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PeerJ provides academics with two Open Access publication venues: PeerJ (a peer-reviewed academic journal) and PeerJ PrePrints (a 'pre-print server'). Both are focused on the Biological and Medical Sciences, and together they provide an integrated solution for your publishing needs. Submissions open late Summer.

"Performing short cycle sprints three times a week could be enough to prevent and possibly treat type 2 diabetes, a study suggests. Scientists at the University of Bath asked volunteers to perform two 20-second cycle sprints on exercise bikes, three times per week. After six weeks, researchers in the university's department of health saw a 28% improvement in their insulin function."

"Our knowledge of species and functional composition of the human gut microbiome is rapidly increasing, but it is still based on very few cohorts and little is known about variation across the world. By combining 22 newly sequenced faecal metagenomes of individuals from four countries with previously published data sets, here we identify three robust clusters (referred to as enterotypes hereafter) that are not nation or continent specific. We also confirmed the enterotypes in two published, larger cohorts, indicating that intestinal microbiota variation is generally stratified, not continuous. This indicates further the existence of a limited number of well-balanced host-microbial symbiotic states that might respond differently to diet and drug intake."

The AIFB Web Portal is the public web site of the Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods (AIFB) at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. It uses Semantic MediaWiki to provide a highly customised Content Management System. The site provides content in two languages (German and English), and it offers rich views for browsing different kinds of data. The content of the AIFB Web Portal is regularly edited by most members of the institute, from secretary to professor, but it is not open for public editing.

"Our Juliets (as parents longing for grandchildren will recognize with a sigh) may experience the tumult of love for 20 years before they settle down into motherhood. And our Romeos may be poetic lunatics under the influence of Queen Mab until they are well into graduate school. What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness. Fortunately, developmental psychologists and neuroscientists are starting to explain the foundations of that weirdness. Photos: The Trials of Teenagers View Slideshow [SB10001424052970204573704577187080963983566] Everett Collection James Dean in the 1955 film 'Rebel Without A Cause' The crucial new idea is that there are two different neural and psychological systems that interact to turn children into adults"

Tabula will be platform and content agnostic, working with as many brands and versions of tablet computers as possible. Of course, compatibility takes coding hours, so we'll start with one or two platforms and build from there. But let's just say we fully recognize the value of high-end and lower-cost hardware when it comes to solutions to help schools thrive.

"Can computers learn to read? We think so. "Read the Web" is a research project that attempts to create a computer system that learns over time to read the web. Since January 2010, our computer system called NELL (Never-Ending Language Learner) has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day:"

"An IEEE Spectrum contributing editor, Charette is a self-described "risk ecologist" who investigates the impact of risk on technology and society. His interest is both professional and personal: He's a 33-year member of the IEEE Computer Society and has two daughters who are contemplating STEM careers. "Now I can give better career advice to my daughters," he says"

"Igor Efimov, Sarah Gutbrod Using an inexpensive 3-D printer, biomedical engineers have developed a custom-fitted, implantable device with embedded sensors that could transform treatment and prediction of cardiac disorders. The 3-D elastic membrane is made of a soft, flexible, silicon material that is precisely shaped to match the heart's outer layer of the wall. Current technology is two-dimensional and cannot cover the full surface of the epicardium or maintain reliable contact for continual use without sutures or adhesives. The team can then print tiny sensors onto the membrane that can precisely measure temperature, mechanical strain and pH, among other markers, or deliver a pulse of electricity in cases of arrhythmi"

"In short, this site is a record of my learning process as I try to understand aspects of colony health and productivity, and the reasons why various management techniques work (or don't). If you are a beginning beekeeper looking for basic information, or an experienced beekeeper looking for a summary of mite treatment options, I suggest that you go directly to Basic Beekeeping. I started keeping bees as a hobbyist in 1967, and then went on to get university degrees in biological sciences, specializing in entomology. In 1980 I began to build a migratory beekeeping operation in California, and currently run about 1000 hives with my two sons, from which we make our livings. In 1993, the varroa mite arrived in California, and after it wiped out my operation for the second time in 1999, I decided to "hit the books" and use my scientific background to learn to fight back"

