Chapel Hill, NC, USA. New evidence shows that the pelvis hipbones continue to widen as people advance in age from 20 years to 79 years, even though growth in height has ceased.

By the age 20, most people have reached skeletal maturity and do not grow any taller. Until recently it was assumed that skeletal enlargement elsewhere in the body also stopped by age 20 and any observed widening was the result of increased body fat.

Boston, MA, USA. Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) have devised a way to measure the physical forces that guide how cells migrate during the chaotic, but collective, migration of cells.

The physical forces that guide how cells migrate — how they manage to get from place to place in a coordinated fashion inside the living body — have been poorly understood.

Boston, MA, USA. A new computational model can analyze any type of complex network — biological, social or electronic — and reveal the critical points that can be used to control the entire system.

The complex network of genes that regulate cellular metabolism might seem hopelessly complex, and efforts to control such a system futile, but the new model can show which points in the network are critical to gene interactions and expression.

Salt Lake City, UT, USA. Males hit harder when they stand on two legs than on all fours, and when hitting downward rather than upward — giving tall, upright males a fighting advantage, helping to explain why our ape-like human ancestors began walking upright and why women tend to prefer tall men.

New study results are consistent with the hypothesis that our ancestors adopted bipedal posture so that males would be better at beating and killing each other when competing for females.

Austin, TX, USA. Sodium channels evolved prior to the evolution of the nervous system, demonstrating how key innovations in complex traits can evolve gradually, often from parts that evolved for other purposes.

New findings help explain our current configuration, while highlighting the potential importance of evolutionary developments. Genetic mutations or changes in our morphology can be dangerous, or they can prove useful when solving an organism's current problems, factors that influence fur