The Chancellor has claimed that the richest are paying a greater share of tax, something that's supported by Treasury analysis.
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Lawyers are taking industrial action over changes to criminal legal aid, including a reduction in fees. We've factchecked some of the claims in this debate.
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“[We] passed a law to guarantee a referendum before Britain passes any more powers to the EU [and will ensure that] any referendum triggered by the EU Act is on the big question: In or Out”—Liberal Democrat manifesto “Labour will legislate for a lock that guarantees that there can be no transfer of powers from […]
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After the US president urged that gay and lesbian people be treated equally under the law in Africa, media reported that same-sex relations are illegal in 36 Africa states. Is this correct?
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"Scientists believe they may have discovered how to mend broken hearts," reports the Daily Mirror.
While it may sound like the subject of a decidedly odd country and western song, the headline actually refers to damage to the heart muscle.
A heart attack occurs when the muscle of the heart becomes starved of oxygen causing it to be damaged. If there is significant damage the heart can become weakened and unable to effectively pump blood around the body. This is known as heart failure and can cause symptoms such as shortness of breath and fatigue.
The heart contains "dormant" stem cells, and researchers want to learn more about them to work out ways to get them to help repair damaged heart tissue.
In this new laboratory and animal study, researchers identified a characteristic genetic "signature" of adult mouse heart stem cells. This led to them being more easily identified than they have been previously, making them easier to "harvest" for study.
Injections of these cells into damaged mouse hearts was shown to improve heart function, even though very few of the donor cells remained in the heart.
These findings will help researchers to study these cells better, for example investigating whether they could be chemically triggered to repair the heart without removing them first. While the hope is that this research could lead to treatments for human heart damage, as yet the results are just in mice.
The researchers also note that they need to find out whether human hearts have the equivalent cells.
The study was carried out by researchers from Imperial College London and other UK and US universities. It was funded by the British Heart Foundation, European Commission, European Research Council and the Medical Research Council, with some of the researchers additionally supported by the US National Heart and Lung Institute Foundation and Banyu Life Science Foundation International.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Communications. It is open access, meaning it can be read for free online.
The Mirror’s main report covers the story reasonably, but one of its subheadings – that scientists have identified a protein that if injected can stimulate heart cell regeneration – is not quite right. The researchers have not yet been able to utilise a protein to stimulate heart regeneration. They have just used a specific protein on the surface of the stem cells to identify the cells. So it was the cells, and not the protein, that were used in regeneration.
The Daily Telegraph’s coverage of the study is good and includes some useful quotes from the lead researcher Professor Michael Schneider. The article also makes it clear that this study only involved mice.
This was laboratory and animal research studying the adult stem cells in mice that can develop into heart cells.
A number of diseases cause (or are caused by) damage to the heart. For example, heart attacks occur when some heart muscle cells do not get enough oxygen and die – usually due to a blockage in the coronary arteries that supply the heart muscle with oxygen-rich blood. There are "dormant" stem cells in the adult heart that can generate new heart muscle cells, but are not active enough to completely repair damage.
Researchers are starting to test ways to encourage the stem cells to repair heart damage fully. In this study, the researchers were studying these cells very closely, to understand whether all heart stem cells are the same, or whether there are different types and what they do. This information could help them to identify the right type of cells and conditions they need to fix heart damage.
This type of research is a common early step in understanding how the biology of different organs works, with the aim of eventually being able to develop new treatments for human diseases. Much of human and animal biology is very similar, but there can be differences. Once researchers have developed a good idea of how the biology works in animals, they will then carry out experiments to check to what extent this applies to humans.
The researchers obtained stem cells from adult mouse hearts and studied their gene activity patterns. They then went on to study which of these cell types could develop into heart muscle cells in the lab, and which could successfully produce heart muscle cells that could integrate into the heart muscle of living mice.
