HSE Hospital trolley crisis has improved but we’re not out of woods yet?
The health Minister Leo Varadkar says there has been a marked improvement in the number of patients lying on trolleys but warned that the situation may deteriorate further next week.
Mr Varadkar said that the latest figures show that 209 patients are currently confined to trolleys compared to 525 patients last Tuesday.
“The situation is much improved but we are not out of the woods yet. Next week the junior doctors change over which is always a difficult time in the health service,” the Fine Gael politician said today.
Mr Varadkar said that there is “some evidence” that a bout of influenza is on the way which will make the situation much more difficult for hospital staff.
Read more: Trolley crisis to worsen as 400 beds for elderly lie idle
He told Marian Finucane on RTE radio that hospitals will need to “ramp up activity” later in the year to “get on top of cancellations” of surgery procedures in recent weeks.
Mr Varadkar said he has been in regular contact with Taoiseach Enda Kenny on the crisis in emergency departments, adding that they have become “very close” in recent months.
Deaths on Iarnród Eireann railways linked to self harm for the last four year’s
Iarnród Éireann has said there have been 29 fatalities on the railways attributed to self harm over the past four years.
It comes as a new suicide prevention initiative, involving the Samaritans and Iarnród Éireann, is being rolled out.
It will see signs put in place on every station platform in the country with the Samaritan’s contact details, to encourage people to seek help if they need someone to talk to.
Research carried out in the UK has shown that signage can help play an important role in suicide prevention.
Crude Oil Dips Under $50 A Barrel, lowest price since 2009
U.S. gasoline prices have fallen sharply since last summer, driven by surging oil production and other factors. The price for a barrel of U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell below $50 Monday.
The price for a barrel of U.S. oil benchmark West Texas Intermediate fell below $50 Monday, matching levels seen in the spring of 2009. The drop is linked to both OPEC’s boosted production and a stronger dollar.
Oil’s latest fall came along with a dip on Wall Street, as the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 330 points to finish at 17,501 — a drop of 1.86 percent that’s also seen as a reaction to new instability in Europe.
Petroleum has been in a free fall: In the U.S., the average cost for a gallon of regular gasoline has fallen from above $3.60 to below $2.20 since June, according to AAA.
The sharp drop has come as OPEC member nations seek to protect their market share by raising production levels to undercut profits for U.S. oil companies.
Both Iraq and Russia are now producing crude at record levels, as Bloomberg News reports.
“People are thinking about promises from OPEC, mostly Saudi Arabia, that they’ll continue to produce at very high levels,” TD Securities commodity strategy chief Bart Melek tells Agence France-Presse. “On the demand side of the equation, what we’re getting is basically a lack of demand growth … as Europe is potentially in crisis.”
The cheaper oil and gas prices come along with a surging dollar, which reached a nine-year high against the euro earlier Monday.
As Krishnadev reported for the Two-Way, the reasons for that gain include renewed instability in Greece and the possibility that the European Central Bank “could introduce quantitative easing to stimulate the eurozone.”
For many in the American oil industry, a central question has been whether companies can keep developing oil fields, even as the financial incentive to do so keeps shrinking.
As the industry site Fuel Fix notes today, the number of working U.S. oil rigs has fallen more in the past two weeks than in any similar period since 2009.
“The number of rigs operating in the United States declined by 29 last week to 1,811,” the site reports, “marking the fourth consecutive weekly decrease for the U.S. count, published by oil field services company Baker Hughes.”
New gene BCL11A discovered in Breast cancer breakthrough at Cambridge University
The gene known as BCL11A is likely to be behind triple negative breast cancer.
Cambridge University and the Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Institute have discovered the gene responsible for the killer triple negative breast cancer.
Up to one in five breast cancer patients have the triple-negative variety, which can recur or spread to other parts of the body more easily than other forms. Prognoses tend to be poorer and survival depends on traumatic rounds of chemotherapy, often combined with surgery.
Scientists have identified the gene behind one of most aggressive forms of breast cancer in a breakthrough which could bring life-saving new treatments.
