The Lobby in transition: what the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal revealed about the changing relationship between politicians and the Westminster Lobby?

The 2009 MPs' expenses scandal was one of the most significant political stories of modern times. It raised questions, not just about the ethics and behaviour of MPs but also about the relationship between politicians at Westminster and the political correspondents who follow them on a daily basis, known as ‘the lobby’. For the significance of this scandal, in media terms, was that the story was not broken by members of the lobby but came from outside the traditional Westminster news gathering process. This paper examines why this was the case and it compares the lobby today with that which was described and analysed by Jeremy Tunstall and Colin Seymour-Ure in their respective studies more than 40 years ago. The article concludes that the lobby missed the story partly because of the nature of the lobby itself and partly as a result of a number of specific changes which have taken place in the media and the political systems over the past 40 years

Identification of 12 new susceptibility loci for different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer.

To identify common alleles associated with different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), we pooled data from multiple genome-wide genotyping projects totaling 25,509 EOC cases and 40,941 controls. We identified nine new susceptibility loci for different EOC histotypes: six for serous EOC histotypes (3q28, 4q32.3, 8q21.11, 10q24.33, 18q11.2 and 22q12.1), two for mucinous EOC (3q22.3 and 9q31.1) and one for endometrioid EOC (5q12.3). We then performed meta-analysis on the results for high-grade serous ovarian cancer with the results from analysis of 31,448 BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers, including 3,887 mutation carriers with EOC. This identified three additional susceptibility loci at 2q13, 8q24.1 and 12q24.31. Integrated analyses of genes and regulatory biofeatures at each locus predicted candidate susceptibility genes, including OBFC1, a new candidate susceptibility gene for low-grade and borderline serous EOC

T-cells expressing natural killer (NK) receptors are altered in multiple sclerosis and responses to α-galactosylceramide are impaired

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