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Just in time for the icy grip of winter: A team of researchers led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has identified several mechanisms that make a new, cold-loving material one of the toughest metallic alloys ever.

For a small African fish species, a colorful dominant male does better in life, winning access to food and females. New research by Stanford biologists suggests that this lucky outcome is regulated at a genetic level, by turning genes on and off.

From the outside, it can seem that taxonomy has a commitment issue with scientific names. They shift for reasons that seem obscure and unnecessarily wonkish to people who simply want to use names to refer to a consistent, knowable taxon such as species, genus or family. However, the relationship between nomenclature and taxonomy, as two quite separate but mutually dependent systems, is a sophisticated way of balancing what we know and what is open to further interpretation.

COLLEGE STATION - A group of 40 international scientists led by a Texas A&M University System professor says three of the earth's mightiest rivers are being ravaged in the name of progress.

The findings of Dr. Kirk Winemiller, Texas A&M AgriLife Research fisheries scientist and Regents Professor in the department of wildlife and fisheries sciences at College Station, and his colleagues has been released in the scientific journal Science.

PHILADELPHIA--(Jan. 7, 2016) -- Melanoma patients who receive treatment with targeted therapies experience an initial response that feels like a cure, but that early excitement is quickly dampened when patients relapse as their cancers find alternative pathways in our cells to grow and spread. With melanoma so good at escaping targeted treatments, there's a dire need to halt these cancers in their tracks to prolong good responses and promote longer, healthier lives.

Leishmaniasis is a serious parasitic disease that affects 12 million people worldwide. Like for many neglected tropical diseases that disproportionately affect poor populations, existing drugs have serious side-effects and face increasing parasite resistance. A study published on January 7th in PLOS Pathogens identifies a new drug target, and supports the conclusion that iron-dependent signals generated in the mitochondria are essential for the development of parasite stages that cause disease in humans.

Scientists are continually unearthing new facts about Homo sapiens from the mummified remains of Ötzi, the Copper Age man, who was discovered in a glacier in 1991. Five years ago, after Ötzi's genome was completely deciphered, it seemed that the wellspring of spectacular discoveries about the past would soon dry up.

Analysis of microbes from the gut of the "Iceman", a famous 5,300-year-old European glacial mummy, provides insights into not only his health status right before he was murdered, but historical human geography as well. Surprisingly, a strain of bacterium in his gut shares ancestry with an Asian strain, in contrast to the fact that most modern Europeans harbor a strain ancestral to North African strains.

As a boom of hydroelectric dams in the tropics is underway, it's important to fully assess the true economic benefits, which are often overstated, and the far-reaching effects on biodiversity and fisheries, which are often underestimated, authors of this Policy Forum say. While Kirk Winemiller et al. acknowledge that these projects address important energy needs, they cite numerous ways in which the true costs of hydrodams are not taken into account, particularly in ecologically-rich areas such as the tropics.

The evidence for a new geological epoch which marks the impact of human activity on the Earth is now overwhelming according to a recent paper by an international group of geoscientists. The Anthropocene, which is argued to start in the mid-20th Century, is marked by the spread of materials such as aluminium, concrete, plastic, fly ash and fallout from nuclear testing across the planet, coincident with elevated greenhouse gas emissions and unprecedented trans-global species invasions.

Nicotine is an addictive substance and genetic factors are known to play a role in smoking behaviors. Recently, a team of researchers at Penn State and the University of Colorado determined how small differences in a particular region of the mouse genome can alter nicotine consumption.

Chromoendoscopy is superior to random biopsy or white-light colonoscopy in detecting dysplasia in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), according to a long-term surveillance study led by James F. Marion, MD, Professor of Medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Director of Education and Outreach at The Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center at The Mount Sinai Hospital, published online in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

Gold nanoparticles have unusual optical, electronic and chemical properties, which scientists are seeking to put to use in a range of new technologies, from nanoelectronics to cancer treatments.

A single chance mutation about a billion years ago caused an ancient protein to evolve a new function essential for multicellularity in animals, according to new research co-led by a University of Chicago scientist. By conducting experiments on 'resurrected' ancestral proteins, the researchers shed light on the origin of a molecular process that allows animals to form and maintain organized tissues.

When modern humans met Neanderthals in Europe and the two species began interbreeding many thousands of years ago, the exchange left humans with gene variations that have increased the ability of those who carry them to ward off infection. This inheritance from Neanderthals may have also left some people more prone to allergies.