OBJECTIVE To explore final-year students' and clinical supervisors' experiences of alignment and misalignment with future Foundation Year 1 (F1) posts in an assistantship programme in the UK. SETTING Assistantships are clinical placements in which students assist junior doctors by undertaking similar duties under supervision. Models of assistantship programmes vary across curricula. Some acti...

Atlantic cod are a commercially important species believed to be threatened by warming seas near their southern, equatorward upper thermal edge of distribution. Limitations to circulatory O2 transport, in particular cardiac output, and the geographic distribution of functionally different haemoglobin (Hb) genotypes have separately been suggested to play a role in setting thermal tolerance in th...

Male weanling pigs (n 32) with a mean initial body weight of 7·5 kg and a mean weaning age of 28 d were used in a 31 d study to investigate the effects of feeding GM (Bt MON810) maize on growth performance, intestinal histology and organ weight and function. At weaning, the pigs were fed a non-GM starter diet during a 6 d acclimatisation period. The pigs were then blocked by weight and litter a...

Ocean acidification (OA) is expected to negatively affect coral reefs, however little is known about how OA will change the coral-algal symbiosis on which reefs ultimately depend. This study investigated whether there would be differences in coral Symbiodinium types in response to OA, potentially improving coral performance. We used denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of the internal...

BACKGROUND Foot orthoses have been demonstrated to be effective in the management of a range of conditions, but there is debate as to the benefits of customised foot orthoses over less expensive, prefabricated devices. METHODS In a randomised, cross-over trial, 15 flat-footed participants aged between 18 and 45 years were provided with semi-rigid, customised orthoses and semi-rigid, contoured...

The midto long-term preservation of papaya (Carica papaya L.) would allow for the safeguarding of important germplasm. In this study, soft friable callus (SFC) and hard callus (HC) were induced from the first two true leaves of 10-day-old seedlings containing a midrib derived from the germinated seed of two cultivars (‘Rainbow’ and ‘Sunrise Solo’). Following germination on a Murashige and Skoog...

We were sitting, I recall, in the canteen of the Medical School at Birmingham. It must have been 1958. I had just returned from a year and a half at the Bellevue Hospital, New York, my mind still reeling from the experience of working in the cardiopulmonary laboratory of Andre Cournand. Donald Heath had returned from the Mayo Clinic where he had coolly reshaped the face of pulmonary vascular pa...

Whether precooling is beneficial for exercise performance in warm climates when heat acclimatised is unclear. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of precooling on repeat-sprint performance during a simulated team-sport circuit performed outdoors in warm, dry field conditions in seasonally acclimatised males (n = 10). They performed two trials, one with precooling (PC; ice slus...

The effects of environmental hypoxia on cardiac and skeletal muscle metabolism are dependent on the duration and severity of hypoxic exposure, though factors which dictate the nature of the metabolic response to hypoxia are poorly understood. We therefore set out to investigate the time-dependence of metabolic acclimatisation to hypoxia in rat cardiac and skeletal muscle. Rats were housed under...

OBJECTIVE To determine the incidence and characteristics of newly incurred injuries and illnesses during international Athletics Championships, by improving the medical surveillance coverage, in order to determine future prevention strategies. DESIGN Prospective recording of newly occurred injuries and illnesses. SETTING 13th International Association of Athletics Federations World Champion...