While the spread of imported fire ants has received much public attention, another invader has been quietly sucking the juices from plants in our lawns and fields: a legless mealybug. In a recent study published in the September issue of the peer-reviewed journal Ecology, scientists have discovered that these bugs may be a possible key to the success of the infamous invasive fire ants.

“Widespread association of the invasive ant Solenopsis invicta with an invasive mealybug,” a study by Ken

The use of drugs/pharmaceuticals in cattle rearing is the object of a recent study, carried out by two researchers from the Centro de Estudos Farmacêuticos, Laboratório de Bromatologia, Hidrologia e Nutrição (Pharmaceutical Study Centre, Bromatology, Hydrology and Nutrition Laboratory) at the Pharmacy Faculty of Coimbra University. The consequences for consumers are, from a public health standpoint, the most significant conclusions to take from an exhaustive work of literary revision in these matters

A study by the coordinator of the Research Group on Climate at the Barcelona Science Park, University of Barcelona, Dr Xavier Rodó, and other researchers at the University of Michigan and the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh, provides evidence not only that climatic variation associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects the appearance of cholera epidemics, as shown by a previous publication in Science by the same group, but also that the relationsh

Cancer develops from a single damaged cell subsequent to an accumulation of genetic errors in a number of its genes. The nature of these alterations and the order in which they occur differ from one cancer to another : hence, the “pathways” that may lead to cancer are numerous.

CNRS and INSERM researchers at the Institut Curie have just discovered a new tumor development pathway in colon cancer, one of the most common forms of cancer (35,000 new cases every year in France).

This

Animals kept in captivity exhibit stereotypic behaviour that is fundamentally similar to that seen in human conditions of autism and schizophrenia; a finding that could confound some behavioural experiments using animals, according to Dr Georgia Mason from University of Oxford speaking at the BA Festival of Science [10.50hrs 11 September 2002].

Animals in zoos, farms and laboratories are often seen gnawing repetitively, pacing back and forward or carrying out other apparently functionless be

Entomologists in Belfast may finally have found a way of limiting the spread of the New Zealand flatworm, which invaded the British Isles in the 1960s. Speaking at the Royal Entomological Society’s national meeting Entomology 2002, which will take place at Cardiff University on 12–13 September 2002, Dr Archie Murchie of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (Northern Ireland) will announce that certain British beetles could help repel the invader by preying on it. Finding a natural pred