Recent financial results by major players in the UK grocery industry seem to point to the ever-increasing consolidation of grocery retailing on the UK High Street, but is this actually in the consumer’s interest, and is it what the consumer really wants? Dr Alan Hallsworth of the University of Surrey School of Management has been looking at trends in UK grocery retailing in the UK for over 25 years and comments, ‘ consumers display ambivalent attitudes towards retail change. There is a residual

A new study from the University of Glasgow that analyses information from over 2000 11 year old children and their parents (in 1984-5) reveals no evidence that number of parents in the household or family meals are associated with children’s diets, while maternal employment is associated with better diets.

The children involved in the study were part of the Medical Research Council’s West of Scotland 11 to 16 Study, a study of health and lifestyles, which has followed them since a

Children say the funniest things, but what makes them laugh? Do German and Israeli kids share the same sense of humour – or is the Simpsons the universal language of laughter?

That is the puzzle that a University of Ulster researcher is hoping to unravel as part of a five-nation probe into what makes children laugh.

Professor Máire Messenger-Davies, who is based at the University’s Coleraine campus, will join researchers from Germany, Israel, South Africa and the US in th

Use of such cholesterol-lowering drugs as statins may reduce the risk of advanced prostate cancer, according to research that followed 34,428 U.S. men for more than a decade.

The study, presented at the 96th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, found that men who used these medications had half the risk of advanced prostate cancer and a third of the risk of metastatic or fatal prostate cancer, compared to men who did not use cholesterol-lowering drugs. R

A study comparing, for the first time, breast cancers from Nigeria, Senegal and North America has found that women of African ancestry are more likely to be diagnosed with a more virulent form of the disease than women of European ancestry.

Researchers from the University of Chicago, working with colleagues at the University of Calabar in Nigeria and the University of North Carolina, found that breast cancers in African women produce a different pattern of gene expression. Tumor

Babies who gain weight rapidly during their very first week of life may be more likely to be overweight as young adults, according to a new study. The research suggests that the first week may be a critical period for setting lifelong patterns of body weight.

Researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Iowa studied 653 adults, ranging in age from 20 to 32. The subjects, all of whom were white, had been measure

Diesel particle pollution inside urban school buses may be worse than levels found in the surrounding roadway air, according to a study by scientists at the University of California. The report appears in the April 15 issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology. ACS is the world’s largest scientific society.

It has generally been assumed that other vehicles on the road are the source of elevated particle levels. But a study of schoo

A new research initiative tackles Scotland’s key demographic issues

Yesterday, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) announces the launch of a new two-year research initiative into the demographic trends which could transform the face of Scotland. Funded in partnership with the Scottish Executive, this £300,000 research investment will investigate three key aspects of Scotland’s demography: migration, fertility and the impact of an ageing population.

Scotlan

A researcher at the University of Essex will investigate ethnic minority disadvantage and poverty in a study launched recently.

Dr Lucinda Platt, of the Department of Sociology, has been awarded almost £34,000 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for the one-year project entitled ’Britain Divided: A Review of Poverty and Ethnicity.’

Dr Platt will conduct a systematic survey of poverty and disadvantage across ethnic groups that will summarise current knowledge an

Randomized strategies versus evolutionary branching

This new study, which will appear in the June 2005 issue of The American Naturalist, asserts that an individual could use his/her genotype as an informative cue when “deciding” which phenotype to develop. This is a new way of looking at certain kinds of genetic polymorphism. Some species have alternative phenotypes, which are different categories of adult individuals specialized for particular circumstances. For instance, if p

Research could lead to new drugs for HIV

The increased frequency of drug resistance in isolates of the AIDS virus, HIV, makes identification of new antiviral targets an urgent necessity. Host genes required to support the replication of HIV are a potential source of such novel targets, but relatively few appropriate target genes have been identified in animal cells thus far. A new study, conducted by Dr. Suzanne Sandmeyer and colleagues at the University of California, reports t

Smad7 protein levels may predict therapy response

Levels of the Smad7 protein may predict therapeutic response in patients with prostate cancer according to research published today by investigators at the Uppsala Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR).

“Although the 2-ME compound is in early clinical trials, no-one has fully understood the molecular mechanisms of how it causes the death of cancer cells, but not normal cells,” says Dr. Maréne Landst

Scientists have discovered how the performance of a quantum computer can be affected by its surrounding environment. The study, published in the latest issue of the journal Science, will help engineers to better understand how to integrate quantum components into a standard office computer – moving us one step closer to a future of quantum computing.

The collaborative team from the London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London (UCL), the Paul Scherrer Institute/ETH i

New findings from researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center help explain how the 20,000 to 25,000 genes in the human genome can make the hundreds of thousands of different proteins in our bodies.

Genes are segments of DNA that carry instructions for making proteins, which in turn carry out all of life’s functions. Through a natural process called “alternative splicing,” information contained in genes is modified so that one gene is capable of making several different p

A six-year study of a special type of brain aneurysm — the thrombotic aneurysm — has led to a treatment “roadmap” that should mean better outcomes for patients with this unusual medical problem.

UCSF Medical Center neurosurgeon Michael Lawton, MD, headed the clinical research team. The findings are reported in the March 2005 issue of Neurosurgery.

Approximately 5 percent of the U.S. population develops a brain aneurysm at some time, and an even smaller percentage — abo

Contrary to what you might think, advanced age does not increase the risk of surgical-site infections, according to a large long-term study reported in the April 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. The study, which involved prospectively collected data on thousands of patients in multiple hospitals undergoing various surgical procedures, found that the infection risk increased by about 1 percent per year between the ages of 17 to 65 years but then decreased by a