An interdisciplinary team has uncovered the first genetic evidence of the Plague of Justinian in the Eastern Mediterranean, reshaping the history of pandemics and our modern understanding of how pandemics emerge, recur and spread -- and why they remain a persistent feature of human civilization.

Humans could learn a thing or two from orangutans when it comes to maintaining a balanced, protein-filled diet.            Great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia, orangutans are marvels of adaptation to the vagaries of food supply in the wild, according to an international team of researchers led by a Rutgers University-New Brunswick scientist. The critically endangered primates outshine modern humans in avoiding obesity through their balanced choices of food and exercise, the scientists found.                                                                                                                                                  The researchers reported their findings, based on 15 years of firsthand observations of wild orangutans in the jungles of Borneo, in Science Advances.