Since the discovery of how DNA encodes genetic information, evolutionary biology has focused on genes. One popular hypothesis - the "selfish gene" theory - states that cells and organisms exist simply as packages to protect and transmit genes.

The selfish gene is by no means accepted and a new paper gives biological 'selfishness' itself a twist, and proposes that if anything is "selfish" it must be the ribosome. That might change everything the public thinks they know about the evolution of life and, in fact, the function of ribosomes themselves.

White fat and brown fat have been well documented regarding metabolism but new research has introduced data that may be important this winter and this new year: each type of fat may change into the other, depending on the temperature.

In particular, cold temperatures may encourage "unhealthy" white fat to change into "healthy" brown fat.

A new study finds that fructose is bad.  Biologists who fed mice sugar in doses proportional to what many people eat found that the ratio of fructose and glucose in high-fructose corn syrup was more toxic than than random variations found in sucrose (table sugar). They conclude that the precisely-determined fructose reduced both the reproduction and lifespan of female rodents. 

The ice on Greenland formed due to processes in the deep Earth interior of the Arctic, large-scale glaciations that began about 2.7 million years ago. Prior to that, the northern hemisphere was so warm it was mostly without it, and that period lasted for 500 million years.

The big question geologically is why the glaciation of Greenland only developed so recently. 

It's because of the interaction of three tectonic processes. Greenland literally had to be lifted up, so that the mountain peaks reached into sufficiently cold altitudes of the atmosphere. Greenland also needed to move sufficiently far northward, which led to reduced solar irradiation in winter. Then a shift of the Earth axis caused Greenland to move even further northward.

Cholera is characterized by acute watery diarrhea resulting in severe dehydration and occurs  when the bacterium Vibrio cholerae infects the small intestine.

How does it happen? 

In 2002 on Christmas Eve, two-year-old Bryce Faber was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a deadly. The toddler's treatment, in addition to surgery, included massive amounts of radiation followed by even more massive amounts of antibiotics, and it no doubt saved his life. But those mega-doses of antibiotics, while staving off infections in his immunosuppressed body, caused a permanent side effect: deafness.

"All I remember is coming out of treatment not being able to hear anything," said Bryce, now a healthy 14-year-old living in Arizona. "I asked my mom, 'Why have all the people stopped talking?'" He was 90 percent deaf.

"The loss has been devastating," said his father, Bart Faber. "But not as devastating as losing him would have been."