The researchers started by identifying a population of adult mouse heart cells that is known to contain stem cells. They separated out these into different groups, some of which are known to contain stem cells, and further separated each group into single cells, and studied exactly which genes were active in each cell. They looked at whether the cells showed very similar gene activity patterns (suggesting that they were all the same type of cells, doing the same things), or whether there were groups of cells with different gene activity patterns. They also compared these activity patterns to young heart muscle cells from newborn mice.
Once they identified a group of cells that looked like the cells that could develop into heart muscle cells, they tested whether they would be able to grow and maintain these in the lab. They also injected the cells into the damaged hearts of mice to see if they formed new heart muscle cells. They also carried out various other experiments to further characterise the cells that form new heart muscle cells.
The researchers found distinct groups of cells with different gene activity patterns. One particular group of these cells was identified as the cells that have started to develop into heart muscle cells. These cells were referred to as Sca1+ SP cells, and one of the genes they expressed produces a protein called PDGFRα, which is found on the surface of these cells. These cells grew and divided well in the lab, and the offspring cells maintained the characteristics of the original Sca1+ SP cells.
When the researchers injected samples of the offspring cells into damaged mouse hearts, they found that between 1% and 8% of the cells remained in the heart muscle tissue the day after the injection. Over time, most of these cells were lost from the heart muscle, but some remained (about 0.1% to 0.5% at two weeks).
By two weeks, some (10%) of the remaining cells were showing signs of developing into immature muscle cells. At 12 weeks, more of the remaining cells (50%) were showing signs of being muscle cells. These cells were also showing signs of being more developed and forming muscle tissue. However, there were only a few of these donor cells in each heart (5 to 10 cells). Some of the donor cells also appeared to have developed into the two sorts of cells found in blood vessels.
Mice whose hearts had been injected with the donor cells showed better heart function at 12 weeks than those who had a "dummy" injection with no cells. The size of the damaged area was smaller in those with donor cell injections, and the heart was able to pump more blood.
Further experiments showed the researchers that they could identify and separate out the cells that specifically develop into heart muscle cells by looking for the PDGFRα protein on their surface. The cells identified in this way grew well in the lab, and when injected into the heart they could integrate into the heart muscle and showed signs of developing into muscle cells after two weeks.
The researchers concluded that they had developed a way to identify and separate out a specific subset of adult mouse heart stem cells and can generate new heart muscle cells. They say that at the very least this will help them to study these cells in mice more easily. If a human equivalent of these cells exists, they may also be able to utilise this knowledge to obtain stem cells from adult heart tissue.
This laboratory and animal study has identified a characteristic genetic "signature" of adult mouse heart stem cells. This has allowed them to be more easily identified than they have been previously. Injections of these cells have also been shown to be able to improve heart function after heart muscle damage in mice.
These findings will help researchers to study these cells more closely in the lab and investigate how they can prompt them to repair damaged heart muscle, possibly without removing them from the heart first. While the hope is that this research could lead to treatments for human heart damage, for example after a heart attack, as yet the results are just in mice. The researchers themselves note that they now need to find out whether human hearts have the equivalent cells.
Many researchers are working on the potential uses of stem cells to repair and damage human tissue, and studies such as this are important parts in this process.
Analysis by Bazian. Edited by NHS Choices. Follow Behind the Headlines on Twitter. Join the Healthy Evidence forum.
Stem cells could be used to repair previously irreversible damage from heart attacks, say scientists. Daily Mirror, May 18 2015
'Heartbreak' stem cells could repair damage of heart attack. The Daily Telegraph, May 19 2015
Noseda M, Harada M, McSweeney S, et al. PDGFRα demarcates the cardiogenic clonogenic Sca1+ stem/progenitor cell in adult murine myocardium. Nature Communications. Published online May 18 2015
The Mail Online has given stressed-out parents one more thing to worry about, saying: "Anxiety is 'catching' and can be passed on to children", adding that, "Attitudes of over-anxious parents can severely affect children's behaviour".
The study that prompted these headlines used an interesting "children of twins" study design intended to filter out the influence of genetics, which is known to have an effect on anxiety.
