Langkawi

A faculty from the College travelled to Malaysia to participate in the Malaysian College of Surgeons Annual Clinical Congress. The Glasgow team handled a very significant portion of the plenary part of the programme with contributions on surgical education and assessment, trauma, oesophageal surgery, pancreatic surgery, surgery for liver metastases, colorectal and obesity / metabolic surgery. There were presidents and senior representatives from surgical Colleges in the USA, Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Pakistan. The Glasgow contribution was appreciated – to quote one of our hosts “Thank you for bringing the Glaswegians here to Malaysia. We all had the rare opportunity to hear from internationally reputed speakers and enjoyed the talks and discussions greatly. Thank you for the gracious and courteous manner in which your team shared input into our conference.” New friendships were made – old alliances reinforced and the College profile enhanced. We look forward to exploring further developments with specialists in Malaysia and will keep you posted.

On one of the adjacent islands we encountered some monkeys with a particular liking for a refreshment claiming to be probably the best of its kind in the world!

Free Obesity surgery for Australia?
OVERWEIGHT Australians should get free lap-band surgery to reduce their ongoing burden on the health system, at least this was the recommendation of a parliamentary committee..

It says all Australians should be regularly measured for height and weight so the Government can monitor the nation's obesity rates.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing says the morbidly obese – people whose excessive weight leads to poor quality of life and other health problems – should be able to access the radical stomach-reduction surgery, at no cost, through the public health system.

Read the article in Adelaide Now

Science Daily
The latest research news is presented as a summary digest on this site and it is impressive in its range and scope. Here for example is a distillation of the latest research in colorectal cancer management. You will see links to an enormous number of alternative clinical and non clinical areas. Worth a visit.

Junk DNA – not so much rubbish

Researchers at K.U. Leuven and Harvard University show that stretches of DNA previously believed to be useless 'junk' DNA play a vital role in the evolution of our genome. They found that unstable pieces of junk DNA help tune gene activity and enable organisms to quickly adapt to changes in their environment. The results will be published in the journal Science.

JAlbum

JAlbum is a very easy to use / customise tool for creating photo displays for publication to the web. I have used the early versions for use on my own site and can strongly recommend the software. It has just been upgraded and has many significant enhancements. Added bonus – it is provided free of charge and has excellent built in flexibility. Check it out.

Till next month

Best wishes

David Galloway