All pregnant women who go into labour too soon should be given antibiotics to protect their baby from a potentially deadly infection called Group B Strep (GBS), say new guidelines. Hundreds of newborn babies a year in the UK catch it. With prompt treatment, most can make a full recovery. Currently, two in every 20 infected babies develops a disability and one in every 20 dies. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists wants to change this. It says any woman who goes into labour before 37 weeks should be offered antibiotics as a precaution, even if her waters have not broken and the protective amniotic sac surrounding the baby in the womb is still intact.
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Sixty years ago this week, one of the greatest British scientists, Francis Crick, gave a lecture in London in which he accurately predicted how genes work, setting the course for the genetic revolution we are now living through. Here, evolutionary biologist Professor Matthew Cobb from Manchester University unpicks the predictions that set a new course for how we understand the very stuff we are made from.
In one lecture, it has been said that Francis Crick "permanently altered the logic of biology". Only four years earlier, he and the young American Jim Watson had solved the double helix structure of DNA, using data gathered by Rosalind Franklin. Aged 41, Crick was still five years away from winning the Nobel Prize for this work, but he had a reputation as a powerful and profound thinker. He gave his lecture - "On protein synthesis" - at University College London for the Society for Experimental Biology. In it, Crick spoke about how genes do what they do. At the time, this subject was still very murky - some scientists were not even convinced that genes were made of DNA. But Crick delivered four predictions about genes - and their link to the proteins that build our bodies. In each of these ideas, he was right. Leaves are the main site of photosynthesis – the production of carbohydrates using energy from sunlight. Photosynthetic leaves are usually thin, have a large surface area, and are arranged and angled on the plant for maximum light absorption. However, they can be adapted for other purposes including food and water storage, support and defence. Stems tend to be above ground, erect and self-supporting. They usually end in a bud and bear leaves, lateral buds and reproductive organs. Lateral branches arise in the axils of leaves (the angle between leaf and stem). There are many variations on ‘normal’ stems. They may be underground, prostrate, or serve as storage, reproductive or support organs. Roots tend to grow downwards, away from light and towards water. As a general rule, they bear neither leaves nor buds. Their primary roles are anchorage, absorption and transport. However, roots have adapted to fulfil a variety of other functions including storage, support and aeration.
For more than 25 years, since the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act came into force, it's been illegal in the UK to research on human embryos in the test tube beyond 14 days. But with recent scientific developments the debate over changing the limit has been rekindled. In the first of two programmes, Matthew Hill, the BBC's West of England Health Correspondent, looks back at the origins of the 14 day rule following the birth of the first baby by IVF, Louise Brown, in 1978.
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