As go the elephants, so go the trees. That’s the message of a new study published in the May 2013 issue of Forest Ecology and Management that found more than a dozen elephant-dependent tree species suffered catastrophic population declines in new plant growths after forest elephants were nearly extirpated from their ecosystems. The fruit-bearing trees [...]

His name is Clay. He’s a happy, creative 24-year-old male who prefers to live in solitude. Although most of the time he is peaceful, he has been known to become aggressive and violent in a manner that can terrify the people who love him. If Clay were human, he would probably have been diagnosed with [...]

In a move that’s probably long overdue, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced last week that it will conduct a status review to determine if captive chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) should be reclassified from “threatened” to the more protected status “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Wild-born chimpanzees have been fully protected under [...]

A medical emergency helicopter can swoop down to pick up a trauma victim and often deliver him or her to a hospital much faster than a road-bound ambulance can. So it might seem obvious that these speedy aircraft, dispatched from major medical centers with top-of-the-line personnel and equipment, are more likely to save a life [...]

As the U.S. population ages and continues packing on the pounds, knee replacement surgeries are becoming increasingly common. More than 650,000 total knee replacements were performed in 2008 (according to the latest data available). And as materials and surgical technologies improve, the promise of newer and better implants is making the procedure even more appealing [...]

The U.S. government apologized Friday for a previously unreported experiment that infected hundreds of un-consenting Guatemalans with syphilis in the 1940s. The research was "clearly unethical," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a joint statement. "Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we [...]