Burmese Pythons may have chosen Florida as a vacation destination, but are unlikely to expand further, according to a new study. Although the United States Geological Survey earlier this year released "climate maps" indicating that the pythons could inhabit up to 32 states in the US, new research indicates that the snakes are unlikely to expand out of Florida.

Ecologists and evolutionary biologists analyzed body size measures of 7,209 species of birds and found that avian families that have experienced the greatest diversification in body size tend to be those with brains larger than expected for their body size.

Warmer temperatures and longer dry spells have killed thousands of trees and shrubs in a Southern California mountain range, pushing the plants' habitat an average of 213 feet up the mountain over the past 30 years, a UC Irvine study has determined.

A new study shows that the number of "dead zones" -- areas of seafloor with too little oxygen for most marine life -- has increased by a third between 1995 and 2007. Dead zones are now "the key stressor on marine ecosystems" and "rank with over-fishing, habitat loss, and harmful algal blooms as global environmental problems."

In the murky waters of an inconspicuous stream in a remote area of Wyoming, researchers detail the potential impact that an introduced fish, the white sucker, could have on the evolutionary biology of fishes.

Bacteria – like people animals and plants – can become infected by a virus. Researchers have now unravelled a mechanism with which bacteria can defend themselves for a longer period against threatening viruses. Over the long term, this research offers possibilities to protect bacteria used in industrial processes against viral infections by giving them a 'flu vaccination'.

The bird enthusiast who chronicled the adventures of a flock of red-headed conures in his book "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" knows most of the parrots by name, yet most of us would be hard pressed to tell one bird from another. While it has been known for a long time that we can become acutely attuned to our day-to-day environment, the underlying neural mechanism has been less clear.

A spin off company from basic structural biology has led to new technology that provides a way of creating therapeutic proteins to tackle major diseases such as cancer, diabetes and infertility.

Massachusetts fisherman once considered the New England whelk or “conch” as nothing more than bycatch. Although demand existed for the large-shelled snail, traditionally used for cooking in East Asian cultures, it could more easily be trawled in the waters around South America, the Caribbean and Asia, making conch unprofitable in the Northeast. This turned around in the 1980s, however, when overfishing of whelk quickly transformed the small New England conch fishery into a multi-million dollar industry.

According to a new study, over 180 oil and gas "blocks" -- areas zoned for exploration and development -- now cover the megadiverse western Amazon, which includes Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and western Brazil. These oil and gas blocks stretch over 688,000 km2 (170 million acres), a vast area, nearly the size of Texas.

"Flesh-eating" or "Strep" bacteria are able to survive and spread in the body by degrading a key immune defense molecule. The finding could aid in development of new treatments for serious infections in human patients.

When dividing cells copy their DNA, mistakes can -- and do -- occur. To compensate, cells have a built-in system to correct these errors. That correction process isn't thoroughly understood, but researchers are piecing it together bit by bit.

Scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding how a type of white blood cell called the eosinophil may help the body to fight bacterial infections in the digestive tract, according to new research in Nature Medicine.

Researchers in the UK have developed a robot which is controlled by a biological brain formed from cultured neurons -- the first step to examine how memories manifest themselves in the brain, and how a brain stores specific pieces of data. The key aim is that eventually this will lead to a better understanding of development and of diseases and disorders which affect the brain such as Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, stoke and brain injury.

Microbial biologists may not have Jimmy Buffett's music from 1977 in mind, but they are changing attitudes about evolutionary diversity on Earth, from oceanic latitudes to mountainous altitudes. They are showing that temperature primarily drives the richness of bacterial diversity in oceans, and that life, plant and microbial, by altitude in the Rocky Mountains may be close, but not exactly, to what biologists have theorized for years.

Long gone are the days when hundreds of thousands of bison grazed the Great Plains, millions of passenger pigeons darkened the skies while migrating to and from their breeding grounds, and some 12.5 trillion Rocky Mountain locusts crowded an area exceeding the size of California. The subject of great migrations -- lost and still to be saved -- is explored in two new articles in PLoS Biology.

In the first statewide study of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB) in the United States, California officials have identified 18 cases of the dangerous and difficult-to-treat disease between 1993 and 2006, and 77 cases that were one step away from XDR TB.

Scientists are stepping up the battle against the devastating and economically damaging bluetongue virus. By combining ingenious ways to trap and monitor midges with cutting edge computer modeling and weather predictions researchers are gaining an understanding of how the insects spread the disease so that they can improve surveillance methods and advise farmers how and when to protect their animals.

Researchers have shown how broken sections of chromosomes can recombine to change genomes and spawn new species. The scientists used X-rays to break yeast chromosomes, and then studied how the damage was repaired.

Since their introduction into land-based birds in 1988, H9N2 avian influenza A viruses have caused multiple human infections and become endemic in domestic poultry in Eurasia. This particular influenza subtype has been evolving and acquiring characteristics that raise concerns that it may become more transmissible among humans. Mechanisms that allow infection and subsequent human-to-human transmission of avian influenza viruses are not well understood.

Elephant seals are helping scientists overcome a critical blind-spot in their ability to detect change in Southern Ocean circulation and sea ice production and its influence on global climate.

A drug that sequesters white blood cells in lymph nodes can allow mice to fight off a chronic infection by a virus that causes meningitis. The novel strategy of restricting white blood cells' circulation has implications for treating chronic viral infections in humans.

Allison Hansen, a doctoral student in entomology at the University of California, Riverside, has discovered and named a new bacterial pathogen that could be responsible for "psyllid yellows," a disease that infects and kills tomato and potato plants. The disease is spread from plant to plant by the psyllid, a sap-sucking insect.