Triple-negative breast cancer is one of the most deadly forms of the disease and nearly one quarter of patients diagnosed will not survive for more than five years.
Now researchers at Cambridge University and the Wellcome Trust’s Sanger Institute have found that the BCL11A gene is overactive in eight out of ten patients.
The study opens the door for therapies which suppress the gene and for screening that would pick up the risk early when women still had time to opt for life-saving mastectomies.
“Our gene studies in human cells clearly marked BCL11A as a driver for triple-negative breast cancers,” says Dr Walid Khaled of the University of Cambridge.
“We also showed that adding an active human BCL11A gene to human or mouse breast cells in the lab drove them to behave as cancer cells.
“As important, when we reduced the activity of BCL11A in three samples of human triple-negative breast cancer cells, they lost some characteristics of cancer cells and became less tumorigenic when tested in mice.
“So by increasing BCL11A activity we increase cancer-like behaviour; by reducing it, we reduce cancer-like behaviour.”
Around 10,000 people a year are diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. The disease does not respond to traditional breast cancer drugs like Herceptin and is one of the most aggressive types.
Just 77 per cent of people with triple-negative breast cancer will survive for five years, compared with 93 per cent for other types of the disease.
For the new study, researchers looked that the genetic profile of tumours from 3,000 patients, specifically searching for genes which affect how stem cells and tissues develop.
Higher activity of the BCL11A gene was found in approximately eight out of ten patients and was associated with a more advanced grade of tumour.
To test the theory that the gene was promoting tumour growth, scientists genetically engineered mice to have inactive copies. None of the animals went on to develop tumours in the mammary gland, whereas all untreated animals developed tumours.
“This exciting result identifies a novel breast cancer gene in some of the more difficult-to-treat cases,” said Professor Carlos Caldas, Director of the Cambridge Breast Cancer Research Unit at the University of Cambridge.
“It builds on our work to develop a comprehensive molecular understanding of breast cancer that will inform clinical decisions and treatment choices.
“Finding a novel gene that is active in cancer should also help in the search for new treatments.”
The breakthrough was welcomed by charities who said it could lead to new targeted treatments.
Dr Emma Smith, senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: “Figuring out the genes that play a role in triple negative breast cancer could lead to new ways to tackle the disease so this study is a promising step forward.
“The next steps will be finding out if the gene plays the same role in causing breast cancer in women, and whether drugs can be developed to target the faulty molecules.
“Triple negative breast cancer can be challenging to treat, so research into the biology of the disease is vital to help scientists come up with new treatments.”
Dr Christopher Runchel, Research Officer at Breakthrough Breast Cancer added: “Whilst this investigation and the discovery of a new gene driver for triple negative breast cancer was mostly confined to cell lines and mice, this work could prove promising in the search for new ways to treat this form of the disease in the future
“Triple negative breast cancer is particularly aggressive and does not respond to hormonal therapies such as tamoxifen, or targeted drugs like Herceptin. That’s why the hunt for effective treatments is so important and Breakthrough Breast Cancer have long supported research like this.”
Galway man’s insight into battle with depression
Sean Nee 
A Galway man has opened up about his battle with depression in a heartfelt open letter.
Salthill man Seán Nee’s honest account of his anxiety and depression has been praised by celebrities who have had similar experience, including Conor Cusack and singer Niall Breslin (Bressie).
The former Jes student wrote the open letter, which is on his blog while he was working at a surfing camp on a remote island in Indonesia.
The 29-year-old photographer paints a picture of paradise – of sunny climes and the best waves on the planet.
But as his detailed account of anxiety and depression attest, people can struggle no matter how rosy their lives appear to others from the outside looking in.
“I wanted to give you an insight into the mind of someone with an illness of the mind and to explain how important it is to emotionally support each other,” he says.
“I also wanted to show people that no matter how blue the water or high the palm tree is on someone’s Facebook profile, it does not show how happy they are.”
Earlier in the open letter, he gives a vivid account of the turmoil in the mind of someone struggling with anxiety and depression.
