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COLLEGE STATION – "Four and 20 black birds baked in a pie" – but wait, one has blue-gray eyes.

That discovery, backed by DNA analysis, means scientists now know there is one more species of black shrike in the Albertine Rift of Africa than was previously thought. And if Dr. Gary Voelker has his way, he'll soon be studying the bird's habits to determine its susceptibility to the deforestation now occurring across its native habitat.

The genes that are most beneficial to males are the most disadvantageous for females, and vice versa. However, this genetic conflict between the sexes is important in maintaining genetic variation within a species, researchers at Uppsala University have shown in a study on fruit-flies published in the open access journal PLoS Biology.

Jessica Shearer and colleagues analyse data from 147 countries to identify factors that influence the time taken to introduce routine vaccination, using vaccination against Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) as a case study. By analysing data from 1990 and 2007 they found that vaccine price and GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) eligibility were both associated with quicker decisions to adopt the Hib vaccine.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted an analysis of worldwide use of Haemophilus influenza Type b vaccine (Hib) to determine what factors influenced a nation's adoption of the vaccine. The study found that a nation's eligibility for support from the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization (GAVI) and whether a country's neighbors used the vaccine were major influencing factors in addition to price of the vaccine. The findings appear in the March 16 edition of PLoS Medicine.

Drugs increasingly used to treat cancer could have a major impact on a wide range of infectious diseases, according to new research.

Anti-angiogenic drugs are used to try and prevent cancers from stimulating the growth of the blood vessels they need to survive and grow.

New research by the Centre for Immunology and Infection at the University of York suggests the same drugs may help in the treatment of other diseases including visceral leishmaniasis which kills 70,000 people worldwide every year.

PHILADELPHIA, March 16, 2010 -- An expert panel convened by the American College of Physicians (ACP) says that properly designed pay-for-performance (P4P) programs can strengthen the relationship between physicians and patients and increase the likelihood that physicians will deliver the best possible care. The panel's analysis appears in the March 16 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (March 15, 2010) Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School have discovered a chemical that may, over the long term, protect the hearts of Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients – a fatal and most common form of muscular dystrophy in children.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---The muscle-building abilities of hormones known as insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) are legendary. Just do an online search and you'll find not only scientific papers discussing the effects of IGFs on the cells that give rise to muscle tissue, but also scores of ads touting the purported benefits of IGF supplements for bodybuilding.

But in spite of widespread interest in these potent molecules, key details about how IGFs work on muscle cells have been lacking.

HOUSTON - Increased understanding of the Skp2 gene and its relation to cellular senescence may lead to the development of novel agents that can suppress tumor development in common types of cancer, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center report in the journal Nature.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The American Academy of Neurology has issued a new guideline recommending the most effective treatments to help people with Parkinson's disease who experience sleep, constipation, and sexual problems, which are common but often underrecognized symptoms. The guideline is published in the March 16, 2010, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Washington, DC – Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) have determined that something in female sex chromosomes appears to trigger a rise in blood pressure after the onset of menopause. This finding challenges the current belief that sex hormones are largely responsible for regulating blood pressure.

Parents of children undergoing ear, nose and throat surgery do not appear to remember all of the risks of the procedures explained to them by clinicians, even when detailed surgical risk counseling and data sheets are used, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

More than 10 percent of newborns who receive oxygenation and ventilation using nasal continuous airway pressure in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) may experience complications inside or outside the nose, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Augmenting the lips with grafts of muscle and connective tissue from the neck appears to result in improved appearance for at least two years, according to a report in the March/April issue of Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Bathing trauma patients daily using cloths containing the antiseptic chlorhexidine may be associated with a decreased rate of colonization and infection by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other difficult-to-treat bacteria, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.