Newborns in Brazil are more susceptible to toxoplasmosis than those in Europe, according to a recent study. Researchers based in Austria, Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom studied the disease's ocular effects in children from birth to four years of age.

Cutaneous leishmaniasis, a disease characterized by painful skin ulcers, occurs when the parasite Leishmania major, or a related species, is transmitted to a mammalian host by the bite of an infected sand fly. In a new study, scientists have discovered L. major does its damage by not only evading but also by exploiting the body's wound-healing response to sand fly bites.

What do a tree and the Eiffel Tower have in common? According to a Duke University engineer, both are optimized for flow. In the case of trees, the flow is of water from the ground throughout the trunk, branches and leaves, and into the air. The Eiffel Tower's flow carries stresses throughout the structure without collapsing under its own weight or being downed by the wind.

The search for what causes a debilitating shell disease affecting lobsters from Long Island Sound to Maine has led one Marine Biological Laboratory visiting scientist to suspect environmental alkyphenols, formed primarily by the breakdown of hard transparent plastics.

What was the number you were supposed to enter for the chili-pepper on the self-service scales? Was it 67 or 76? And the number for the bananas? The latest self-service scales automatically recognize what the customer has placed on them.

Scientists report the identification of a bluetongue virus strain that caused the northern European Bluetongue outbreak in 2006. Comparison of the virus strain with the sequences of other previously isolated strains showed that it originated in sub-Saharan Africa, rather than from vaccine strains or strains circulating in southern Europe.

When bumblebees return to the nest from a successful foraging mission, they produce a pheromone which encourages their nest mates to also go out and find food. Scientists had originally thought that these pheromones elicited a standard response from all bees. But new research from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences has shown that bees' response to the pheromone changes according to their situation.

The first study to compare the performance of different types of green roofs suggests that buyers shouldn't assume these roofs are created equal.

Researchers have harnessed the sensitivity of days-old fish embryos to create a tool capable of detecting a range of harmful chemicals. By measuring rates of oxygen use in developing fish, which are sensitive to contaminants and stressful conditions, the technology could reveal the presence of minute levels of toxic substances before they cause more obvious and substantial harm. It could be used as an early warning system against environmental contamination or even biological weapons.

A cell's nucleus -- home of it its most precious contents -- is a delicate envelope that, without support, is barely able to withstand the forces that keep it in place. Now, researchers have discovered a network of molecules in the nuclear membrane that provide the nucleus with rigidity and also facilitate a previously undiscovered form of communication between the cell's nucleus and its cytoplasm.

Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world's oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing.

Scientists in Sweden are cautioning about the need for further research as more countries embrace a popular method for preventing pesticide spills. Researchers point out that pesticide spills are common when farmers transfer highly concentrated liquid preparations into spray tanks where the pesticide is diluted with water. Even if a small, few-inch wide puddle of this concentrate spilled under the tank, the nearby environment could be exposed to up to one hundred thousand times the normal pesticide dose.

Most insects landing on the natural fly paper plant, Roridula grogonias, are in for a sticky end. However, mirid bugs that make the sticky plants their homes seem immune to the alluring adhesive. So what protects mirid bugs from R. gorgonias' fatal grasp? Dagmar Voigt and Stansilav Gorb from the Max-Planck Institute for Metals Research have found that the bugs are covered in a thick greasy nonstick coating that shrugs gorgonias glue off.

A nanoproduct made from silver and calcium phosphate is lethal to bacteria. Its special feature is that the bacteria themselves invoke and dispense this disinfectant effect.

AIDS experts say they have compelling evidence that some people with HIV who for years and even decades show extremely low levels of the virus in their blood never progress to full-blown AIDS and remain symptom free even without treatment, probably do so because of the strength of their immune systems, not any defects in the strain of HIV that infected them in the first place.

A medical test developed to detect an overload of iron in humans has recently been adapted to screen for the condition in some distant relatives: diminutive monkeys from South America, according to veterinarians at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Scientists are using a new tool to find relationships between DNA markers and economically significant traits in cattle.

Scientists have documented, for the first time in the northeastern United States, that a variety of bird species are extending their breeding ranges to the north, a pattern that adds to concerns about climate change.

The current U.S. population of red imported fire ants--which infest millions of acres across the southern states -- can be traced back to nine to 20 queens in Mobile, Alabama.

Scientists have identified a key regulatory factor that controls development of the human vascular system, the extensive network of arteries, veins and capillaries that allow blood to reach all tissues and organs.

Inwood Hill Park survived the drastic modifications of Revolutionary War patriots, but preserving this last bastion of large-growth, mature trees in New York City is difficult with the proliferation of invasive species and hard human use, according to biologists. They suggest the situation warrants a plan in collaboration with those studying the park.

Scientists have discovered a new group of plant hormones, the so-called strigolactones. This group of chemicals is known to be involved in the interaction between plants and their environment. They have now proven that strigolactones, as hormones, are also crucial for the branching of plants. The discovery will soon be published in Nature and is of great importance for innovations in agriculture. Examples include the development of cut flowers or tomato plants with more or fewer branches.

As the grouse shooting season gets under way, two scientists involved in high-profile studies of hen harriers and red grouse at Langholm Moor in Scotland have called for field trials of a "ceiling" on harrier numbers in an attempt to end the long running conflict between conservationists and grouse managers.

WorldBirds say "Shame on them available food supply governs numbers of grouse, not predation from harriers and eagles.

This has been proved time and again.

Common tree species in the Amazon will survive even grim scenarios of deforestation and road-building, but rare trees could suffer extinction rates of up to 50 percent, predict scientists in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

New modeling research demonstrates that the "sky islands" of the Great Basin are not islands: the different populations of small mammals that inhabit mountain tops have contact with each other.