UK trained doctors and medical students from minority ethnic groups tend to underperform academically compared with their white counterparts, finds a study published on bmj.com today. This attainment gap has persisted for many years and must be tackled to ensure a fair and just method of training and assessing current and future doctors, say the authors. A third of all UK medical students and junior doctors are from minority ethnic groups. Although universities and the NHS are legally required to monitor the admission and progress of students and staff by ethnic group, ...

Lowering cholesterol could help the body's immune system fight viral infections, researchers have found. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have shown a direct link between the workings of the immune system and cholesterol levels. Researchers found that when the body succumbs to a viral infection a hormone in the immune system sends signals to blood cells, causing cholesterol levels to be lowered. Cholesterol produced by our cells is needed for viruses and certain bacteria to grow. Limiting our body's production of cholesterol would therefore curb the opportunity ...

A study has gained new insight into the minds of domestic hens, discovering, for the first time, that domestic hens show a clear physiological and behavioural response when their chicks are mildly distressed. The research by academics at the University of Bristol's Animal Welfare and Behaviour research group, and funded by the BBSRC Animal Welfare Initiative, is published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The study is the first to demonstrate that birds possess one of the important attributes that underpins empathy, and the first study to use both ...

DURHAM, N.C., and SINGAPORE -- The powers that be in Las Vegas figured out something long before neuroscientists at two Duke University medical schools confirmed their ideas this week: Trying to make decisions while sleep-deprived can lead to a case of optimism. The scientists showed, using a functional MRI, that a night of sleep deprivation leads to increased brain activity in brain regions that assess positive outcomes, while at the same time this deprivation leads to decreased activation in the brain areas that process negative outcomes. Sleep-deprived individuals ...

University Park, Pa. -- Crabs, fishing, land use and pollution sources are frequently hot topics for researchers in the Chesapeake Bay area, but finding all the available information, especially remote sensing data, is frequently a chore. Now, ChesapeakeView, a project of the AmericaView consortium, brings together a variety of datasets and makes them available to anyone who needs them for research, planning or other studies. "No simple place existed to find remote sensing information about land use, habitat changes and biodiversity," said Maurie Caitlin Kelly, director ...

The researcher in question is Nadia Skorupa Parachin and the secret of her technique is enzymes that she extracted from garden soil. If ethanol can be successfully made from xylose then ethanol production could increase by over 20 per cent – to the benefit of cheaper environmentally friendly fuel. Ethanol is manufactured by fermenting sugars from plant material. At present, xylose is not used, despite being the second most common type of sugar found in nature. Succeeding with xylose requires good, quick enzymes that can get the yeast to also ferment the less appetising ...

Metabolomics is a post-genomic research field for analysis of low molecular weight compounds in biological systems, and its approaches offer an analysis of metabolite level changes in biological samples. Recently, metabolomic method has shown great potentials in identifying the new diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets for cancers. However, metabolomic studies on cancer metastasis remain scarce. A research article to be published on February 14, 2011 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The authors used metabolomics, which is based on ...

Magnesium-containing cathartics are commonly used to treat chronic constipation. Although hypermagnesemia is a rare clinical condition, it can occur as a side effect of increased intake of magnesium salts. The Japanese government has recently reported fatal cases of hypermagnesemia in adults treated with magnesium oxide. It is now important for pediatricians to know whether hypermagnesemia can develop in children with functional constipation who are receiving daily magnesium oxide treatment. A research article to be published on February 14, 2011 in the World Journal ...

Biliary atresia (BA) is an inflammatory obliterative cholangiopathy with unknown etiology, leading to progressive fibrosis and cirrhosis. Microarray technology, emerged as an indispensable research tool for gene expression profiling, has been used to study the mechanism underlying BA, and allows the simultaneous analysis of thousands of transcripts within a single experiment. Some studies have been performed to investigate the gene expression profiling of livers from BA patients. However, none of them was designed to identify genes that play a key role in the pathogenesis ...

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Western countries. Metastatic liver disease more frequently develops metachronous metastasis following treatment of CRC. It was reported that hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection finally reduces the risk of intrahepatic metastasis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with a higher survival rate and therefore can be considered an important prognostic factor for HCC patients. Rare reports are available on the relation between HBV infection and hepatic metastasis of CRC. A research article ...

The structures inside animals' thigh bones that enable them to support huge loads whilst being relatively lightweight are revealed in research published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The researchers say their work could lead to the development of new materials based on thigh bone geometry. A team from Imperial College London and the Royal Veterinary College collected thigh bone samples from British museum collections and zoos, analysing specimens of the femur bone from 90 different species including the Asian elephant, Etruscan shrew, roadrunner, ...

Forget technology. The best prescription for patients with venous leg ulcers is good quality nursing care – and the occasional belly laugh! A five-year study led from the University of Leeds has shown that ultrasound therapy does nothing to speed up the healing process of leg ulceration – contrary to what had been expected. Traditional methods of nursing care, which are cheaper and easier to deliver, work just as well, the authors conclude. "The 'healing energy' of low-dose ultrasound can make a difference to some medical conditions but with venous leg ulcers, this ...