“I am confused as to how I should feel right now. I feel restless and suffocated by a sensation like a strong elastic band wrapped tight around my ribcage constricting my lungs. My mind is racing between thoughts of self-hatred and self-harm. I feel unable to stop pulling the hairs out of my beard and my muscles ache. I look around me and see other people content with the moment, where as I am in a constant battle with it.
“My heart is hurting which is making my anxiety worse. I am trying to focus on writing one-letter-at-a-time! But my thoughts that everyone hates me or people might be talking about me are hard to push away; the anxiety grows. I can’t get comfortable, the fear is unbearable,” he writes.
He points out that just two days previous he had “the best surf of my life”.
“Nothing particularly negative has happened between then and now, and yet I feel the complete opposite. My self-confidence is a diminishing drizzle and I feel paranoid. I believe no-one cares whether I exist or not. I am nothing. I am in a position I don’t deserve so I keep my head down and break all eye contact with the others. The only thing I can really focus on is to end this feeling.”
As the letter continues, Seán touches on the subject of suicide. “Burying our heads in the sand will not help anyone so we need to face this issue head-on and see what we can do,” he says.
Another interesting aspect to his account is just how ‘normal’ he appears to others.
“I don’t think you would guess I had any issues if you met me, even those who know me well were shocked when they found out. I laugh a lot, I’m pretty social, have a loving family and I’ve a good group of friends.”
He says he struggled with “extreme anxiety and crippling depression” throughout his school days and reached a low aged 27 when he was admitted to hospital.
He gives a brutally honest outline of his thoughts on people’s perceptions of the illness – the ‘depression deniers’ – and on how it is treated.
But he ends on an uplifting note.
“For any young people reading this, or anyone, who is suffering from depression or anxiety disorder, I hope I haven’t scared you. I have more good days than bad ones and I have felt love and joy many times. I know I will in future – so will you! You may go through this rough patch but you can get through it. You will know yourself better and will have a greater empathy for others. Keep your heads held high.”
Fierce shark-like reptile found in Scotland
Resembling a fierce ancestor of the Loch Ness monster, the first fossil of a shark-like reptile that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs has been found in Scotland.
The fossil of the top-ocean predator that lived 170 million years ago was first discovered lying on a beach on the Isle of Skye in 1959 by an amateur collector – but it has only now been recognised as a new species of ichthyosaur, an extinct group of marine reptiles that dominated the oceans of the Jurassic Period.
Scientists have named it Dearcmhara shawcrossi, after Brian Shawcross, the amateur collector who donated the specimen to Glasgow’s Hunterian Museum, and the Gaelic word for marine lizard, dearcmhara – pronounced “jark vara”.
The fast-swimming reptile grew to be about 4.2 metress long from snout to tail and was armed with an array of sharp teeth.
It lived in the warm, shallow seas around the coast of what is now Scotland and fed on fish and possibly smaller reptiles, said Steve Brusatte, a palaeontologist at the University of Edinburgh.
“During the time of the dinosaurs, the waters of Scotland were prowled by big reptiles the size of motor boats. Their fossils are very rare, and only now for the first time we’ve found a new species that was uniquely Scottish,” Dr Brusatte said.
“It looked particularly peculiar to us and when we compared it to other fossils it was clear that it was a different ichthyosaur to anything that we had been seen before. It’s not the most beautiful fossil in the world but we realised it was an unusual specimen.”
Though the fossil is incomplete and includes only four bones of the animal’s skeleton, the researchers identified unique features, such as a triangular bony projection on one of the bones of its forelimb for connecting muscles that were not seen in other ichthyosaurs.
During the Jurassic Period, much of Skye was underwater but connected to the mainland. Britain was part of a large island positioned between the great land masses of Europe and North America.
Skye is one of the best places in the world for finding fossils of the creatures that lived during the middle of the Jurassic, between 160 million years and 170 million years ago, Dr Brusatte said.
“It’s a real treasure because the fossils on Skye come from a time during the Jurassic when we don’t have fossils from the rest of the world. By pure, dumb luck, it gives us a window into this mysterious period of time.”
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