Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered significant clues to the evolutionary origins of the nervous system by studying the genome of a sea sponge, a member of a group considered to be among the most ancient of all animals.

Low levels of testosterone may increase the long-term risk of death in men over 50 years old, according to researchers with the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

"The new study is only the second report linking deficiency of this sex hormone with increased death from all causes, over time, and the first to do so in relatively healthy men who are living in the community," said Gail Laughlin, Ph.D., assistant professor and study author.

In 1976 a research cruise in the Gulf of Alaska recorded the sighting of "brown penguins."

How was it that birds that swim rather than fly and live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere turned up deep in the Northern Hemisphere? Did they migrate more than 5,000 miles from Peru?

Recent research shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) can offer a new – and completely free – way to prevent fever-related epileptic seizures. The discovery was made by the NordForsk-financed Nordic Centre of Excellence on Water Imbalance Related Disorders (WIRED)

In the cover story of this month’s BioScience journal, leading tiger experts warn that if tigers are to survive, governments must stop all trade in tiger products from wild and captive-bred sources, as well as ramp up efforts to conserve the species and their habitats.

The paper, “The Fate of Wild Tigers,” describes the wild tiger's population decline as "catastrophic" and urges international cooperation to ensure the animal's continued existence in the wild.

Researchers of the Group of Recent Prehistory Studies (GEPRAN) of the University of Granada, from the department of Prehistory and Archaeology, have taken an important step to determine how life was in the Iberian Peninsula in the Bronze Age.

Weather models are not good at predicting rain. Particularly in hilly terrain, this can lead to great damage arising from late warnings of floods, or even none at all. From June 1 to September 1, 2007 Delft University of Technology is participating in a major international experiment in Germany’s Black Forest, to learn more about what causes rain. Aircraft and an airship are to be used alongside ground-based observatories and satellites.

The most comprehensive study of its kind has found that violence costs the United States $70 billion annually, a figure that rivals federal education spending and the damage caused by hurricane Katrina.

Phaedra Corso, lead author of study and associate professor of health policy at the University of Georgia College of Public Health and health economist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the study illustrates how much money can be saved by investing in programs that decrease interpersonal violence and self-inflicted violence such as suicide. For comparison, the federal Department of Education has an annual budget of $67.2 billion and hurricane Katrina caused an estimated $80 billion in damage.

It might be time to change some history books.

Prehistoric Polynesians, not European voyagers, may have brought chickens to the Americas, according to new research from The University of Auckland’s Department of Anthropology.