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High Profile Doctors Support GMC Licensing Campaign
High profile doctors have today lent their support to the latest phase of the GMC"s licensing campaign.
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WHO Approves Second HPV Vaccine
The WHO announced Thursday it had approved a second cervical cancer vaccine, opening "U.N. agencies and partners [to] now officially buy millions of doses of the vaccine for poor countries worldwide," where an estimated 80 percent of the 280,000 annual deaths from cervical cancer occur each year, the AP/Google.com reports (7/9).
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Telemonitoring Systems At Heart Failure Congress 2009
Telemonitoring systems, by which the symptoms of heart failure can be remotely assessed, now provide a strategy for the improved personalised care of patients, according to Professor John Cleland from the University of Hull, UK.1 He told Heart Failure Congress 2009 that the management of heart failure is complex but most effective when tailored to the individual patients" needs and condition.2 "Unfortunately," he added, "the res required to offer this tailored treatment outside a hospital setting are generally not available. Current services provide, at best, only a crude attempt to deliver long-term, personalised healthcare, but telemonitoring provides a strategy which could radically change this situation."
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Running Faster On High-Grade Oil: Mouse Study

Between the 1932 and 2008 Olympic Games, world record times of the men"s 100m sprint improved by 0.6 seconds due to improved training techniques and technological advances. Imagine if this improvement could be achieved by a simple change in diet. Scientists at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology in Austria have managed to achieve an equivalent feat in mice fed on a diet high in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Polyunsaturated fatty acids are important dietary components which mammals cannot synthesize de novo. The research, presented on 29th June 2009 at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting, has shown that mice fed for two weeks on a diet high in sunflower oil, which contains n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, ran on average 0.19m/s faster than mice fed a diet rich in linseed oil, which is high in n-3 fatty acids. This means that, over a 2 second sprint, a mouse fed on a high n-6 fatty acid diet would have a 0.4m advantage. This represents a 6.3% improvement which equals that achieved in the 100m world records over more than 75 years. For a mouse, or other small mammal, this would be significant in evolutionary terms when escaping from a predator or catching prey. "The results of the current study on mice suggest that moderate differences in dietary n-6/n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid intake can have a biologically meaningful effect on maximum running speed", says Dr Christopher Turbill who presented the research. A previous study by the group, which looked at a range of mammal species, found that those with a relatively high n-6 fatty acid content in their skeletal muscles had a greater maximum running speed. Combined, these two studies suggest that diets enriched in these fatty acids "could also affect the maximum (or burst) running speed of other vertebrates, including humans" says Dr Turbill. "The application of this research to the performance of elite athletes (specifically those in sports that involve short distance sprints, including cycling) is uncertain, but in my opinion certainly deserves some further attention" he says. Tess Livermore Society for Experimental Biology


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