Poster from Medecins sans Frontieres.

Much more information, materials and video clips on the Medecins sans Frontieres website.

Teddy Bear Hospital

This is a new project to help children overcome fear of hospitals. It involves medical students from Leicester, the Leicester Royal Infirmary play coordinators, and (of course) some teddy bears. More details in the Leicester e-bulletin.

Biochemical Journal to become open access

The Biochemical Journal has announced that it will make all new papers freely available six months after publication. It will do this by putting them in PubMed Central
(www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov).

(From a Biochemical Journal press release)

ISI Web of Knowledge service downtime

ISI Web of Knowledge will be unavailable on Tuesday April 5th from 0800-1000, due to disk replacement work. This will affect Science Citation Index and other Web of Science databases, and also access to the Journal Citation Reports.

(Information from a WoK email)

Artists on science - Scientists on art

This is the subject of a section within the issue of Nature for 17th March. The articles in the section are available free online. They include an article by A.S. Byatt about how science informs her fiction, one about poetry and science, and articles on music and on the visual arts.

The DNA sequence of the human X chromosome

Is in a paper in Nature (17th March 2005), and discussed in the Guardian (same date). The Nature paper is freely available (although we do subscribe).

Kidney stone formation during space flight

A paper in Kidney International assesses the effects of microgravity on nanobacteria. The authors have previously assessed the role of nanobacteria in kidney stones.

Bichard Report

The conclusions of this report are detailed in the Government News Network.

The enquiry also has a website, where the full report is available. The recommendations include a national IT system to enable information sharing, and changes to registration of those who work with children.

UK Stem Cell Initiative

Announced in yesterday's budget and to be chaired by Sir John Pattison, this group will formulate a strategy for stem cell research.

Read more in the Guardian

Heart surgery figures

The Guardian is investigating hospitals' figures on death rates in heart surgery - it has obtained these figures under the Freedom of Information Act and has found that some hospitals are not collecting the appropriate data. Some surgeons in the north west of England published their data in the British Medical Journal recently.

Long term use of vitamin E may increase the risk of heart failure

This is one finding of a RCT of the effects of long term use of vitamin E supplements on cardiovascular events and cancer, in JAMA 2005; 293(11):1338-47.

Read the abstract (the University subscribes to this journal: please contact the library if you cannot locate the password on our webpages).

Bird flu update

An international conference in Vietnam has heard that $US100 million needs to be spent on research into a bird flu vaccine. Read more from the Science and Development Network. The most recent University of Leicester e-bulletin also contains news on flu vaccines. Health Protection Agency work on this involves the University.

Nature is carrying a news item on the increase of incidence of bird flu in Vietnam.

The Health Protection Agency website has frequently asked questions on avian flu

Two articles in the Journal of Advanced Nursing

Effects of an adaptation training programme for patients with end-stage
renal disease
Shiow-Luan Tsay, Yuh-Chain Lee, Yueh-Ching Lee

Brain and Tissue Bank for the Investigation of Sudden Death

The Department of Pathology at the University of Edinburgh has MRC funding to establish this, which will collect samples from post-mortem examinations, with the consent of families. It is hoped that the Bank will help research into a range of conditions.

Read a report in the Scotsman

Today's (well, tomorrow's) BMJ

Has articles on

The risk factors for pre eclampsia
A clinical review of asthma management by authors from Aberdeen (my last workplace) and Ipswich (my birth place)


And news items on

Transient ischaemic attacks as a predictor of stroke (paper in Neurology - link is in the news item)
The Bitter Pills Awards

The online contents page is currently at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/current.shtml

Asthma clinical pathways

Report of a trial in New Zealand on the effect of a clinical pathway on hospitalisation for asthma.

Details of paper:

Mitchell EA et al A randomized controlled trial of an asthma clinical pathway for children in general practice. Acta Paediatrica 2005;94(2):226-33.

We have online access to this title but there seem to be no 2005 issues available yet. Clinical Sciences Library has the journal in print.

Commission for Africa

The Commission has published its report, "Hear Africa". Recommendations on health include increased aid contributions to tackle HIV, and the need for African governments to spend 15 percent of their annual budget on health, and to rebuild public health services and train health workers. Aid for health related projects should be increased.

Guardian report

Guardian special report on Hear Africa

Commission for Africa website - English --- French

Malaria infects more than half a billion people

A report out today records that more than half a billion people, more than twice previous estimates, were infected with the deadliest form on malaria in 2002.

Read the Guardian report

The research is published in Nature.

American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine - good news

Online access is restored. Of course, if you discover otherwise, please contact me.

Arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death

Is the 8th chapter of the National Service Framework for Coronary Heart Disease. The chapter sets out good practice in these areas.

Chapter 8 of the NSF
The full NSF for Coronary Heart Disease

Correct site surgery recommendations

The National Patient Safety Agency and the Royal College of Surgeons of England have launched recommendations on how to mark patients to show where an operation is to take place.

Read NPSA press release
Links to information, patient information a gwybodaeth yn y Gymraeg

New Library web portal

The Library has launched Rooms, a new web portal. There is a pilot of several Rooms between now and the 18th March, and the opportunity to send feedback to the portal developers.

The pilot includes a Medicine and Health Room and a Biological Sciences Room. The Rooms link to a range of online books, journals and databases, live news, images, and much more.

Read more...
Visit the Rooms
Read the University of Leicester e-bulletin on the subject

MRSA rates

The Guardian reports the Department of Health's figures on incidence on MRSA in hospitals. There is also a link to the tables themselves.

Read the article
See the tables (PDF format)

The Lancet: Neonatal Survival Series

The Lancet is making this series available free to registered users of thelancet.com (registration there is free and is not the same as subscribing).

I have had an email from the Lancet to advertise this, with a link to the series. I found the link (via activemag.co.uk) did not work very well, but have discovered the same series at

http://www.thelancet.com/journal/vol365/iss9462/full/llan.365.9462.neonatal_survival_series

Why Holland has virtually no MRSA

Article by Bill Hanage in the Guardian. Describes Dutch policies in dealing with MRSA in hospitals.

Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America's Women Physicians

An online exhibition from the National Library of Medicine. Includes school lesson plans, videos, career information, and the opportunity to post stories.

Visit the exhibition

Autism and MMR: Japanese study

The BBC's Today programme reported this morning a study from Japan which documents an increase in the incidence of autism, despite the withdrawal of of the combined MMR vaccine. This study is an early online publication in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

Read the study (University Athens needed off campus)

BBC story

Report of the story in the Guardian

Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology

We have on campus online access to vols. 63-69. There will be a link in the library catalogue record.

NICE guidance on lung cancer

NICE have recently issued guidance, available at http://www.nice.org.uk/page.aspx?o=244008. According to Nursing Times (1st March) the guidelines recommend that every cancer unit should have at least one trained lung cancer specialist nurse.

Default review filter added to PubMed

PubMed has recently added various new features, including search filters, the ability to run automatic updates, and a spell checker. It has now added a default filter which will pick out review articles from your search. This filter displays if you are not logged in to My NCBI.

These changes are covered in our PubMed tutorial, and I am happy to advise.

Nurses assessing respiratory dysfunction

Respiratory dysfunction in hospitalised patients can be the precursor of a major adverse event such as cardiac arrest. A paper in the most recent Journal of Advanced Nursing looks at the role of the nurse in preventing this respiratory dysfunction.

Read the paper... (University of Leicester members only: Athens needed off campus).