Doctors are adjusting their bedside manner as better informed patients make ever-increasing demands and expect to be listened to, and fully involved, in clinical decisions that directly affect their care.

You know, how doctors always said patients should be.

In a study just published in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, Dr. J. Bohannon Mason of the Orthocarolina Hip and Knee Center in Charlotte, NC, USA, says changes in society, the population and technology are influencing the way patients view their orthopaedic surgeons. As patients gain knowledge, their attitude to medicine changes: They no longer show their doctors absolute and unquestionable respect.

A 40,000-year-old tooth has provided scientists with the first direct evidence that Neanderthals moved from place to place during their lifetimes.

In a collaborative project involving researchers from the Germany, the United Kingdom, and Greece, Professor Michael Richards of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany and Durham University, UK, and his team used laser technology to collect microscopic particles of enamel from the tooth.

For more than a decade, Peter Zandstra has been working at the University of Toronto to rev up the production of stem cells and their descendants. The raw materials are adult blood stem cells and embryonic stem cells. The end products are blood and heart cells – lots of them. Enough mouse heart cells that they form beating tissue.

ROCHESTER, New York, February 15 /PRNewswire/ --

EUSA Pharma (Oxford, UK), a Vaccinex collaboration partner, has announced that it has licensed OP-R003, a human anti-interleukin-6 antibody discovered by Vaccinex, to GlaxoSmithKline.

According to the terms of the product license, GSK will pay an up-front license fee, development milestones, and royalties on product sales to acquire the exclusive world-wide rights to develop and commercialize OP-R003 for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other disease indications. Vaccinex will share 50% of fees, payments and royalties. The antibody was discovered by Vaccinex utilizing its ActivMAb(R) antibody discovery technology and first licensed for co-development by EUSA Pharma (formerly OPi SA).

LONDON, February 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Prospects new Managing Director will be Vincent McDonnell, currently Director of Learning at CfBT Education Trust. He will take over in his new post at the end of March.

Vincent worked in senior positions in Birmingham, Sheffield and then Staffordshire Local Education Authorities, before moving to the London Borough of Richmond as Chief Education Officer in February 1998.

Then, in April 2000, he moved to Cambridge Education, to lead the outsourced education service in Islington, turning around what had been identified as a failing service into what was subsequently identified as one of the most improved Authorities in the country.

BARCELONA , Mobile World Congress, February 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Launched in 2007, the R&S CMW270 WiMAX communication tester from Rohde & Schwarz now offers the capability to emulate a base station (signaling mode). This capability means utmost flexibility and test depth. Plus, the measurement speed of the instrument is up to ten times higher than that of existing test solutions. This results in maximum throughput in the production of WiMAX chipsets and mobile stations.

Less smoking or less time eating in restaurants because of a ban on smoking? Either way, the number of acute coronary events such as heart attack in adults dropped significantly after a smoking ban in public places in Italy, researchers reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Researchers in Rome compared acute coronary events in the city for five years preceding a public smoking ban with those occurring one year after the ban. They found an 11.2 percent reduction of acute coronary events in persons 35 to 64 years and a 7.9 percent reduction in those ages 65 to 74.

“Smoking bans in all public and workplaces result in an important reduction of acute coronary events,” said Francesco Forastiere, M.D., Ph.D., co-author of the study and head of the Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology Unit, Department of Epidemiology, Rome E. Health Authority, Italy. “The smoking ban in Italy is working and having a real protective effect on population health.”

MELBOURNE, Australia, February 15 /PRNewswire/ --

In a landmark study electronically published today in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a blood test for detecting TB infection, QuantiFERON(R)-TB Gold (QFT(TM)), has been shown to be six times more accurate than the conventional tuberculin skin test (TST) at predicting which tuberculosis (TB)-exposed individuals will go on to develop TB disease. This study has important implications for the worldwide effort to eradicate TB, as accurately indentifying TB-infected individuals allows health authorities to treat them before they develop disease, and the greater accuracy of the new test makes this more efficient as well as cheaper and safer.