A remarkable new discovery shows the four-eyed spookfish to be the first vertebrate ever found to use mirrors, rather than lenses, to focus light in its eyes.

Recent animal studies have shown that clioquinol -- an 80-year old drug once used to treat diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders -- can reverse the progression of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.

At first, figuring out how pebble-sized rocks organize themselves in evenly-spaced patterns in sand seemed simple and even intuitive.

Human-made light sources can alter natural light cycles, causing animals that rely on light cues to make mistakes when moving through their environment. In the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, a collaboration of ecologists, biologists and biophysicists has now shown that in addition to direct light, cues from polarized light can trigger animal behaviors leading to injury and often death.

When development and conservation go hand-in-hand.

Stem cells are the body's primal cells, retaining the youthful ability to develop into more specialized types of cells over many cycles of cell division. How do they do it? Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have identified a gene, named "scrawny", that appears to be a key factor in keeping a variety of stem cells in their undifferentiated state.

A team of University of Toronto physicists has demonstrated a new technique to squeeze light to the fundamental quantum limit, a finding that has potential applications for high-precision measurement, next-generation atomic clocks, novel quantum computing and our most fundamental understanding of the universe.

Obstructive sleep apnea decreases blood flow to the brain, elevates blood pressure within the brain and eventually harms the brain’s ability to modulate these changes and prevent damage to itself, according to a new study published by The American Physiological Society. The findings may help explain why people with sleep apnea are more likely to suffer strokes and to die in their sleep.

AP (via Yahoo!) reports that the Bush Administration has established three protected zones in the Pacific Ocean, using national monument status to protect the areas from fishing and mining.

Women who smoke during pregnancy risk delivering aggressive kids, according to a new Canada-Netherlands study published in the journal Development and Psychopathology.