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World Economic Forum releases list of 'Important Technologies'

The World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies has just released its list of "Important Technologies" that will change the world in the years ahead. The list highlights technology trends most likely to impact on the state of the world in the near future and was developed by a cross section of experts from science, businesses, and public policy.

15 Feb 2012

Top four reasons why many dieters fail to lose weight

It's been more than one month since the new year and swimsuit season is lurking on the horizon - how are those weight-loss resolutions working out? "Losing weight is one of the top resolutions made every year, yet only 20 percent of people achieve successful weight-loss and maintenance," says Jessica Bartfield,MD, internal medicine who specializes in nutrition and weight management at Loyola University Health System's Gottlieb Memorial Hospital.

15 Feb 2012

Crop failures, returning migrants, weather patterns threatening to worsen malnutrition in Africa's Sahel, Horn regions

"Sahel states are bracing for a long, potentially deadly hungry season, many weakened by the return of people from Libya who are unemployed, armed and creating fresh strife in already-vulnerable countries," Agence France-Presse reports.

14 Feb 2012

WFP, FAO warn food security worsening for millions in South Sudan, call for action

The U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) "warned Wednesday that millions of people in South Sudan are facing worsening hunger and called for urgent action to improve food security through adequate food aid and projects to boost agricultural production," the U.N. News Centre reports,

10 Feb 2012

New evidence for role of the brain in obesity

Researchers at the University of Turku and Aalto University have now found new evidence for the role of the brain in obesity. The researchers measured the functioning brain circuits involved in with multiple brain imaging methods.

10 Feb 2012

Administration officials announce new initiatives to promote innovations in global development

In a White House briefing on Wednesday, "senior Administration officials announced a series of new initiatives to promote game-changing innovations to solve long-standing development challenges" in response to President Obama's "call to harness science technology, and innovation to spark global development," Gayle Smith, special assistant to the president, and Tom Kalil, senior adviser for science, technology, and innovation, write in this post in the White House Blog.

10 Feb 2012

Negative consequences of maternal obesity can be reversed through exercise

Exercise is the key to overcoming the adverse metabolic effects passed on to offspring by their overweight mothers, with research showing for the first time these effects can be almost completely reversed through physical activity.

10 Feb 2012

Children with multiple psychosomatic symptoms more likely to experience physical abuse

Children who display multiple psychosomatic symptoms, such as regular aches and pains and sleep and appetite problems, are more than twice as likely to be experiencing physical abuse at home than children who do not display symptoms, according to a study in the March edition of Acta Paediatrica.

10 Feb 2012

Cancer-related fatigue linked to muscle mass and strength

Many patients with advanced cancer suffer from cachexia, a condition also called body-wasting or wasting syndrome, which causes significant weight loss, extreme fatigue and reduces quality of life.

10 Feb 2012

Viewpoints: Debt estimates and Medicare plans; Sen. McConnell on fate of health law

Debt projections released Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office illustrate three fiscal paths: dangerous, dumb and smart. ... President Obama has called for a balanced solution but has neither proposed serious tax reform nor adequately outlined the ways in which he would get entitlement spending, particularly Medicare, under control. The position of most Republicans, on the presidential campaign trail and in Congress, is wildly less responsible.

2 Feb 2012

Roche’s skin cancer drug Erivedge gets FDA nod

The Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) this Monday approved a pill that treats the most common type of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma.

31 Jan 2012

UNICEF appeals for $1.28B to provide humanitarian assistance for children in 25 nations

UNICEF on Friday "appealed ... for $1.28 billion to provide humanitarian assistance to children in over 25 countries this year, with nearly one-third of the total amount earmarked for the crisis in the Horn of Africa," the U.N. News Centre reports.

31 Jan 2012

Genentech receives FDA approval for Erivedge to treat basal cell carcinoma

Today, Erivedge (vismodegib) was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat adult patients with basal cell carcinoma, the most common type of skin cancer. The drug is intended for use in patients with locally advanced basal cell cancer who are not candidates for surgery or radiation and for patients whose cancer has spread to other parts of the body.

31 Jan 2012

Inlyta receives FDA approval for treatment of advanced kidney cancer

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Inlyta (axitinib) to treat patients with advanced kidney cancer (renal cell carcinoma) who have not responded to another drug for this type of cancer.

30 Jan 2012

Global hunger estimates 'are not infallible'

"While the Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) estimated figures on global hunger often grab headlines, the uncertainty surrounding the numbers receives relatively little media attention," Guardian reporter Claire Provost writes in the newspaper's "Poverty Matters Blog."

30 Jan 2012

Revised menus for school lunches with more fruits and veggies

American schoolchildren are accustomed to a steady diet of pizza and french fries for school lunches. Now they will find more fruits, vegetables and whole grains on their cafeteria trays under new government school lunch rules announced on Wednesday. Apart from adding double the produce servings the guidelines also call for fat-free and low-fat milk only, child-appropriate portion sizes and reductions in sodium, saturated fat and trans fats.

26 Jan 2012

Brown fat burns in the cold and could hold key to burning excess fat: Study

Brown fat is something that occurs more in thin people than fat, younger people than older and young women than men. It is brown in color and a new study finds that one form of it, which is turned on in cold climates can burn calories from elsewhere in the body to keep the body warm. Another new study finds that a second form of brown fat can be created from ordinary white fat by exercise.

24 Jan 2012

Drought threatens Africa's Sahel region; Aid agencies worry about donor fatigue

"For the third time in the past decade, drought has returned to the arid, western shoulder of Africa, bringing hunger to millions," and "aid agencies are warning that if action is not taken now, the region known as the Sahel could slip into crisis," the Associated Press reports.

24 Jan 2012

Famine refugees finding little relief in overcrowded Somali capital

Al Jazeera examines the consequences of Somalia's ongoing famine, "the worst hunger crisis seen here for two decades." Many Somalis fled their rural homes to Mogadishu to escape drought and conflict, but "the city has become the epicenter of the world's worst humanitarian crisis," the news service reports, adding, "While new arrivals say that conditions in the capital are better than elsewhere in the country, they are atrocious by any other measure."

20 Jan 2012

External stimuli control hormonal regulation of our eating behavior

Max Planck researchers have proven something scientifically for the first time that laypeople have always known: the mere sight of delicious food stimulates the appetite. A study on healthy young men has documented that the amount of the neurosecretory protein hormone ghrelin in the blood increases as a result of visual stimulation through images of food.

20 Jan 2012