King penguin. We are used to hearing about the effects of climate change in terms of unusual animal behaviour, such as altering patterns of fish and bird migration. However, scientists at the University of Birmingham are trying out an alternative bio-indicator – the king penguin – to investigate whether they can be used to monitor the effects of climate change.

Use of certain common antiviral drugs during a recent influenza B epidemic in Japan showed the development of viruses with partial resistance to the drugs, according to a study in the April 4 issue of JAMA.

Rabies, a relentless, ancient scourge, may hold a key to defeating another implacable foe: HIV. Scientists at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia have used a drastically weakened rabies virus to ferry HIV-related proteins into animals, in essence, vaccinating them against an AIDS-like disease. The early evidence shows that the vaccine – which doesn’t protect against infection – prevents development of disease.

Researchers have discovered a factor that controls blood sugar's manufacture in a novel way: by limiting the supply of its building blocks. The findings are reported in the April issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, published by Cell Press.

Filtering white cells from donor blood before a transfusion is much safer for patients and long overdue as a national standard for all surgical procedures, according to University of Rochester researchers who present their analysis in the April journal, Transfusion.

A Sandia National Laboratories research team led by Anup Singh is taking a new approach to studying how immune cells respond to pathogens in the first few minutes and hours of exposure.

Using a nuclear medicine technique and molecular imaging to "see" programmed cell loss—the body's normal way of getting rid of unneeded or abnormal cells—may help in early identification of those individuals who are at risk of developing heart failure, say researchers in the April Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Cleaner engines, cleaner air and more uses for local farm products were the focus of a just-completed study of biodiesel as an alternative fuel source on selected Ontario farms. This province-wide initiative is the only one of its kind in Canada. It involved six farms to evaluate the effectiveness of using biodiesel in agriculture.

Why do male owls hoot? Researchers from the Centre d'Études Biologiques de Chizé (France) and the University of Sussex (UK) have studied the vocal communication of male European Scops owls, one of the smallest living species of nocturnal raptors. The study, published in the April issue of the American Naturalist, was conducted between June 2003 and June 2005 on the isle of Oléron, off the west coast of France, where Christian Bavoux and Guy Burneleau have been studying the local scops owl population since 1981.

The cure for cancer is one step closer this week with the first collections of cancer tissue taking place at the new Wesley Research Institute Tissue Bank.

One of the persistent riddles of the deadly 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic is why it struck different cities with varying severity. Why were some municipalities such as St. Louis spared the fate of the hard-hit cities like Philadelphia when both implemented similar public health measures? What made the difference, according to two independent studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was not only how but also how rapidly different cities responded.

Two bottlenose dolphin males, PL and Gallatin, are sparring in Doubtful Sound, New Zealand. Mating strategies are straightforward in bottlenose dolphins, or are they? Much of the work carried on male-female relationships in that species to date show that males tend to coerce females who are left with little choice about with whom to mate. This explains the complex relationships we observe in male bottlenose dolphins, which are only paralleled by human social strategies: the formation of alliances and alliances of alliances, also called coalitions. These alliances and coalitions are then used to out-compete other male bands to access females.