Do speakers of different languages build sentence structure in the same way? In a neuroimaging study published in PLOS Biology, scientists from the Max Planck institute for Psycholinguistics, Donders Institute and Radboud University in Nijmegen recorded the brain activity of participants listening to Dutch stories. In contrast to English, sentence processing in Dutch was based on a strategy for predicting what comes next rather than a ‘wait-and-see’ approach, showing that strategies may differ across languages.

Non-persistent human papillomavirus (HPV) infections are characterized by a sharp increase in viral load followed by a long plateau, according to a study published January 21^st in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Samuel Alizon of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France, and colleagues.

As males age their reproductive success typically declines. A study in fruit flies, led by University of Oxford researchers has found that while old males do produce fewer offspring than young males, this is not because they have fewer sperm, but it is due to seminal fluid limitation. This study highlights the importance of the seminal fluid in reproductive success and may have crucial implications for improving animal fertility and IVF.