The BMJ today calls on the next Secretary of State for Health to "secure the NHS's future as the best and fairest health service in the world." In an open letter, Editor in chief, Dr Fiona Godlee, and colleagues say England's NHS is stretched close to breaking point - and they set down what they believe is needed to heal the NHS. They point to current problems, such as virtually flat-line funding in real terms since 2010, the growing demands of an aging population, and extreme cuts to social care, that have "exacerbated the pressures, causing knock-on effects across ...

The likelihood of record-breaking warm years in England is set to substantially increase as a result of the human influence on the climate, new research suggests. In a study published today, 1 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, an international team of researchers has shown that the chances of England experiencing a record-breaking warm year, such as the one seen in 2014, is at least 13 times more likely as a result of anthropogenic climate change. This is according to climate model simulations and detailed analyses of the Central England ...

Making a series of relatively minor and realistic changes to UK diets would not only reduce UK diet-related greenhouse gas emissions [1] by nearly a fifth, but could also extend average life expectancy by eight months, according to new research led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. The findings are outlined in two papers. The first, published in Climatic Change, estimates the greenhouse gas emissions associated with current UK diets and with diets modified to meet World Health Organization (WHO) dietary recommendations, and the second, in BMJ Open (1 ...

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a technique to allow people to cast their election vote online - even if their home computers are suspected of being infected with viruses. Taking inspiration from the security devices issued by some banks, the security and privacy research group at Birmingham, led by Professor Mark Ryan, has developed a system that allows people to vote by employing independent hardware devices in conjunction with their PCs. The new technique offers a fresh contribution to the debate surrounding e-voting and could be ready ...

Patients receiving care from commercial providers of out-of-hours care report poorer ratings of care when compared with not-for-profit or NHS providers, a new study has shown. In the first study of its kind, a team led by the University of Exeter Medical School analysed results from more than 80,000 eligible patients who responded to the English General Practice Patient Survey, and who reported their experience of using an out-of-hours service in the past six months. The work, published online in the BMJ on Friday May 1, was funded by NIHR and involved collaborators at ...

New research published today in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) indicates that for each 5% increase of a person's total energy intake provided by sweet drinks including soft drinks, the risk of developing type 2 diabetes may increase by 18%. However, the study also estimates that replacing the daily consumption of one serving of a sugary drink with either water or unsweetened tea or coffee can lower the risk of developing diabetes by between 14% and 25%. This research is based on the large EPIC-Norfolk study which included ...

Commercial providers of out of hours GP care in England are associated with poorer experience of care compared with NHS or not for profit providers, finds a study in The BMJ this week. The researchers say further work is needed to better understand the reasons for this finding. Out of hours GP care in England (operated between 6.30 pm and 8 am on weekdays and throughout weekends and public holidays) is currently delivered by a combination of NHS, not for profit, and commercial providers. After concerns over variation in the quality of out of hours care, the Care Quality ...

A new study suggests that engaging in low intensity activities such as standing may not be enough to offset the health hazards of sitting for long periods of time. On the bright side, adding two minutes of walking each hour to your routine just might do the trick. These findings were published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). Numerous studies have shown that sitting for extended periods of time each day leads to increased risk for early death, as well as heart disease, diabetes and other health conditions. Considering that 80 percent ...

Highlight In an observational study that followed participants for an average of just under 3 years, a "trade-off" of sedentary activity with low-intensity activity was not beneficial, but a trade-off of 2 minutes/hour of sedentary activity with an equal amount of light-intensity activity was associated with 33% lower risk of dying in the general population and a 41% lower risk of dying in the individuals with chronic kidney disease. Previous research suggests that sitting for long periods of time may increase the risk of disease and early death. Washington, DC ...

A new study by Johns Hopkins researchers concludes that most U.S. clinical registries that collect data on patient outcomes are substandard and lack critical features necessary to render the information they collect useful for patients, physicians and policy makers. Findings of the study, published ahead of print April 24 in the Journal for Healthcare Quality, reveal poor data monitoring and reporting that researchers say are hurting national efforts to study disease, guide patient choice of optimal treatments, formulate rational health policies and track in a meaningful ...

"The word, virus, connotes morbidity and mortality, but that bad reputation is not universally deserved," said Marilyn Roossinck, PhD, Professor of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology and Biology at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park. "Viruses, like bacteria, can be important beneficial microbes in human health and in agriculture," she said. Her review of the current literature on beneficial viruses appeared ahead of print April 24 in the Journal of Virology, which is published by the American Society for Microbiology. In sharp contrast to ...

Scientists require high-resolution imaging of plant cells to study everything from fungal infections to reproduction in maize. These images are captured with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), where an electron microscope focuses beams of electrons to increase magnification of objects. SEM is a common technique for all fields of science. However, preparing objects for SEM and other common imaging methods can compromise delicate biological samples. Freeze-drying of material, electron beams, and vacuum pressure in the microscope can all result in cell damage, which is ...

New research has shown that children who display increasing levels of inattention at the age of seven are at risk of worse academic outcomes in their GCSE examinations. Researchers at the Universities of Nottingham and Bristol studied more than 11,000 children as part of the research which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and is published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The findings of the research have a range of implications for parents, teachers and clinicians. The research was led by Kapil ...

