news 2014

A class of drug for treating arthritis - all but shelved over fears about side effects - may be given a new lease of life following new research. The new study, led by Imperial College London and published in the journal Circulation , sheds new light on the 10-year-old question of how COX-2 inhibitors - a type of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) - can increase the risk of heart attack in some people, and suggests a possible way to identify which patients should avoid using it.

A new study has shown that older people living in towns and cities in Northern Ireland are a quarter more likely to be admitted to care homes than people living in rural areas. Researchers from the University of Glasgow found that rural dwellers had greater access to informal networks of care, such as family, friends and neighbours, which decreased their reliance on the care system.

4 July 2014 A collaborative European Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) project that includes researchers from the University of Bristol aims to train high calibre PhD and postdoctoral researchers with a comprehensive understanding of water quality processes, uncertainty issues and decision making strategies for integrated water catchment management.

Soils under Britain's allotments are significantly healthier than intensively farmed soils First study to show that growing at small-scale in urban areas produces food sustainably without damaging soils Authors say planning and policy makers should promote urban own-growing as a sustainable way of meeting increasing food demand An increase in urban allotments could help us meet the rising demand for food throughout the world, without damaging the Earth's soils, according to new research from the University of Sheffield.

The global diversity of plants being cultivated by Britain’s gardeners is playing a key role in the fight to save the nation’s threatened bumblebees, new research has revealed. Ecologists at Plymouth University, in a study published this week, have shown the most common species of bumblebee are not fussy about a plant’s origin when searching for nectar and pollen among the nation’s urban gardens.