A Masters student working through the South West Doctoral Training Centre is currently researching the experiences of community-dwelling over 65s, who have taken or are currently taking some form of sleeping medication.
What is the purpose of the study?
The long-term use of sleep medication by older adults can be extremely harmful to health. However, prescription rates remain very high; hypnotic drugs remain the most popular treatment offered by those aged over 65 by GPs. For this to change, and for any intervention to be successful, it is important that the voices of those...
Research by the University of Exeter has helped underline new national guidelines to help GPs diagnose cancer earlier, and save lives.
Professor Willie Hamilton, at the University of Exeter Medical School, was a major contributor to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) process to consider the latest evidence in formulating guidelines for use in general practice and healthcare settings. He was the clinical lead on the NICE Guideline Group, feeding in his expertise into key decisions that affect the way healthcare is delivered.
An MSc student at the University of Exeter is running a study evaluating a new intervention for depression and is looking participants.
What is the purpose of the study? The purpose of this study is to examine the effect positive activities have on mood. It aims to investigate if different thinking styles enhance mood during and after the experience. Specifically this study looks at ways to increase pleasure experience in people who experience low mood. This has clinical implications for the treatment of anhedonia (how much people...
Researchers from Biosciences at the University of Exeter will be working closely with school pupils from Newton Abbot College as part of the Small World Initiative which aims to discover new antibiotics from soil bacteria.
Teachers and researchers at the University of Exeter and Newton Abbot College, have successfully won a grant from the Society for General Microbiology which aims to engage students with the problems surrounding drug resistance and drug discovery.
The Small World Initiative will support teachers in providing practical lessons with links to the wider...
A Physicist at the University of Exeter has received a substantial grant to help improve the sustainability of commercially valuable crops.
Professor Julian Moger has received a share of the £885,781 grant to fund pioneering research into how to improve the uniformity and resilience in Brassica seeds – which include cabbages and mustard plants.
The research will develop new varieties of Brassica seeds that are not affected by the effects of adverse temperature conditions during the early stages of production.
The crucial research is one of six projects nationwide...
A new study from the University of Exeter has revealed that the Central African country of Gabon is providing an invaluable nesting ground for a vulnerable species of sea turtle considered a regional conservation priority.
A huge ground survey covering nearly 600 km of Gabon’s coastline has uncovered the largest breeding colony of olive ridley turtles in the Atlantic.
The study, published today (4 June) in the journal Biological Conservation, is the first to combine existing monitoring data with a back-to-basics coastal survey of the area. The results suggest that Gabon...
Ladybirds use colour to reveal their toxicity to predators says new research
For one of Britain’s best-loved and colourful group of insects, ladybirds, the brightness of their colour reveals the extent of their toxicity to predators, according to new research undertaken at the Universities of Exeter and Cambridge.
The study which is published in the journal Scientific Reports, also found that the more conspicuous and colourful the ladybird species, the less likely it is to be attacked by birds.
Lina María Arenas, a PhD student at the Centre for Ecology and...
A new research centre will bring together experts in a diverse range of fields to tackle some of the greatest health issues of our time – and the public are being invited to get involved.
The University of Exeter’s Centre for Biomedical Modelling and Analysis will unite disciplines including mathematics, computer science and physics with those from biology, biomedicine and clinical sciences.
By working together, they will gain a better understanding of the root causes of diseases such as dementia, diabetes and epilepsy, leading to new tools for diagnosing and treating these...
New research has indicated that obesity in children has quite different causes at different ages.
The research, led by the University of Exeter Medical School and part of the internationally respected EarlyBird Study, could have far-reaching implications for attempts to reduce the global epidemic of childhood obesity, as it indicates that very different approaches may be needed at various stages of development.
In a study published yesterday (Monday April 27) in the International Journal of Obesity, scientists compared data on contemporary children with those of the 1980’s...
A six-year-old boy and his mum and dad today became the first family in the South West to take part in ground-breaking DNA research at the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust (RD&E) to help fight rare health conditions.
Noah Puleston, from Honiton, has moderate to severe learning difficulties after showing signs of delayed development from an early age. The cause of his difficulties has so far remained a mystery but he and his family now have an opportunity to unlock the mystery and achieve a clearer diagnosis after the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust (RD...