If you're in the market for a new car, and especially if you have a trade-in, the latest research from the USC Marshall School of Business marketing department suggests you aren't getting the deal you think you are getting. New research from USC Marshall School of Business associate professors of marketing Anthony Dukes and Sivaramakrishnan Siddarth shows that a consumer with a trade-in actually forks over more money to the dealer than consumers without a trade-in. "The Informational Role of Product Trade-Ins for Pricing Durable Goods" is forthcoming in the Journal ...

Results to be published in the Journal of Family and Economic Issues suggest that having short-term household debt -- credit cards and overdue bills -- increases depressive symptoms. The association is particularly strong among unmarried people, people reaching retirement age and those who are less well educated, according to a new study by lead author Lawrence Berger of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These are the first results to show the impact of different types of debt on depression and their effects on different sectors of the US population. Little evidence ...

Scientists are using a variety of buoys and autonomous underwater vehicles to record and archive sounds from marine mammals and fish species in the western North Atlantic through a new listening network known as the U.S. Northeast Passive Acoustic Sensing Network (NEPAN). Stretching from the northern Gulf of Maine to the New York Bight in the northwest Atlantic Ocean, NEPAN provides year-round, long-term information on the presence and physical distribution of vocal whales, dolphins and porpoises and some fish species. The archived and near-real-time data comes from recorders ...

Researchers at Aalto University (Finland) and Amherst College (USA) have observed a point-like monopole in a quantum field itself for the first time. This discovery connects to important characteristics of the elusive monopole magnet. The results were just published in Science magazine. The researchers performed an experiment in which they manipulated a gas of rubidium atoms prepared in a nonmagnetic state near absolute zero temperature. Under these extreme conditions they were able to create a monopole in the quantum-mechanical field that describes the gas. 'In this ...

LA JOLLA -- A study tying the aging process to the deterioration of tightly packaged bundles of cellular DNA could lead to methods of preventing and treating age-related diseases such as cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease, as detailed April 30, 2015, in Science. In the study, scientists at the Salk Institute and the Chinese Academy of Science found that the genetic mutations underlying Werner syndrome, a disorder that leads to premature aging and death, resulted in the deterioration of bundles of DNA known as heterochromatin. The discovery, made possible through ...

HOUSTON - (April 30, 2015) - With the Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2000 coming to an end in 2015, and the new Sustainable Development Goals now in the works to establish a set of targets for the future of international development, experts at Baylor College of Medicine have developed a new tool to show why neglected tropical diseases, the most common infections of the world's poor, should be an essential component of these goals. Using World Health Organization data for the number people at risk of parasitic worm infections in each ...

A detailed study of marine animals that died out over the past 23 million years can help identify which animals and ocean ecosystems may be most at risk of extinction today, according to an international team of paleontologists and ecologists. In a paper to be published in the May 1 issue of the journal Science, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and other institutions report that worldwide patterns of extinction remained remarkably similar over this period, with the same groups of animals showing similar rates of extinction throughout and with a ...

Demand for seafood from wild fisheries and aquaculture around the world has nearly doubled over the past four decades. In the past several years, major retailers in developed countries have committed to source their seafood from only sustainably certified fisheries and aquaculture, even though it is not clear where that supply will come from. A team of researchers led by the University of California, Davis, has focused its attention on fishery improvement projects, or FIPs, which are designed to bring seafood from wild fisheries to the certified market, with only a promise ...

HIV-1 continues to spread globally. While neither a cure, nor an effective vaccine are available, recent focus has been put on 'treatment-for-prevention', which is a method by which treatment is used to reduce the contagiousness of an infected person. A study published this week in PLOS Computational Biology challenges current treatment paradigms in the context of 'treatment for prevention' against HIV-1. Sulav Duwal, Max von Kleist and their collaborators develop and employ optimal control theory to compute and assess diagnostic-guided vs. pro-active treatment strategies ...

Proteins inside a cell are in constant motion, changing shape continuously in order to carry out their functions. In addition, their multiple component atoms each have individual patterns of motion, making the entire protein a system of non-stop highly complex movement. Understanding how a protein moves is the key to developing drugs that can efficiently interact with it. But because of this complexity, protein motion has been notoriously difficult to study. Scientists at EPFL, IBS-Grenoble, and ENS-Lyon, have developed a new method for studying protein motion by first ...

The fossil record helps to predict which kinds of animals are more likely to go extinct. When combined with information about hotspots of human impacts and climate-change predictions, Smithsonian scientists and colleagues pinpoint animal groups and geographic areas of highest concern for marine conservation in the May 1 issue of Science magazine. "Just as some groups of people are more prone to health problems like diabetes or heart disease, we can tell from the fossil record which groups of animals are naturally more likely to go extinct," said Aaron O'Dea, paleontologist ...

If you thought that a beetle with a machine gun built into its rear end was something that only exists in sci-fi movies, you should talk to Wendy Moore at the University of Arizona. Many beetles secrete foul-smelling or bad-tasting chemicals from their abdomens to ward off predators, but bombardier beetles take it a step further. When threatened, they combine chemicals in an explosive chemical reaction chamber in their abdomen to simultaneously synthesize, heat and propel their defensive load as a boiling hot spray, complete with "gun smoke." They can even precisely ...