"Everybody likes a simple cause and effect - something we can point to and say (ommitting a few choice words to the perpetrators), 'Fix this and the bees will be right again.' Reality is rarely so straightforward. As the bee decline has progressed I've lost count of the simple 'causes' that have been presented. Among the more memorable are: * mobile 'phones (the absolute 'definite cause' of choice a couple of years ago) * mobile base stations, power lines and other strong electromagnetic sources (a perennial favourite for any malaise) * alien abduction (hopefully they have smaller probes for abducted bees...) * God's punishment (pro gay-marriage states in the USA have more cases of CCD) Leo's article shows neonicotinoids are at least a plausible candidate and they are surely not good for bees, but the argument for these being the explicit 'cause' of global bee decline is still not particularly strong. The risk here is that the media and vocal lobbyists are going off on a righteous crusade to the detriment of more diligent, and maybe less newsworthy, efforts to get to the root of a complex problem. Rather than reviewing the evidence here, I recommend a visit to Randy Oliver's website where his two recent articles from the American Bee Journalon this topic can be found, along with some further commentary on his home page. Interested readers can also directly access the study by Henry et. al. (2012a), the commentry on this study by Creswell and Thompson (2012), the response to the comment (Henry et. al. 2012b) and to the meta-analysis of toxicological studies on imidacloprid by Creswell (2010). An example of one such study is Cutler and Scott-Dupree (2007). Links to all are included below. These are original material rather than reportage and demonstrate the complexity of the issue. As food for thought, I'll leave you with the following: * Neonicotinoids are widely used in Australia and our bees are not (yet) in decline."

"Sleep and its role in memory consolidation The role of sleep in the honeybee memory consolidation has been addressed in our lab in two studies so far. Hussaini et al. (2009; http://www.neurobiologie.fu-berlin.de/menzel/Pub_AGmenzel/Sleep Deprivation.pdf) found reduced retention after extinction learning in an olfactory PER experiment if bees are prevented from sleep during the night following extinction learning. Beyaert, Greggers and Menzel tested freely flying bees after navigation learning and found reduced homing rates if the bees could not sleep the night after novel navigation learning (see Beyaert L, Greggers U and Menzel R (2012) Honeybees consolidate navigation memory during sleep. Journal of Experimental Biology 215, 3981-3988"

"But over the century-plus that the prize has been awarded, the Nobel Committees have increasingly seen fit to reward not discoveries, but technological innovations that enable more discoveries. After all, these might confer a greater "benefit to mankind" than any individual discovery. Two examples: PCR and GFP"

"Gears are ubiquitous in the man-made world, found in items ranging from wristwatches to car engines, but it seems that nature invented them first. A species of plant-hopping insect, Issus coleoptratus, is the first living creature known to possess functional gears, a new study finds. The two interlocking gears on the insect's hind legs help synchronize the legs when the animal jumps."

"There is a "significant credibility gap" between researchers' expectations and the likelihood of their forging long-term careers in higher education, a survey has found. More than three-quarters of research staff responding to the Careers in Research Online Survey 2013 said they aspired to a career in higher education and around two-thirds said they expected to achieve this. But it was "unrealistic to expect" that this number of research staff, or even half of those in the early stages of their career, would be able to secure a long-term research role in higher education, says the report, based on the survey produced by Vitae, the careers organisation for researchers."

In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary inside a black hole, in the bulk universe the event horizon of a 4D black hole would be a 3D object - a shape called a hypersphere. When Afshordi's team modelled the death of a 4D star, they found that the ejected material would form a 3D brane surrounding that 3D event horizon, and slowly expand. The authors postulate that the 3D Universe we live in might be just such a brane - and that we detect the brane's growth as cosmic expansion. "Astronomers measured that expansion and extrapolated back that the Universe must have begun with a Big Bang - but that is just a mirage," says Afshordi.

Scientists had thought that there was a single species of housecat-sized Brazilian tigrina. However, the molecular data now show that tigrina populations in northeastern versus southern Brazil are completely separate, with no evidence of interbreeding between them. As such, they are best described as two distinct species.

"I chose S.thermophilus randomly of the two; I could as easily have chosen L.delbrueckii. Fortunately, I didn't, because Tuur Van Balen, syn-bio-artist extraordinaire, has given a practical demonstration for Next Nature on how to do so!"

"The informatics portal io-port.net offers fast and convenient access to about more than two million publications in informatics and related subject areas from all over the world. All information, which up to then had been stored in various data sources, has been consolidated and is now available from one source. All steps required for information retrieval are available via an easy-to-use, powerful interface."

"The History of Science and Technology Collection brings together in digital facsimile two categories of primary and secondary publications: writings about scientific research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and unique or valuable titles in science and technology held by the UW-Madison libraries. "