News by Subject Biology

University of Utah researchers find that stable isotopes in hair reveal a divergence in diet according to socioeconomic status (SES), with lower-SES areas displaying higher proportions of protein coming from cornfed animals. It's a way, the authors write, to assess a community's diet and their health risks.

Scientists have found that countries with mandatory Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination until at least the year 2000 tended to exhibit slower infection and death rates during the first 30 days of the outbreak

Biodiversity's ongoing global decline has prompted policies to protect and restore habitats to minimize animal and plant extinctions. However, biodiversity forecasts used to inform these policies are usually based on assumptions of a simple theoretical model describing how the number of species changes with the amount of habitat. A new study published in the journal Nature shows that the application of this theoretical model underestimates how many species go locally extinct when habitats are lost.

Once found in bottles, food containers, cash register receipts and electronics, bisphenol A (BPA) has been phased out of many products because of health concerns and government regulations. As a result, the production and use of BPA analogs, which are unregulated and poorly understood, have increased. Now, by analyzing urine samples and wastewater, researchers report in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology how human exposure to bisphenols has changed over time in an Australian population.

The biomass of small animals that decompose plants in the soil and thus maintain its fertility is declining both as a result of climate change and over-intensive cultivation. To their surprise, however, scientists from the UFZ have discovered that this effect occurs in two different ways: while the changing climate reduces the body size of the organisms, cultivation reduces their frequency. Even by farming organically, it is not possible to counteract all negative consequences of climate change.