In a 0-60 mph stand off, most cars would be hard pressed to give a cheetah a run for its money, and at their highest recorded speed of 29m/s (65mph) cheetahs easily outstrip the fastest greyhounds. But, according to Alan Wilson from the Royal Veterinary College, UK, there is no clear reason for the cheetah's exceptional performance. 'Cheetahs and greyhounds are known to use a rotary gallop and physically they are remarkably similar, yet there is this bewitching difference in maximum speed of almost a factor of two', he says. Teaming up with Penny Hudson and Sandra Corr, Wilson decided to compare how cheetahs and greyhounds sprint to see if there were any mechanical differences between the two animals' movements and they publish their findings in The Journal of Experimental Biology at http://jeb.biologists.org.

A team of researchers led by UC Davis Health System has found that human alpha-defensin 6 (HD6) – a key component of the body's innate defense system – binds to microbial surfaces and forms "nanonets" that surround, entangle and disable microbes, preventing bacteria from attaching to or invading intestinal cells.

Regenerative medicine researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have reached an early milestone in a long-term project that aims to build replacement kidneys in the lab to help solve the shortage of donor organs.