news 2013

Homeless women are not accessing the support of social services that they need to progress due to a lack of service coordination and the complex needs of the service users, a recent project has found. Researchers at the University of Bristol found that homeless women 'are used to making themselves invisible in order to survive' and are therefore a hard-to-reach group for social services to work with.

12 December 2013 With Christmas just around the corner, a time where people can face emotional difficulties, stress or isolation, a University of Sydney study of close relatives is set to shed new light on one of Australia's most debilitating illnesses. Depression affects one in six Australians at some point in their lives, and there are one million of us living with the illness right now.

The G8 summit has announced today the launch of a £4 million research project about improving life with dementia. This new project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and National Institute for Health Research hopes to answer some key questions: How can people with dementia be supported to live well?  What affects their ability to do this and when should support be offered to help people live well with this challenging disease?

First, the number of chromosomes in a cell changes, then an avalanche of further mutations occur that transform the cell into a cancer cell, according to a well-known - but untested - theory. A research group at Lund University in Sweden has now shown that the theory is not correct and constitutes a dead end for research.

11 December 2013 It is well known that type 2 diabetes raises the risk of dementia. The reasons for this are less clear, but one explanation could be insulin resistance in the brain, according to Malin Wennström, a researcher at Lund University’s Molecular Memory Research Unit. She has received EUR 700,000 from the Swedish Research Council to investigate her theory.

A mechanism in the brain which controls tics in children with Tourette Syndrome (TS) has been discovered by scientists at The University of Nottingham. The study, which has been published in the British Psychological Society's Journal of Neuropsychology , could herald new non-drug therapies to help young people with TS overcome the repetitive physical movements and vocal sounds which characterise their condition.

Taking probiotics in pregnancy or giving them to infants doesn't prevent asthma, UAlberta medical research shows. Meghan Azad and her research team reviewed clinical trials from around the world and found that probiotics had no effect on preventing asthma in kids. Taking probiotics has health benefits, but preventing childhood asthma isn't one of them, according to recently published research led by medical scientists at the University of Alberta.

A new study by Canadian researchers may pave the way for more effective treatment of an aggressive and deadly type of brain tumour, known as ETMR/ETANTR. The tumour, which is seen only in children under four, is almost always fatal, despite aggressive treatment. The study proposes a new model for how this brain tumour develops and suggests possible targets to investigate for novel therapies.

The University of Liverpool and a team of European experts will explore the role of the neighbourhood in the everyday lives of people with dementia in a new research project announced during the G8 dementia summit. The 'Neighbourhoods and Dementia' study, led by the University of Manchester, was one of six research projects announced by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) along with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), as part of a £20 million funding boost which will significantly add to the understanding of dementia.

11 December 2013 Three years of observations by ESA's CryoSat satellite show that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing over 150 cubic kilometres of ice each year - considerably more than when last surveyed. The imbalance in West Antarctica continues to be dominated by ice losses from glaciers flowing into the Amundsen Sea.

MIT neuroscientists find even high-performing schools don't influence their students' abstract reasoning. To evaluate school quality, states require students to take standardized tests; in many cases, passing those tests is necessary to receive a high-school diploma. These high-stakes tests have also been shown to predict students' future educational attainment and adult employment and income.

Muting the Mozart effect Contrary to popular opinion, research finds no cognitive benefits to musical training C hildren get plenty of benefits from music lessons. Learning to play instruments can fuel their creativity, and practicing can teach much-needed focus and discipline. And the payoff, whether in learning a new song or just mastering a chord, often boosts self-esteem.

The idea of growing replacement tissue to repair an organ, or to swap it out for an entirely new one, is rapidly transitioning from science fiction to fact. Tissue engineering techniques are improving in their ability to generate three-dimensional masses of cells and provide them with vascular systems for keeping them alive, but a more mathematically rigorous approach for designing these tissues is still needed.

A 4p per day drug for high blood pressure could become the first ever treatment for one of the most common forms of dementia within a decade, say two leading charities. The widely prescribed drug amlodipine has shown promising effects in people with vascular dementia, the most common type of dementia after Alzheimer's disease.

In healthy individuals, the only thing that separates the lining of the human gut from the some 100 trillion bacterial cells in the gastrointestinal tract is a layer of mucous. But when gut bacteria do come in with cells on the gut's surface, inflammation occurs, triggered by bacterial cell proteins.

New research has suggested men of South Asian origin may need to exercise for approximately 20 minutes a day longer than their Europeans counterparts. Current physical activity guidelines recommend that all adults take at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity (equivalent to walking briskly for 30 minutes on 5 days of the week) per week.

Current test only identifies around 60 per cent of blood cancers; without new test, diagnosis in other 40 percent is difficult and requires multiple, often invasive, tests Not only will the identification of CALR lead to a new, less invasive test, we also hope that it can lead to new treatments Dr Jyoti Nangalia A simple blood test will soon be able to catch the vast majority of a group of chronic blood cancers, a new study reveals.

Although researchers have determined the ages of rocks from other planetary bodies, the actual experiments-like analyzing meteorites and moon rocks-have always been done on Earth. Now, for the first time, researchers have successfully determined the age of a Martian rock-with experiments performed on Mars.

Mothers get all the attention. But a study led by McGill researcher Sarah Kimmins suggests that the father's diet before conception may play an equally important role in the health of their offspring. It also raises concerns about the long-term effects of current Western diets and of food insecurity.

A study which monitored the health habits of 2,235 men over a 35-year period has found that exercise significantly reduces the risk of dementia. Published today in the  PLOS One journal by researchers from Cardiff University, the study is the longest of its kind to probe the influence of environmental factors in chronic disease.