To do this, researchers studied patterns of anxiety in families of identical twins, who are genetically identical, and in families of non-identical twins.
They found there was some link between anxiety and neuroticism (a tendency to have negative thought patterns) in parents and their adolescent children.
There was no evidence that genetics was playing a significant role, but modest evidence that non-genetic factors were. This suggested that anxiety, far from being hardwired into DNA, might be passed on in other ways, such as through learned or mimicked behaviour.
In the Mail Online, journal editor Dr Robert Freedman said: "Parents who are anxious can now be counselled and educated on ways to minimise the impact of their anxiety on the child's development."
This suggestion seems a touch premature – as noted by the researchers, there is a chicken and egg situation here that has not been resolved. Do children worry because they sense their parents are worried, or do parents worry because they see their children are worried about something?
Family life is not always easy, but one way to boost your physical and mental health is to make the time to do activities as a family.
The study was carried out by researchers from universities based in London, Sweden and the US. It was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the US National Institute of Mental Health, and the National Institute for Health Research.
The study was published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, a peer-reviewed medical journal. It has been made available online on an open-access basis, so it is free to read or download as a PDF.
Generally, the Mail Online reported the story accurately, but hardly mentioned the study's limitations. The quote from journal editor Dr Robert Freedman saying that, "Parents who are anxious can now be counselled and educated on ways to minimise the impact of their anxiety on the child's development", seems a little premature, based on the relatively weak associations found in this research.
This twin study investigated the relative role of genetic factors (nature) and non-genetic factors (nurture) in the transmission of anxiety from parent to child.
Non-genetic factors might be, for example, the children observing their parents' anxious behaviours and mimicking them, or the parenting style of anxious parents.
The researchers say it is well recognised that anxiety can run in families, but the underlying processes are poorly understood. This study wanted to find out whether genetics or environment was more important in the transmission of anxiety, by observing identical twins.
This type of study is commonly used for this type of question. It does not aim to pinpoint exact genes or non-genetic factors that play a role in a trait.
The team gathered self-reported anxiety ratings from parents and their adolescent children. They compared the results between identical twin families and non-identical twin families to see to what extent non-genetic factors were driving anxiety transmission, in contrast to genetics.
Data came from the Twin and Offspring Study of Sweden, which has information on 387 identical (monozygotic) twin families and 489 non-identical (dizygotic) twin families. A twin family comprised a twin pair where both twins were parents, each twin's spouse, and one of each of their adolescent children.
In families where the twins were identical, the cousins would share, on average, 50% of the same DNA with their (blood) aunt or uncle. In families where the twins were not identical, the cousins would share less of their DNA, on average, with their aunt or uncle.
If cousins whose parents are identical twins are more similar to their aunt or uncle for a trait than cousins whose parents are non-identical twins, this suggests that genes are playing a role.
Only same-sex twin pairs were used. Twin offspring were selected, so cousins were the same sex as one another and did not differ in age by more than four years, so they were as similar as possible. The average age of the twin offspring was 15.7 years.
This type of study design, known as a "children of twins" study, is intended to dampen down the potential influence that family genetics could have on the outcomes being investigated.
Anxious parental personality was self-reported using a 20-item personality scale. They rated phrases such as, "I often feel uncertain when I meet people I don't know very well", and, "Sometimes my heart beats hard or irregularly for no particular reason".
Each item was ranked between 0 (not at all true) and 3 (very true), covering social and physical signs of anxiety, as well as general worry. There was a similar self-reported scale to measure neuroticism.
Offspring anxiety symptoms – social, physical and general worry – were measured in a similar way, using questions from a Child Behaviour Checklist.
Both parents and offspring rated their anxiety and neuroticism over the last six months. The researchers used computer modelling of the relationships between individuals and their traits to estimate the contribution of genetic and non-genetic factors.
Analysis of the data suggested genetic factors were largely not driving the transmission of anxiety or neuroticism from parent to adolescent. Ratings of anxiety and neuroticism within and between twin families were only very weakly linked.
