miércoles, 1 de marzo de 2017

Your monthly update of news from BioMed Central


BioMed Central – The Open Access Publisher


A round up of recent events
Supporting World Cancer Day and National Cancer Prevention Month
BioMed Central proudly supported World Cancer Day on Feb 4thWorld Cancer Day explores how everyone can do their part to reduce the impact that cancer has on the community.
BioMed Central also supports National Cancer Prevention Month, which aims to promote a better lifestyle by eating healthy, being active and staying lean. To accompany both events, BioMed Central has curated a selection of noteworthy articles covering the year's main themes, which can be found on our website.
On our On Health blog, Raquel Peck, CEO of World Hepatitis Alliance, talks about the link between liver cancer – one of the most common cancers worldwide – and viral hepatitis and what this means for cancer prevention.

Rare Disease Day is an annual global event that aims to raise attention for patients and the rare conditions with which they live.
BioMed Central’s Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases (OJRD) celebrates this year’s Rare Disease Day with the publication of the winner of Findacure’s “Student Voice” essay contest. OJRD will also host blogs from other contest entrants, a rare disease quiz, and a new piece from Editor in-Chief Ségolène Aymé, so keep an eye on the journal homepage!

Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases now offers authors the opportunity to utilize a new tool to enrich their articles with Human Phenotype Ontologies (HPO). HPO allows authors to upload a manuscript and then download a set of terms that can be used to create ontologies and make research more accurately searchable and visible to relevant audiences. The option was introduced late last year and articles with this new section should become accessible shortly.

In an effort to assist in making marine aquarium research freely available to all, Marine Aquarium Societies of North America (MASNA) has created The Dr. Junda Lin Memorial Fund for Publishing Open Access Marine Aquarium Research.
The goal of the fund is to off-set the cost to students of publishing research as open access articles in order to promote the spread of scientific ideas to not only scientists, but to anyone who is interested in the research. BMC authors might be eligible for this fund and further information is available here.

15th February marks the 16th anniversary of The Human Genome Project (HGP), an international, collaborative research program established to map and understand all the genes of human beings.
The first draft human genome sequence was published in Nature on February 15, 2001. A 90% complete sequence of all three billion base pairs in the human genome, it promised insights into human development, physiology, medicine and evolution. Derek Anane, serior editor on the BMC Series, will write about this on the BMC Series blog, so keep an eye on the website!

In a recent article, published in BioMed Central’s journal Marine Biodiversity Records, the authors describe using DNA barcoding to identify what they assumed were multiple different oyster species in the waters surrounding Japan.
Though the oysters looked markedly different from each other, the researchers found that the species were in fact very similar on a molecular level and closely related to species found across many Atlantic, Mediterranean and South Pacific coasts. The authors posit that the species identified here – Ostrea stentina – could be extremely invasive.

The most popular blog on genetics across the BMC Blog Network in January picked up 260 views. Shane M Heffernan, post-doctoral fellow at the School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science at University College Dublin and Alun G Williams, leader of the GENESIS project, describe their research into how FTO genetic variation can have an effect on skeletal muscle and whether someone is likely to become an elite athlete.


BioMed Central in the news

Photo by: Zoe Della Vedova
The first live record of the ruby seadragon, Phyllopteryx dewysea, a species never before observed in the wild, was published in Marine Biodiversity Records.
Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Western Australian Museum observed two ruby seadragons for nearly thirty minutes at the Recherche Archipelago in Western Australia in April 2016, providing insights into the morphology, habitat, and behaviour of the fish.
The discovery was widely reported internationally. It gained 799 media hits, with coverage by BBCNew ScientistThe Telegraph and Daily Mail in UK; Spiegel Online – WissenschaftSüddeutsche Zeitungtagesschau.deDeutsche Welle and Zeit Online in Germany; New York TimesSmithsonian MagazineFox NewsNBC newsNational Geographic and Live Science in US; ABC in Australia; Folha de Sao Paulo in Brazil; Science.apa.at in Austria; CBC Radio and IFL Science in Canada; La Stampa in Italy; El Mundo in Spain; Bluewin in Switzerland; Sveriges Radio and natursidan.se in Sweden, and Bao Moi in Vietnam. It was tweeted by novelists J.K. Rowling and Margaret Atwood.

Exploiting the placebo effect significantly improved the recovery of patients undergoing heart surgery, according to research published in BMC Medicine.
Patients who were given psychological support to raise their expectations about post-surgery recovery scored lower on disability tests, had a better mental quality-of-life, reported more hours of physical activity and better fitness for work six months after surgery, compared to those who received no additional support.
The research was covered in The Times and Medical News Today in UK; aerzteblatt.de and biermann-medizin.de in Germany; Medpage Today in US; and orientaldaily.on.cc in China.

In a UK study of 5,658 women, 3% were found to have an active eating disorder in mid-life, a figure higher than expected as eating disorders are primarily associated with adolescence or early adulthood. The research published in BMC Medicine is the first investigation of the prevalence of eating disorders in a population sample of women in the fourth and fifth decade of life.
Around 15.3% of women in the study reported having an eating disorder at some point in their life and 3.6% reported an eating disorder in the past 12 months. Less than 30% of women who had eating disorders said they had sought help or received treatment.
The research was reported in main and local news outlets in the UK, with coverage in The TimesBBC newsThe IndependentThe TelegraphDaily MailBMJ and it was discussed in BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour. It did well globally, reported by ABCPsychiatry Advisor and The Age Times in US; The AustralianThe Courier Mail, and Daily Telegraph in Australia; The Voice in Finland; and Sveriges Radio in Sweden.


©Danielle Dufault, Royal Ontario Museum
Research published in BMC Evolutionary Biology describes a new species of lobopodian, a worm-like animal with soft legs from the Cambrian period (541 to 485 million years ago). This is the first finding of these fossils in the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rocky Mountains.
The research was covered by bbc.com/turkce in Turkey; Live Science and World News Report in US; widely reported in Canada, including IFL Sciencewww.cheknews.ca , The Chronicle JournalCTV news24news.ca and Calgary Herald; and Brazilian Business Today in Brazil.

Mouse models, tau tangles and neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease
In one of the most popular blogs across the BMC blog network in January, Christian Matheou, Associate Editor at BioMed Central, writes about research into neurodegenerative diseases and the tools being used to try and untangle their underlying mechanisms.



BioMed Central on the road
Baltimore, Maryland, 12/3/2017

Pacific Grove, California, 14/3/2017

Beijing, China, 30/3/2017



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