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UAlberta research shows prescribing stool softeners isn't effective in easing constipation for palliative-care patients. End-of-life patients typically struggle with constipation caused by the narcotics they are given to alleviate their pain, so doctors prescribe a stool softener called docusate twice a day to alleviate this uncomfortable problem.

The School of Social Sciences has secured significant new funding for research in the field of children's social care. This funding (more than £0.5M) comprises three research grants awarded to academics in the School. The first of these is a large, four nation project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

An experimental drug being investigated for the treatment of advanced breast cancer by researchers from the Revlon/UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center this week received "breakthrough therapy" designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Cells from patients' blood could be developed as treatments for heart and circulatory diseases. Scientists have shed light on a common bleeding disorder by growing and analysing stem cells from patients' blood to discover the cause of the disease in individual patients. The technique may enable doctors to prescribe more effective treatments according to the defects identified in patients' cells.

A new international study has confirmed that self-testing for HIV is effective and could be the answer to controlling the global epidemic. This major systematic review, led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), shows HIV self-testing removes much of the fear and stigma associated with being tested for the disease.

Eight years ago, Dr. Diane Krause was one of only two scientists at the Yale School of Medicine whose work was specifically focused on stem cells. Today, more than 70 Yale faculty members are involved in some form of stem cell research, which since 2007 has been supported at Yale by more than $230 million in state and federal grants and funding foundations.

The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police has said he will ensure his staff are treated fairly and that he will build a diverse workforce. Sir Peter Fahy has accepted the recommendations of a University of Manchester report, which found that ethnicity was a factor in internal misconduct and counter-corruption investigations involving police officers and staff.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown that a new imaging dye, designed and developed at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, is an effective agent in detecting and mapping cancers that have reached the lymph nodes. The radioactive dye called Technetium Tc-99m tilmanocept, successfully identified cancerous lymph nodes and did a better job of marking cancers than the current standard dye.

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic disease which affects around 0.8% of the population; and its causes are of great interest to the medical world. Research led by Ian Bruce, NIHR Senior Investigator and Professor of Rheumatology at The University of Manchester and consultant at Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, looked into the association between lifestyle factors and the risk of developing RA.

Plant cells communicate information about the time of day to their chloroplasts, the part of their cells that underpins all agricultural productivity on Earth, researchers at the University of Bristol have demonstrated in a study published today in Science. Plant cells contain an internal clock (the circadian clock), which is able to regulate cellular processes so that they occur at the optimal time of day, causing a big increase in plant productivity.

Research shows that intimate personal attributes can be predicted with high levels of accuracy from 'traces' left by seemingly innocuous digital behaviour, in this case Facebook Likes. Study raises important questions about personalised marketing and online privacy.

Species of seabirds could successfully return to their natural foraging habits following changes to European fisheries policies, scientists have suggested. The European Parliament recently voted to scrap the controversial discards policy, which has seen fishermen throwing thousands of edible fish and fish waste back into the sea because they have exceeded their quotas.

In Africa and Thailand, communities that worked together on HIV-prevention efforts saw not only a rise in HIV screening but a drop in new infections, according to a new study presented this week at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have identified molecules in the blood that could help predict the risk of a patient developing liver injury eight hours after a paracetamol overdose. Paracetamol overdose is one of the most frequent cases of hospital admissions, accounting for approximately 90,000 hospital attendances per year in the UK and almost 47,000 bed days in England alone.

Based on a news release by Cancer Research UK A less invasive 'virtual colonoscopy' using CT scans is more effective for investigating patients with possible bowel cancer than the traditional X-ray test, according to a new study. The researchers say CT colonography (CTC) should now be considered alongside the 'gold standard' of colonoscopy.

Hospital performance on two Medicare quality measures are not strongly related, and are likely to reflect very different aspects of their clinical care, according to results published by Yale School of Medicine researchers in the Feb. 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Facebook and other social networking technologies could serve as effective tools for preventing HIV infection among at-risk groups, new UCLA research suggests. In a study published in the February issue of the peer-reviewed journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases, researchers found that African American and Latino men who have sex with men voluntarily used health-related Facebook groups, which were created by the study's investigators, to discuss such things as HIV knowledge, stigma and prevention and ultimately to request at-home HIV testing kits.

Australians decided not to gamble away last year's carbon tax compensation payments and hoarded them instead, a University of Melbourne study has found.

New research from Karolinska Institutet shows that men who take vitamin C supplements regularly run a higher risk of developing kidney stones. The study, which is published in the scientific periodical JAMA Internal Medicine, did not however observe an increased risk between kidney stones and multivitamins - which contain lower concentrations of vitamin C. The research is based on data from a large population-based study of men from Västmanland and Örebro counties, who were monitored for 11 years.

The introduction of smoke-free legislation in England was immediately followed by a fall in the number of children admitted to hospital with asthma symptoms, a new study has found. NHS statistics analysed by researchers at Imperial College London show a 12.3 per cent fall in admissions for childhood asthma in the first year after the law on smoking in enclosed public places and workplaces came into effect in July 2007.