A chickadee's alarm call carries a surprising amount of informationThere's more than meets the human ear when the black-capped chickadee lets its flock mates know a predator is lurking about by giving out its familiar "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" call.

The small songbirds, which are common throughout much of North America, use that signature call in a wide variety of social interactions including warning of predators. And it turns out that those alarms are far more subtle and information-packed than scientists previously imagined.

Microtubules are active protein polymers critical to the structure and function of cells and the process of cell division. In a living cell their growing ends constantly elongate and retreat in a thrashing frenzy of polymerization and depolymerization, like the writhing snakes of Medusa's hair. Known prosaically as "dynamic instability," this ongoing rapid growth and shrinkage is key to the diverse workings of microtubules in the cell.

Impressive impact factors prove that BioMed Central's Open Access journals are high quality and widely read and cited. Journals published by BioMed Central have again received impact factors that compare well with equivalent subscription titles, it was announced today, with five titles in the top five of their specialty. The high impact factors for these journals affirm that they are respected by researchers, and are fast becoming the place for authors to submit important research findings.

The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (RIC) announced at a press conference today that it is pursuing advancements in engineering and neuroscience technology which have the opportunity to transform the lives of millions of people within the next five years suffering from paralysis, major consequences of stroke, amputation and limb loss.

In a demonstration of one of these breakthroughs, the Institute unveiled the world's first "bionic man" showcasing his bionic arm which is the most advanced prosthesis of its kind today based on its precise, thought-powered movement and its greatest range of motion. The RIC also announced the donation of a $5 million gift from the Searle Funds at the Chicago Community Trust to establish the Searle Program for Neurological Restoration, which will oversee progress to help achieve these breakthroughs.

The fossilized skeleton of a small crocodile relative excavated last year at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona throws a wrench into theories of how and where the dinosaurs arose more than 210 million years ago at the end of the Triassic Period.

The animal, one of many creatures from the Late Triassic known only from their teeth, was thought to be an ancestor of the plant-eating ornithischian dinosaurs like Stegosaurus and Triceratops, which roamed the world millions of years later in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) introduced a high-capacity version of its human protein Multiple Affinity Removal System, which removes up to 99 percent of the six most common proteins from human blood serum. The new system allows researchers to purify approximately twice the volume of serum per sample compared with other protein removal systems, and will facilitate the detection and identification of low-abundance proteins that may serve as markers for a wide range of diseases.

UC Irvine School of Medicine researchers have discovered how new neurons born from endogenous neural stem cells are sent to regions of the brain where they can replace old and dying cells, a finding that suggests how stem cell therapies can be specifically targeted to brain regions affected by neurodegenerative diseases or by stroke.

Regulating when and where certain proteins are made is crucial to the normal functioning of living things. To make proteins, information from DNA is transcribed into RNA molecules and then translated into the amino acids building blocks of proteins. But not all genes code for proteins--some make RNA molecules called microRNAs. These small RNA molecules interfere with--and therefore control--the production of proteins. A new paper in PLoS Computational Biology shows how important microRNAs are in the biology of diverse.