The entire 2017-18 series of Dr Hairy’s Research Summaries, in book form. 130 summaries, plus 13 true-or-false quizzes, in plain English. We’ve even put in some jokes to keep things interesting! If you want a lively and easy-to-digest way of keeping up with what’s going on in medical research, this is it!
All for only £15! To place an order, click here.
Dr Hairy’s Research Summaries & quiz for March 2018 are now online. Subjects covered this time:
Can we usefully stratify patients according to suicide risk?
BMJ 2017;359:j4627
Low vitamin D levels as a risk factor for cancer
BMJ 2017;359:j4761BMJ 2017;359:j4761
The responses to the “cancer drugs scandal” must fully involve patients—an essay by Tessa Richards
BMJ 2017;359:j4956
How Europe copes with flu
BMJ 2018;360:k266
Sixty seconds on . . . loneliness
BMJ 2018;360:k300
“Where there is life, there is hope”
BMJ 2018;360:j5920
Trimethoprim use for urinary tract infection and risk of adverse outcomes in older patients: cohort study
BMJ 2018;360:k341
Large study is “robust” evidence of link between chronic heavy drinking and dementia
BMJ 2018;360:k814
Are expanding disease definitions unnecessarily labelling women with polycystic ovary syndrome?
BMJ 2017;358:j3694
Sex robots: the irreplaceable value of humanity
BMJ 2017;358:j3790
This is the last set of Research Summaries in the present series: we’ll now take a couple of months off to put this series in book form and prepare ourselves for the next one, which will probably commence in June or July.
With The Calamitous Tale of Mr Punch as a bonus disc. Here’s a short trailer:
Click here for the full programme
The third Cranbrook Video Festival took place on Saturday 17th February at 12 o’clock in the Crane Surgery, Cranbrook, Kent. This year the theme of the festival was ‘Family’.
Contributors came from the USA, Belgium and Russia as well as the UK. There were animations, dramas, documentaries and experimental films, from both amateurs and professional film-makers.
The theme of the festival this year was ‘Family’. This grew out of the theme of last year’s festival, ‘Wellbeing’. Family turned out to be the thing most people thought of as essential to their wellbeing: but some of the films in this year’s lineup showed the negative aspects of family, as well as the positives. ‘Voicing Silence’ by Lucy Lee is about child abuse, a how hard it is for the victims of abuse to speak out about their experiences. ‘Lint People’ by Helder K Sun is a Freudian comedy-animation about a community of creatures made out of fluff, in which the father-figure is always trying to devour his own children.
The first half of the show was taken up by a screening of my own feature-length puppet-animation ‘Dr Hairy and the QCQ’. I was a bit worried that ninety minutes it might be too long for an audience unfamiliar with my style, but in fact it seemed to go down very well and got some big laughs. Of the other animations in the show, the one that seemed to make the biggest impression on people was the very beautiful ‘My Strange Grandfather’ by the Russian film-maker Dina Velikovskaya; and of the acted films, the standout was probably ‘Brian and Charles’, directed by Jim Archer, written by and starring David Earl and Chris Hayward – an oddly touching comedy about a lonely man’s love-hate relationship with his pet robot. A special mention should also go to the mini-documentary ‘The Reinvention of Normal’ by Liam St Pierre, a brilliantly original mixture of animation and ‘real-life’ footage about the inventor/artist Dominic Wilcox and his ideas.
As with previous festivals, one of the highlights was to have one of the contributors there – Jenni Cresswell, a textile artist from Brighton, who presented her own video, ‘Bound Together’, about a book that was passed on to her by her mother.
The standard of contributions in the festival is definitely getting higher year-on-year, which makes it a very exciting thing to be part of.
The latest Research Summaries and Quiz have just gone online. Subjects covered this time:
To find out more about Dr Hairy’s Research Summaries, please visit http://www.drhairy.org/concrete5/index.php/research-summaries/
Slightly belatedly, Dr Hairy’s Research Summaries for December 2017 are now online. Subjects covered this time:
Br J Gen Pract 2017; 67 (664): e757-e763. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp17X693125
Br J Gen Pract 25 September 2017; bjgp17X693077. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp17X693077
Br J Gen Pract 9 October 2017; bjgp17X693149. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp17X693149
Br J Gen Pract 2017; 67 (664): 529-530. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp17X693437
Br J Gen Pract 20 November 2017; bjgp17X693629. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp17X693629
Br J Gen Pract 2017; 67 (665): e830-e841. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp17X693641
BMJ 2017;359:j5193
BMJ 2017;359:j5037
BMJ 2017;357:j1284
BMJ 2017;359:j4746
For more information about Dr Hairy’s Research Summaries, please visit http://www.drhairy.org/concrete5/index.php/research-summaries/
The concluding episode of the current series.
Dr Hairy is cornered by the vengeful Dr Stead, who wants to know why he said ‘bollocks’ to the QCQ. Luckily, Dr Hairy remembers Grabber’s advice about pleading insanity – with hilarious results!
YouTube – https://youtu.be/AqssjKPvhvI
Vimeo – https://vimeo.com/247685976
A poem-video about the Blockchain (and computerisation in general). Audio: ‘Data Tones’ by Brotherprovisional, from Freesound.org. Images from Google Images. Text based on a cut-up of blockchain discussion from Netbehaviour.org.
YouTube – https://youtu.be/vz4bKu3e-uk
Vimeo – https://vimeo.com/245758021
The ninth in a new series of puppet-animations about the adventures and misadventures of an ordinary (but rather hirsute) GP.
Dr Hairy goes to visit his Mum, accompanied by his daughter Jenny. Dr Hairy’s Mum appears surprisingly clear-headed, and she also seems not to be wearing any hairclips: in fact all her hairclips seem to have gone missing. Then Dr Hairy ventures into the cupboard under the stairs, and finds out where all the hairclips have got to… with hilarious results!
YouTube – https://youtu.be/mnJWNmhBNMg
Vimeo – https://vimeo.com/243144099
The eighth in a new series of puppet-animations about the life and misadventures of an ordinary (but rather hirsute) GP.
News of Dr Hairy’s outburst about the QCQ comes to the ears of the vengeful Dr Stead, who decides to pay Dr Hairy a visit to sort him out. In the meantime, we find out the truth about the yellow man Dr Hairy’s mother has been seeing in her house, and the mysterious writing he’s been putting on her walls.
YouTube – https://youtu.be/fACVxRH6SgU
Vimeo – https://vimeo.com/239346872