The National Center for Biotechnology Information Coffee Break is a biweekly series of short reports on recent biomedical discoveries. "Each report is about 400 words, and is usually based on a discovery reported in one or more articles from the recently published peer-reviewed literature." Each report incorporates interactive tutorials, figures, and links to related sources for more information. Previous topics include: "The compound eye of flies divulges evolutionary secrets," "The neighborhood of Alzheimer's amyloid precursor protein," and "Ubiquitin links Parkinson's disease genes." Aimed at an academic and professional audience, the NCBI Coffee Break is a concise yet content rich current awareness tool.