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Researchers have recently found a new reason for doctors to listen to the heart: certain heart rhythms may provide critical information about the health of our kidneys.

Daniel Brotman , professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, and colleagues analyzed data from 13,241 individuals enrolled in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study. The researchers found that participants with a high resting heart rate and a low beat-to-beat heart rate variability were more likely to develop kidney malfunction.

It is a phenomenon that has eluded description for centuries. Today's supercomputers are not up to the task of simulating it in detail. And the great physicist Richard Feynman reportedly called it "the most important unsolved problem of classical physics." [More]

By Leigh Coleman

WAVELAND, Mississippi (Reuters) - Coastal Mississippi is facing its biggest environmental crisis since Hurricane Katrina as oil from a leaking BP well in the Gulf of Mexico fouls its beaches and creeps onto inshore wetlands.

A team of roboticists and computer scientists has created a truly three-dimensional display scheme , with multiple layers of water serving as the display surfaces. [More]

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health have identified long-sought and elusive broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV in a pair of papers published in the July 9 issue of Science . These proteins produced by the innate immune system are crucial for creating a preventive vaccine , and could also have therapeutic uses developed in the coming years or decades. [More]

For many, the warm glow of fireflies in the night air is a sure sign that summer has arrived. After dark, these bioluminescent beetles are generally visible only when they emit flashes of yellow, green or pale red from their lower abdomen as part of their mating ritual. Some species of firefly have found their own key to successful coupling-- synchronous flashing patterns, a phenomenon that has attracted the attention of a team of researchers studying what pattern recognition tells us about how the brain is wired. [More]

Earthquakes are rattling the globe this year, but the number of atmospheric catastrophes, like floods , is multiplying faster as the world warms, according to the lead climate researcher at a global insurance corporation.

Haiti, Chile and China suffered jarring quakes in the first half of 2010, resulting in more than 225,000 deaths. Nearly all of those occurred in Haiti during a January shake, marking a global spree of tectonic rumblings that caused $38 billion in total losses, according to catastrophe data collected by insurance giant Munich Re .

Stress is often linked to heart disease and other ailments, but a new study suggests that the strains of living in crowded and challenging physical environments might mitigate against cancer. Scientists found that simply placing mice afflicted with cancer in a more complex living environment resulted in a remarkable reduction in tumor growth. [More]