Farmers, home gardeners, golf course managers and other growers now have access to a new type of microbial fertilizer that dramatically increases plant size and yield, thanks to a licensing agreement between Michigan State University and Bio Soil Enhancers Inc.

Chimpanzees recognize their pals by using some of the same brain regions that switch on when humans register a familiar face, according to a report published online on December 18th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The study?the first to examine brain activity in chimpanzees after they attempt to match fellow chimps' faces?offers new insight into the origin of face recognition in humans, the researchers said.

By applying an old theory that has been used to explain water flow through soil and the spread of forest fires, researchers may have an answer to a perplexing ecological and evolutionary problem: why locusts switch from an innocuous, solitary lifestyle to form massive swarms that can devastate crops and strip fields bare. Their report, published online on December 18th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, concludes that once the insects' ranks grow to a certain threshold size, banding together prevents predators from moving from one patch of insects to the next and easily picking the bugs off one by one.

Human parechovirus is a harmless virus which is encountered by most infants and displays few symptoms. Suspected of triggering type 1 diabetes in susceptible people, research methods need to take this "silent" virus into consideration. This comes from findings in a study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Ohio State University scientists believe they are the first in the world to study the molecular underpinnings of cancer by probing individual bonds between an asbestos fiber and human cells.