However, there was "modest evidence" that non-genetic transmission of both anxiety and neuroticism was happening. Although still a relatively weak relationship, it was statistically significant, unlike the genetic finding.
The research team said their results supported the theory that direct, environmentally mediated transmission of anxiety from parents to their adolescent offspring was the main driver, and not genetics.
This study tentatively shows that environmental factors, as opposed to genetics, play a more important role in the transmission of anxiety from parents to their adolescent children.
However, it used self-reported anxiety ratings over a six-month period, so this tells us very little about any potential longer-term effects of anxiety transmission while growing up.
The correlations in the main results were quite weak. This means that not every adolescent with an anxious parent will "catch" or "take on" their parents' anxiety. This suggests that it's a more complex issue.
The results showed non-genetic (environmental) factors were more important than genetic, but precisely what these environmental factors were is not something this study can tell us.
The study used a clever and unique sample of twins and their families to drill down into the age-old debate about the influence of nature versus nurture. However, it doesn't prove that environmental factors are the main driver overall.
That notwithstanding, the authors suggest two main contrasting explanations for the results:
This twin study doesn't bring us any closer to knowing which explanation might be true, or to what extent this can be impacted by changes in behaviour.
Despite these limitations, the hypothesis that children are sensitive to their parents' attitudes and mood seems plausible. So, learning more about how to manage your stress and feelings of anxiety could be good for both you and your children.
For more information and advice, visit the NHS Choices Moodzone.
Analysis by Bazian. Edited by NHS Choices. Follow Behind the Headlines on Twitter. Join the Healthy Evidence forum.
Anxiety is 'catching' and can be passed on to children, scientists warn over-protective parents. Mail Online, April 24 2015
Eley TC, McAdams TA, Rijsdijk FV, et al. The Intergenerational Transmission of Anxiety: A Children-of-Twins Study. The American Journal of Psychiatry. Published online April 2015
With the terrorism threat level remaining at “severe” (meaning an attack is highly likely), and the head of MI5, Andrew Parker, warning that “there will be terrorist attacks” in Britain, there is a climate of continuous public concern.
And yet this November 5, like every other, the British skyline will be filled with explosions and the public will look on in delight. The story behind this annual celebration can become muddled, but it’s worth remembering that Guy Fawkes night marks the most famous counter-terrorism mission in history. Counter-terrorism is going on around us at all time – we just aren’t usually allowed to know about it.
Many, if not most, of the families attending fireworks displays on this weekend will know the story of Guido “Guy” Fawkes. Fawkes, along with his 12 co-conspirators, tried to assassinate King James I of England and IV of Scotland by blowing up the Houses of Parliament with 36 barrels of gun powder. This was a planned act of terrorism to take place at the opening of Parliament on November 5 1605.
Similar to a number of terrorist groups today, the plotters were driven by religious motivations. Under Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, many Catholics had suffered religious persecution. King James was also Protestant but his mother – Mary Queen of Scots – had been Catholic, leaving many hopeful that he would be a more religiously tolerant monarch.
Upon his coronation in 1603 King James failed to reverse the anti-Catholic laws. Instead he began to order Catholic priests to leave the country and increased oppression further by introducing legislation which refused Catholics the right to receive rent or make wills.
In response, Robert Catesby, an English Catholic and the leader of the gunpowder plot, started to plan King James’ assassination. He thought that killing the King would incite a popular revolt whereby the throne would be returned to a Catholic – James’ daughter Princess Elizabeth.
Catesby began to assemble a group of like-minded individuals who had the will and expertise to carry out his ideas. Guy Fawkes was recruited in April 1604 by Catesby’s cousin, Thomas Wintour, in Flanders. He was enlisted for his specific skill set – he was an explosives expert who had been fighting for the Spanish army.
After a few changes of plan, one of the plotters, Thomas Percy, rented a vault under the House of Lords, where the gunpowder was stored. But the opening of Parliament was delayed a number of times – largely due to fear of the plague – leading to a need for further funds. As a result, additional wealthy individuals were recruited, including Catesby’s cousin Francis Tresham.
