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A global treaty on the harvesting of genetic resources will probably be ratified by July 2012, the UN executive secretary on biological diversity said Tuesday.

Scientists in the UK and US, including researchers at Arizona State University, have been awarded funding to improve the photosynthetic process as a means of producing renewable fuel.

Scientists studying populations of gray wolves in the USA's Yellowstone National Park have developed a way to predict how changes in the environment will impact on the animals' number, body size and genetics, amongst other biological traits.

The diversity of the biological world is astounding. How do new species arise? In the traditional view, most speciation events occur under special circumstances, when a physical barrier arises and divides a population into groups that can no longer interbreed. The populations diverge genetically and eventually can't interbreed even if the barrier disappears.

global warming may affect the capacity of trees to store carbon by altering forest nitrogen cycling, concludes a study led by Jerry Melillo, Distinguished Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) Ecosystems Center, and published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. Rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust.

Could electronic components made from human blood be the key to creating cyborg interfaces? Circuitry that links human tissues and nerve cells directly to an electronic device, such as a robotic limb or artificial eye might one day be possible thanks to the development of biological components.