BACKGROUND Publication bias and discrimination are increasingly recognised in medicine. A survey was conducted to determine if medical journals were more likely to publish research reports from members of their own than a rival journal's editorial board. METHODS A retrospective review was conducted of all research reports published in 2006 in the four competing medical journals within five me...

Starting with the inaugural issue, we would like the AORTA journal to feature a special section, “Poll the Editorial Board,” in which readers ask questions and the journal provides a poll of answers from the Editorial Board. In this way, we hope to assess the thought and practice patterns of the Editorial Board. The question for the first issue was: Which method of cerebral protection do you fa...

Dr. Kyoungho Suk is a member of editorial board for the journal. He is currently a professor of Department of Pharmacology, Kyungpook National University (KNU) School of Medicine (Daegu, Korea), and the director of Brain Science & Engineering Institute of KNU. He obtained his Ph.D. in Immunology at University of California at Davis in 1994, and M.S. degree in Immunology at Cornell University in...

Massimo Avoli is a Physician Scientist who performs research as a Faculty member of the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University. He is a Professor in the McGill University’s Departments of Neurology & Neurosurgery and of Physiology as well as Professor of Human Physiology in the Department of Experimental Medicine at the Sapienza University of Rome. Dr. Avoli’s main interests are d...

Gustav Akk has a background in biophysics and pharmacology of ion channels. His current work focuses on the mechanisms of activation and modulation of transmitter-gated ion channels, particularly the GABAA receptor, under physiological and clinical conditions. The GABAA receptor is the major ionotropic inhibitory ion channel in the brain and an important component in the maintenance of excitato...

Meet Our Editorial Board Member Dr. Gerhard Meissner University of Northern Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA The laboratory’s research focuses on defining the molecular basis of Ca release channel (RyR) function in cardiac and skeletal muscle. RyRs are 2,200 kDa ion channels that release Ca ions in response to an action potential from the sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR), an intracellular Ca-storing compa...

There has been a wide gap between science and society. The last three hundred years of the history of modern science indicates to us that many research results disappeared or took a long time to become useful to society. Due to the difficulties of bridging this gap, it has been recently called the valley of death or the nightmare stage (Note 1). Rather than passively waiting, therefore, researc...