambridge University's Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies found the partial remains of 27 individuals, including at least eight women and six children.

La Jolla, Calif., January 20, 2016 -- Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) have solved the atomic structure of a unique ubiquitin ligase complex. Ubiquitin is best known for its role in protein degradation, but more recently seen as important for cell signaling, DNA repair, anti-inflammatory, and immune responses.

The study, published today in Nature, opens the door for developing a novel class of drug targets for cancer as well as inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and psoriasis.

TORONTO, Jan. 20, 2015 -- Dangerous driving when dropping children off at schools may put kids at increased risk of getting injured in the vicinity of their schools, a recent York University and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) study indicates.

"Though dangerous driving behaviour near schools is often witnessed and reported, such incidents are not well described," says Professor Alison Macpherson, in the Faculty of Health. "Our study shows that there is a significant association between schools with dangerous driving and pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions (PMVCs)."

A significant proportion of our genetic information encoded in DNA is expressed in a living cell as proteins. In order to synthesize a protein, this information needs to be converted from nucleotide sequence to the language of amino acids. The process of the decoding is called translation, and it involves the distinct nucleic acid molecule, messenger RNA (mRNA) - the "temporary carrier" of the information, which is a copy of one particular gene. Special molecular machine - the ribosome - moves along the mRNA and reads nucleotide triplets. Each triplet encodes a particular amino acid.

LAUREL, Md. -- A deadly fungus causing population crashes in wild European salamanders could emerge in the United States and threaten already declining amphibians here, according to a report released today by the U.S. Geological Survey.