There is no link between using a mobile phone and the most common form of brain tumour in the medium term according to Leeds-led research, reported international and national media.

Leeds epidemiologist Professor Patricia McKinney was interviewed for broadcast news on BBC radio, BBC TV and Sky. Speaking to Washington DC station WTOP she said: "People who developed brain tumours didn't use the phone any more frequently or for any longer period of time than people who didn't develop brain tumours."

Professor McKinney explained the limits of the study to the Times: "Our study can only evaluate relatively short-term use, because the majority of people had used mobile phones for less than ten years. Future studies will be able to address the risks of longer term use, but we found no evidence of increased risks in the short to medium term."

The story was also covered by outlets including the Guardian, Independent, Financial Times, the Sun, Daily Mail, Mirror, Bloomberg, Reuters, United Press International, the Toronto Star, Gulf Times, CBC news (Canada), Fox News and CRN Australia. Professor McKinney and Professor Anthony Swerdlow from the Institute of Cancer Research briefed national press and broadcast science reporters at the Science Media Centre in London.

Transport expert Matthew Page joined BBC Radio 4's 'Jonathan Edwards looks into...' to explain why social science can help solve traffic problems: "We're faced with difficult problems which can't entirely be solved by technology - we may find in addition to technological development, there has to be behavioural changes as well. We can't all travel where we want to when we want to by the mode we want to."

The East African Standard newspaper featured research by Dr Brendan Nicholls from Leeds institute of colonial and postcolonial studies on author Ngugi wa Thiong’o’'s representation of women in his writing. Dr Nicholls is one of the eminent international scholars producing new work on the writer 'admired for his relentless critique of colonial and neo-colonial practices'.

Dr Des McLernon's visit to the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology in Pakistan was widely reported by the country's press. The Daily Nation, Daily Dawn, Daily Express covered the Dr McLernon's lecture on improving mobile wireless communications.

Paleoclimatologist Dr Jane Francis explained her work on climate change in the Guardian: "A few years ago people were saying, 'OK, well, we'll look back a million years or so, something like that, to see the effects of climate change'. They thought that we'd still be in the kind of world that we currently know. But now we think that for a vision of what the Earth's going to be like in a couple of hundred years, we may have to go back to a time before the ice, to when it was a greenhouse world. "

Earth and environment colleague Dr Cris Little's research on deep sea creatures (Reporter 510) was featured by the Independent.

Richard Howells joined one-off BBC 2 programme Top Toys, presented by Top Gear's James May. He talked about the sociology of Lego, Meccano, Action Man and school yard crazes. Dr Howells was also a guest on Radio 4's Beyond Belief, discussing film and religion. He argued a literal belief in the historical truth of the Bible stories was no longer intellectually sustainable, and that atheism should be society's default position in matter of faith.

The sexual thoughts project by psychological studies (Reporter 512) was featured on BBC news online, Yorkshire Post, and the Yorkshire Evening Post.

Simon Warner joined BBC Radio 4 Word of Mouth on Friday as part of the John Lennon 25th anniversary week. He said: "From the mid-Sixties the Beatles, particularly Lennon, began to deal with issues of frustration, desperation, the complexities of life - the loneliness, nostalgia, the political - in ways that hadn’t been confronted in that way before."

Photo: Professor Patricia McKinney