A recent survey found that 50% of final year veterinary students in the UK don't feel confident discussing dental problems or doing oral cavity examinations of small pets.

Most vets just dread the idea of seriously discussing feline dental procedures.

UK veterinarians Rachel Perry and Elise Robertson have taken it upon thenselves to plug this educational and fee gap and have coordinated a ground-breaking two-part special issue of the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery devoted to feline dentistry.

When obese children with asthma run out of breath it could be due to poor physical health related to weight, yet it is considered asthma often enough that there could be high and unnecessary use of rescue medications, finds a paper in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 

The researchers reviewed the lung function, treatment uses, symptom patterns, healthcare utilization, quality of life and caregiver perceptions of asthma-related quality of life in overweight/obese children with asthma (BMI ≥ 85th percentile) and lean counterparts (BMI 20-65th percentile). In total 58 children participated in the study's three clinical visits. 

Three years ago, a patient at Sahlgrenska University Hospital received a blood vessel transplant grown from her own stem cells. Two other transplants were performed in 2012. The patients, two young children, had the same condition as in the first case – they were missing the vein that goes from the gastrointestinal tract to the liver. 

Professors
Suchitra Sumitran-Holgersson, Professor of Transplantation Biology at The Univerisity of Gothenburg, and Michael Olausson, Surgeon/Medical Director of the Transplant Center and Professor at Sahlgrenska Academy, came up with the idea, planned and carried out the procedure.

In a new study, researchers have shown that shutting off the blood supply to an arm or leg before cardiac surgery protects the heart during the operation.

The research group wanted to see how the muscle of the left chamber of the heart was affected by a technique, called RIPC (remote ischemic preconditioning), during cardiac surgery. RIPC works by shutting off the blood supply to an arm or a leg before heart surgery. The goal is to reduce risk during cardiac surgery in the future.

The technique is not new, but its effects have never before been tested directly on the left chamber of the heart.

Focus on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has led to a lot of confusion among the public: bad storms are caused by global warming but a lack of warming is not.

There may be a reason things don't add up, according to a paper in Science. The circulation of the ocean plays an equally important role in regulating the earth's climate, it finds. In their study, the researchers say the major cooling of Earth and continental ice build-up in the Northern Hemisphere 2.7 million years ago coincided with a shift in the circulation of the ocean – which pulls in heat and carbon dioxide in the Atlantic and moves them through the deep ocean from north to south until it's released in the Pacific.

 Massive amounts of erupting lava have connected with the fall of civilizations, the destruction of supercontinents and dramatic changes in climate and ecosystems. 

Since August 31st, Bárðarbunga volcano in central Iceland has been spewing spectacular amounts of lava. A new paper finds that high mantle temperatures miles beneath the Earth's surface are essential for generating such large amounts of magma - and  Bárðarbunga volcano lies directly above the hottest portion of the North Atlantic mantle plume.