Monthly Archives: October 2013

Publishing House of Horrors – Spooky Science

As Halloween begins, and night inevitably creeps closer, we’ve been scouring our open access research for the creepiest, weirdest, and grossest research we can get our claws into. The world’s cutest vampire The kodkod, also known as the guiña, is the smallest cat in the Americas. Not many people have heard of the kodkod, which… Read more »

Biology
1

New thematic series in Gut Pathogens: Probiotics and Metagenomics of gut pathogens

iStock_lactobacillus

Gut Pathogens is delighted to introduce two new thematic series, highlighting articles published in the journal on the topics of Probiotics and Metagenomic analysis of gut pathogens. Probiotics is a term used to describe any micro-organism which has a beneficial impact on another organism. There has been extensive research into probiotics and their health implications,… Read more »

Biology
1

Are elephants beginning to forget?

Mother and calf. Copyright Graeme Shannon

Elephants’ social skills are vital to their survival, helping them to live as part of a group. But research published in Frontiers in Zoology this week shows that African Elephants lose these vital skills as a result of human activity. Elephants that have suffered traumatic events, separation from family members and/ or translocations have a… Read more »

Biology

Whales at the Disko

Bowhead whale

 Bowhead whales congregate in Disko Bay, West Greenland, in winter and spring in order to take advantage of high quality feeding opportunities, finds a new study published in Animal Biotelemetry today. The whales diving behaviour differs between winter and spring months, matching the seasonal changes in availability of copepods nearer the surface. By tagging nine… Read more »

Biology

Drought, disease, and a bear in your yard

Bear crossing road, credit Rachel Mazur

Black bears in California’s Sierra Nevada could come into contact with humans more often as they travel further to find available food, finds a new study in Animal Biotelemetry today. With increasing threats to the bears natural food sources of sugar pine seeds and blue acorns, this could lead to an increase in human-bear incidents… Read more »

Biology

Open-Phylo: give science back to the people

open-phylo-screen

It seems that scientific research in the last two hundred years or so has made a full conceptual circle. In the good old days of the nineteenth century, any Englishman with a vaguely middle-class background, a source of modest income and an insatiable curiosity could treat research as an eccentric pastime. Whether that meant sea… Read more »

Biology
2

Far from black and white: Insights into the diversity of SIV

Black-and-white colobus monkey

Retrovirology is pleased to announce the publication of its 1000th article, a fantastic milestone for the journal. The article is from researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, analysing new simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) identified from nine black-and-white colobus monkeys (Colobus guereza) from the Kibale National Park in Uganda. With limited taxonomic and geographic sampling… Read more »

Biology

Retrovirology publishes its 1000th article

1000th article

Retrovirology, currently enjoying its 10th anniversary, saw the publication of its 1000th article this week: Discovery and full genome characterization of two highly divergent simian immunodeficiency viruses infecting black-and-white colobus monkeys (Colobus guereza) in Kibale National Park, Uganda, by Michael Lauck and colleagues. Guest blogger, Liam Prestwood from University of Cambridge,  has summarised the key… Read more »

Biology Open Access