On October 26, Tresham’s brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, received an anonymous letter warning him not to attend the opening of Parliament. The letter was passed to the King and the authorities searched the cellars of the Palace of Westminster. The gunpowder was discovered and the plot foiled.
Guy Fawkes, who had been given the responsibility of managing the explosives and lighting the fatal fuse, was found in the early hours of November 5 1605. He was captured, questioned and eventually tortured to extract a confession. The other plotters were summarily rounded up, killed or arrested and later hung, drawn and quartered.
The year after the failed plot, Londoners were encouraged to light bonfires to commemorate King James’ survival. This tradition continues each year with Guy Fawkes – Britain’s most famous terrorist – annually punished through effigies (“Guys”) that are burnt on the top of bonfires.
The noise and spectacle of bonfire (or fireworks) night serves as a regular reminder of what might have been had the terrorist attack succeeded. Therefore the event is, in part, about religious terrorism and the actions of a terrorist group.
But the fires actually represent the blaze that never was. Similarly, the fireworks and their associated bangs represent the gunpowder that did not explode. Furthermore, the “Guys” only exist because Guy Fawkes became notorious once he was caught. Consequently, the events are less about remembering terrorism and more about celebrating successful counter-terrorism.
The nature of contemporary counter-terrorism means that successful operations are rarely known, let alone celebrated. There have reportedly been 12 terror plots thwarted in the UK in the past three years but the details of these operations often remain secret within the security services.
But in an environment of concern over the threat of terrorism, it is perhaps even more important – and perhaps reassuring – to remember that the festivities this weekend recognise a long tradition of successful counter-terrorism. And that’s even more reason to join in the celebrations.
Louise Kettle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.
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The UK Statistics Authority has written to Labour MPs pointing out that they haven’t been presenting statistics on zero hour contracts entirely clearly. Contrary to Labour’s suggestions, 1.8 million people are not ‘on zero hour contracts’ but rather around 1.8 million zero hour contracts were in use in August 2014. The number of people with a zero hours contract in their main job was estimated...
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An article about rape in South Africa published online by the British Telegraph newspaper was peppered with statistics. Closer investigation reveals that most of them are not backed up by research.
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We’ve launched a podcast for the election. Each week we’ll bring you the facts behind the headlines, and news from our election HQ where the team is working 18 hour a day, 7 day a week. In Episode 4, Poppy Damon and Phoebe Arnold talk about crime and foodbanks with researchers from the team, and interview […]
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“25% of all staff who are clinicians [at Great Ormond Street] and 24% of all research staff come from non-British EU countries.”
BBC Question Time audience member, 3 November 2016
There are figures to show this for doctors, but we’re still trying to track down the evidence on research staff.
Almost 13% of Great Ormond Street hospital's total full time equivalent (FTE) staff were from the rest of the EU, as of September 2015. The same applies to 23% of its doctors and 17% of all doctors and nurses (‘clinical staff’).
An article from the Health Service Journal had similar findings earlier this year, and also reported nearly a quarter of research staff at Great Ormond Street were citizens of other EU countries. We haven’t been able to back this up, so we’re getting in touch with the publication.
How does this compare nationally?
In June 2016 5% of all NHS FTE staff in England were from the EU, or almost 56,000 people. In London it was much higher at 11% or just over 19,000.
However, all these figures come with a health warning.
NHS staff report their own nationality and this can range from the country of their birth to the country they have most cultural affinity with. NHS Digital, which publishes the information, also warns that nearly 100,000 NHS staff records don’t contain useful data on nationality because staff either aren’t asked to provide it or choose not to.
Update 4 November 2016
We received more recent data from NHS Digital on the proportion of staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital who reported they were from other EU countries.
In June 2016 14% of all staff at the hospital were from other EU countries. This is the proportion of individual people employed rather than FTE however. The same was true for 23% of doctors and 18% of all clinical staff (doctors, nurses and health visitors).
