While humans can survive large temperature fluctuations, such species as corals are only comfortable within a 12-degree temperature range. And rising global temperatures appear to be threatening their survival, according to Drew Harvell, Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

However, she noted in presenting a paper at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, Feb. 18, Caribbean gorgonian sea fan corals show surprising warm-weather tenacity -- they not only are somewhat temperature resilient but can also boost their cellular and enzymatic defenses to fight lethal microorganisms as temperatures rise. These abilities may someday be harnessed to help protect other fragile coral reefs, Harvell said.

It's essential to all life, and numerous research papers are published about it every year. Yet there are still secrets to reveal about water, that seemingly simple compound we know as H2O.

Equipped with high-speed computers and the laws of physics, scientists from the University of Delaware and Radboud University in the Netherlands have developed a new method to "flush out" the hidden properties of water--and without the need for painstaking laboratory experiments.

A new genus of millipede was recently discovered by a Northern Arizona University doctoral student and a Bureau of Land Management researcher.

J. Judson Wynne, with the Department of Biological Sciences at NAU and cave research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Southwest Biological Center, and Kyle Voyles, Arizona State Cave Coordinator for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), collected specimens leading to the discovery of two new millipede species in caves on opposite sides of the Grand Canyon.

Wynne and Voyles, known for their cave research, also discovered a new genus of cricket last spring.

"We knew the millipedes likely represented two distinct species because the two populations were separated by the Grand Canyon," Wynne said.

The French Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC, or GIEC in French) has just announced the conclusions of its 4th report, which restates that global warming has increased the average temperature by 0.74°C over the last century. However, there is very little information about some parts of the planet, such as central Asia.

Researchers from MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology and Ohio State University have developed a new computer modeling approach to study how materials behave under stress at the atomic level, offering insights that could help engineers design materials with an ideal balance between strength and resistance to failure.

When designing materials, there is often a tradeoff between strength and ductility (resistance to breaking)-properties that are critically important to the performance of materials.

Wood is formed from secondary xylem tissue consisting of cells with a heavily thickened secondary cell wall that is enriched in lignin and cellulose. In contrast, primary cell walls are composed mainly of polysaccharides (including cellulose), but contain very little lignin. Wood formation occurs through a complex series of steps involving cell division and expansion and the biosynthesis of lignin and cellulose. In addition, heartwood (darker wood at the center of the trunk) forms in many tree species through a highly regulated process of programmed cell death. Although herbaceous plants by definition do not form wood as in trees and shrubs, they nonetheless form secondary xylem tissue that is in many respects similar to that of their woody relatives.