About: Joseph

Leptospirosis, which affects more than one million people worldwide each year, is known to be transmitted to humans from a wide range of animals. Now, researchers reporting in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases have discovered that more than 7 percent of the cattle and 1 percent of sheep and goats in local slaughterhouses in northern Tanzania...

New, higher-quality assemblies of great ape genomes have now been generated without the guidance of the human reference genome. The effort to reduce "humanizing" discovery bias in great ape genomes provides a clearer view of the genetic differences that arose as humans diverged from other primates.

Scientists have discovered honeybees can understand the concept of zero, putting them in an elite club of clever animals that can grasp the abstract mathematical notion of nothing.

Featherwing beetles are smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. They get their name from the feathery fringe on their wings that enables them to catch the air and float like dandelion seeds. And, it turns out, they go way back -- scientists discovered a 99-million-year-old featherwing beetle preserved in amber, and...

All land mammals and birds have two types of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM (also called slow-wave sleep). Earlier evidence had suggested that REM sleep -- associated with dreaming -- is essential for physical and mental well-being and learning, and that a lack of it could even be deadly. But the underlying function...

When attacked, bluetongue skinks open their mouth suddenly and as wide as possible to reveal their conspicuously coloured tongues. This surprise action serves as their last line of defence to save themselves from becoming prey says Martin Whiting, of Macquarie University in Australia, who conceived the study just published in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and...