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Over the last year, the north grew faster than the south.
George Osborne, chancellor of the exchequer, in his Budget speech.
According to the chancellor’s Budget speech, Britain is the “comeback country” enjoying the spring of “a truly national recovery”. The theme is familiar, as several of his speeches on the potential of plans for a “northern powerhouse” have highlighted high rates of economic growth and job creation in the north of England. Osborne’s claim that the north grew faster last year is surprising, as it has been widely noted that the economic recovery since 2009 has been led by London and the south-east and that these regions have proved to be more resilient. So does the claim stand up to scrutiny?
To test this we really need regional data on the value of output and employment for 2014. According to the Treasury, the key evidence behind the chancellor’s claim is data from the Office of National Statistics on economic output for the third quarter 2013, which is the latest available. Gross Value Added (GVA) measures the increase in the value of the economy due to the production of goods and services and here it is based on the income generated by resident individuals and firms, including inflation.
This provisional data does show higher rates of growth of GVA per head in northern regions, although London’s growth is high and these small differences would take a very long time to close the very large regional differences in GVA per head. So there is some justification for the claim based on this measure, although it is for 2013 and not last year, or 2014 as he says in his speech.
We can gain a better picture by putting this snapshot in a longer-term context. The chart below shows the change in GVA per head within each region since the pre-recession peak in 2007. We can see that the upswing in northern regions in 2013 is actually part of their recovery from a deeper downswing than in London and the south-east.
Consequently, the differences between regional GVA per head between 2007 and the third quarter of 2013 have widened slightly when compared to the national average. The lead of London and the south-east has increased slightly and the results for Wales are concerning. London has moved from 167.3% of the national average to 171.9% and the south-east from 108% to 110.5%. At the other end, the north-east has fallen from 86.1% to 85.2%, the north-west from 87.7% to 85.2% and Wales from 73.8% to 72.2%.
Do recent employment and jobs statistics provide more convincing support for the chancellor’s claim? The emphasis on growth in the north has apparently been based on employment from the Labour Force Survey. The most recent data shows the growth in employment over the year from November 2013 to January 2014 to November 2014 to January 2015.
With the exception of the north-west, the divergence between London and the rest of the country stands out. While some northern regions are finally enjoying a rapid period of recovery this is not true of other northern regions which are still struggling to exceed their pre-crash level. Given that the trends in total jobs vary from year to year, and that recovery is not simultaneous, broad claims based on one year are not persuasive.
We are not yet able to judge whether the regions in the north of England grew faster in terms of the value of their output last year (2014) as we haven’t got the data. Results for earlier years suggest this may have been the case. Employment data for 2014 show a jobs recovery in some northern regions, but substantial variations within both the north and south and continuing strong growth in London. What is clear is that the recession has intensified a pattern of uneven regional growth.
There are two senses in which the chancellor’s comment could be said to be misleading – this article discuss both of them. The first, which seems relatively less important, concerns the timing of the economic data on which the statement is based. As this article makes clear, although the latest available data is not for “last year”, it does show faster annual per-capita growth in northern regions.
The second sense in which these figures could be misleading is as an indicator of the relative long-term performance of different parts of the UK. As the article discusses, broad claims about long-term growth based on one year of data are not persuasive. In particular, because the northern regions saw a deeper and longer recession than London it is quite possible that some of those regions are now seeing faster growth as they finally recover. Longer-term data would suggest that large gaps in relative economic performance between north and south remain largely unchanged, or may even have been exacerbated by the recession.
Peter Sunley has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
From 2007-2013, Henry Overman directed the Spatial Economics Research Centre which was core funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Department for Business Innovation and Science, Welsh Government and Department of Communities and Local Government. From 2013, he has directed the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth which is core funded by the same departments. Both these centres also receive additional government and research council funding.
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A reference to "EU human rights legislation" in today's Express makes a common error: our human rights laws have nothing much to do with the European Union.
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