Research by the University of Liverpool has found that systemic inflammation caused by sepsis can be suppressed by a protein which occurs naturally in a type of roundworm. Sepsis is a serious inflammatory condition, caused by the body over-reacting to infection. The body becomes overwhelmed by bacteria, setting off a series of reactions that lead to inflammation and clotting. It affects around 20 million people worldwide each year, and accounts for a large proportion of intensive care unit admissions. For the past 30 years, sepsis has largely been treated by antibiotics ...

Closely contested major sporting events are followed by a significant increase in traffic fatalities for fans of the winning team, according to new research from North Carolina State University. It turns out there may be more on the line than many sports fans bargained for. "A previous study showed that traffic fatalities increased in the hours following the Super Bowl. We wanted to see if that held true for other high-profile sporting events and, if so, whether the number of fatalities was influenced by whether the game was a close one," says Dr. Stacy Wood, Langdon ...

A recent trial of rituximab in combination with a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor and methotrexate (MTX) in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis (RA) found the safety profile to be consistent with other RA trials with TNF inhibitors. While the trial reported no new safety risks, clear evidence of an efficacy advantage in RA patients receiving the combination therapy was not observed in this study sample. Results of the trial are published in the March issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, a peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Rheumatology. The National ...

Researchers in Europe reported that treatment with modified-release sildenafil significantly reduced the frequency of attacks of Raynaud's phenomenon in patients with limited cutaneous systemic sclerosis (lcSSc), also known as scleroderma. The double-blind, placebo-controlled trial found that sildenafil was well tolerated with only some subjects experiencing minor or moderate side effects. Full findings are available in the March issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). Raynaud's ...

According to rough estimates, there are some 20,000 undiscovered archaeological sites in Israel waiting to be explored. Currently buried under highways or beneath cities, some could reveal historic monuments from the biblical past and give us clues to the expansion and settlement of modern man as he made his way through the Fertile Crescent. But where to begin? Who decides which sites should be "dug" — at considerable financial cost — and which should remain unexplored until a later date? A new tool from Prof. Lev Eppelbaum of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics ...

Bowel cancer patients whose tumors contain defects in specific DNA repair systems are much less likely to experience tumour recurrence post surgery, results from a major clinical study have demonstrated. Scientists who collaborated on the 10 year QUASAR randomised control trial, one of the largest UK clinical trials to test the benefits of chemotherapy in post-surgery bowel cancer patients, have confirmed that colon tumors containing defects in their DNA mismatch repair system are 50 percent less likely to recur following surgery compared to tumors where DNA mismatch ...

A group of researchers from EPFL's Global Health Institute (GHI) and Inserm (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, the French government agency for biomedical research) has discovered that a class of chemotherapy drugs originally designed to inhibit key signaling pathways in cancer cells also kills the parasite that causes malaria. The discovery could quickly open up a whole new strategy for combating this deadly disease. The research, published online in the journal Cellular Microbiology, shows that the malaria parasite depends upon a signaling pathway ...

TORONTO, ON., March 8, 2011—Homeless patients cost about $2,500 more per hospital stay than the average patient, according to a new study by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital. Homeless people with medical or surgical problems arrive at the hospital with underlying health issues and stay longer than others, often because there is no place to send them after their initial medical crisis has been treated, the study found. Those with psychiatric illness arrive at the hospital much sicker than others. The findings suggest the cost of hospitalizing people who are homeless ...

This release is available in German. Magnetic Random Access Memories (MRAM) are the most important new modules on the market of computer storage devices. Like the well known USB-sticks, they store information into static memory, but MRAM offer short access times and unlimited writing properties. Commercial MRAMs have been on the market since 2005. They are, however, still slower than the competitors they have among the volatile storage media. An invention made by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) changes this situation: A special chip connection, in association ...

Getting someone's attention can be easy with a loud noise or a shout, but what if the situation calls for a little more tact? How can a robot use subtle cues to attract a human's notice and tell when it has captured it? In a preliminary study, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found that they can program a robot to understand when it gains a human's attention and when it falls short. The research is being presented today at the Human-Robot Interaction conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. "The primary focus was trying to give Simon, our robot, the ...

Alexandria, VA – In 1993, "Jurassic Park" thrilled the world with the idea that dinosaurs could be resurrected from bits of DNA preserved in mosquitoes trapped in ancient amber. In the 18 years since the movie came out, scientists have been finding that parts of this scenario are closer to reality than anyone ever imagined: Researchers have found microbes living for tens of thousands - and maybe millions - of years inside salt crystals. These findings raise exciting questions, as EARTH explores in "Bacteria Back From the Brink" in the April issue. Could these hibernating ...

This release is available in Spanish and French. The incidence of eating disorders was found to be 2.3-fold higher among Muslim adolescents than among their Christian classmates. Similarly, body dissatisfaction was 1.8-fold higher in the former group. Finally, as a general conclusion, an average of one in four adolescents suffers some type of eating disorder, and 15% suffers body dissatisfaction. These were the conclusions drawn of a research conducted at the University of Granada. The sample was taken from a Spanish multicultural city, Ceuta, where different religious ...

A study published today (09 March) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B by researchers at Rothamsted Research (an institute of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council), and the universities of Lund (Sweden), Greenwich and York, reports the surprising finding that night-flying moths are able to match their songbird counterparts for travel speed and direction during their annual migrations but they use quite different strategies to do so - information that adds to our understanding of the lifestyle of such insects, which are important for maintaining ...