A male club-winged manakin - Courtesy of Kimberly BostwickHummingbirds and rattlesnakes move parts of their bodies at amazing speeds. But male club-winged manakins -- colorful, sparrow-sized South American birds -- have them both beat, vibrating their wings at more than 100 cycles per second, twice the speed of hummingbirds. The bird uses this unprecedented feat not for fight or flight, but to impress females with its violinlike hum.

Imagine a cancer drug that can burrow into a tumor, seal the exits and detonate a lethal dose of anti-cancer toxins, all while leaving healthy cells unscathed.

MIT researchers have designed a nanoparticle to do just that.

Previously unrecognized stem cells found in the bone marrow and blood of mice can "restock" a depleted ovary with new egg cells within weeks, according to new research published in this week's issue of the journal Cell.

Effective control of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) requires treatment of the sexual partners of infected patients. A new study shows that providing infected men with antibiotics to give their partners is more effective than traditional means of contacting and treating the partners, according to an article in the Sept. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online. Men with chlamydia or gonorrhea were more likely to see and talk to their female partners about the STD when given medicine to give to their partners than the men who were simply told to inform their partners of their STD exposure.

In cancer research, biomarkers are molecules that indicate the presence of cancer in the body. Most are based on abnormal changes or mutations in genes, RNA, proteins and metabolites. Since the molecular changes that occur during tumor development can take place over a number of years, biomarkers potentially can be used to detect cancers early, determine prognosis and monitor disease progression and therapeutic response. Candidate biomarkers, however, frequently are found only in relatively low concentrations amid a sea of other biomolecules, so both biomarker research and possible diagnostic tests depend critically on the ability to make highly sensitive and accurate biochemical measurements.

The finding has led to the development of a new chemical compound that can accelerate this process (called stem cell mobilization) in mice--which could eventually lead to more efficient stem cell harvesting for human use.

Circulating stem cells play a minor role in repairing lung damage, according to a team of scientists who used male and female chromosomal differences to analyze the repair process in lung transplant patients.

The National Research Council Biotechnology Research Institute (NRC-BRI) today announced the publication of an article that reveals the complete genomic annotation of Candida albicans, a fungal pathogen that is one of the main causes of infection in people with weakened immune systems, and currently very difficult to treat.

The rivers of South America's Amazon basin are "breathing" far harder – cycling the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide more quickly – than anyone realized.

Most of the carbon being exhaled – or outgassed – as carbon dioxide from Amazonian rivers and wetlands has spent a mere 5 years sequestered in the trees, other plants and soils of the surrounding landscape, U.S. and Brazilian researchers report in the July 28 issue of Nature.

Ragoletis fruit fly. The animal family tree may not be filled just with forks, but may also contain knots: hybrid species with two different ancestors rather than one, according to a team of Penn State researchers.

"We are looking for the origin of species," says Dr. Dietmar Schwarz, post-doctoral researcher in entomology. "In animals, people envision the formation of a new species by a split of one ancestral species to two derived species or a branching of one species from another."

However, according to Schwarz, another way to get a new species is for two species to hybridize – mate with each other – forming a new species lineage while the parental species persists.

Data presented at IAS build a compelling case for FUZEON (enfuvirtide, formerly known as T-20) to be combined with the newest drugs to give patients facing resistance their best chance of achieving undetectable viral load – the optimal treatment goal for all people living with HIV.

Scientists at the MUHC have made progress in understanding what causes migraines. The research, published in the new issue of the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveals how gene mutations known to cause a form of inherited migraine--the kind that cause debilitating headaches and light flashes known as auras--target a cellular process involved in brain cell communication.