Populations of New World screwworm flies - devastating parasitic livestock pests in Western Hemisphere tropical regions - could be greatly suppressed with the introduction of male flies that produce only males when they mate, according to new research from North Carolina State University, the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, the Panama-United States Commission for the Eradication and Prevention of Screwworm (COPEG) and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Withholding tetracycline in the larval diet essentially means "It's a boy" when the genetically modified male flies successfully mate with females in the field, says Max Scott, an NC State entomologist who is the corresponding author of a paper describing the research.

When it comes to the billions of neurons in your brain, what you see at birth is what get -- except in the hippocampus. Buried deep underneath the folds of the cerebral cortex, neural stem cells in the hippocampus continue to generate new neurons, inciting a struggle between new and old as the new attempts to gain a foothold in memory-forming center of the brain.

In a study published online in Neuron, Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT in collaboration with an international team of scientists found they could bias the competition in favor of the newly generated neurons.

A new hypothesis aims to explain how the complex vertebrate body, with its skeleton, muscles, nervous and cardiovascular systems, arises from a single cell during development and how these systems evolved over time. They give it a proper name, embryo geometry, but scientists are going to hold off on calling it a theory until it shows some chance of validation. Until then, it is like String Theory, more philosophy than science.

The paper, along with illustrations - or "blueprints" - depicting how it applies to different vertebrate organ systems, is in Progress in Biophysics&Molecular Biology.

Skin bleaching with the use of glutathione is on the rise, despite the potential ethical issues and adverse side effects associated with the practice, warns a doctor in The BMJ this week.

Ophelia Dadzie, a consultant dermatologist at The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Founder and Director of London Ethnic Skin Limited, says that "there is a lack of authoritative public health information in the UK about the efficacy and safety of this practice."

Skin bleaching is a cosmetic procedure that involves lightening constitutive skin colour, and one such agent used is glutathione, an antioxidant that can be administered orally or intravenously.

The Griffith University study investigated parasite interactions in wild birds and found they are a crucial indicator of malaria infection risk.

The study Co-infections and environmental conditions drive the distributions of blood parasites in wild birds has been published in the Journal of Animal Ecology.

A special variant of a sugar molecule in the human nose might explain why pneumococcal infections are more common in humans than in other animals, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report in a study published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe. The discovery can help in the search for a broader vaccine able to protect against all types of pneumococci.

The bacterium S. pneumoniae or the pneumococcus exists naturally in the noses of children and adults, but is also one of the most common causes of infectious diseases in the world, with meningitis and pneumonia being amongst the most severe. Pneumococci cause more severe infections in humans than in other mammals, something that has hitherto remained a mystery.