Obesity rates across Canada are reaching alarming levels and continue to climb, according to a new University of British Columbia study. Published today in the Canadian Journal of Public Health, the study provides the first comprehensive look at adult obesity rates across Canada since 1998, complete with "obesity maps." "Being obese or overweight significantly increases the risk of chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes, and some cancers," says study lead author, Prof. Carolyn Gotay in UBC's School of Population and Public Health. "Our analysis shows that ...

It's a basic, reasonable question: How much will this cost me? For patients in the emergency room, the answer all too often is a mystery. Emergency departments play a critical role in health care, yet consumers typically know little about how medical charges are determined and often underestimate their financial responsibility -- then are shocked when the hospital bill arrives. A new study led by UC San Francisco highlights the problem by identifying giant price swings in patient charges for the 10 most common outpatient conditions in emergency rooms across the country. Out-of-pocket ...

Protection of marine areas from fishing increases density and biomass of fish and invertebrates (such as lobster and scallops) finds a systematic review published in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental Evidence. The success of a protected area was also dependent on its size and on how it was managed, however even partial protection provides significant ecological benefits. Marine ecosystems worldwide are suffering from a loss of biodiversity due to destruction of food chains and habitats. Increasingly areas are being set aside to protect sensitive environments ...

The walls of the body's major artery - the aorta - are already thickened in babies born to mums who are overweight or obese, finds a small study published online in the Fetal and Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease of Childhood. Importantly, this arterial thickening, which is a sign of heart disease, is independent of the child's weight at birth - a known risk factor for later heart disease and stroke. And it may explain how overweight/obese mums could boost their children's subsequent risk of cardiovascular disease, suggest the authors, who point out that more ...

[Ambulance call-outs and response times in Birmingham and the impact of extreme weather and climate change Online First doi 10.1136/emermed-2012-201817] Every one degree fall in outside air temperature during the winter corresponds to a drop in ambulance response time of more than 1 per cent, reveals research published online in Emergency Medicine Journal. Increased demand and treacherous road conditions during the winter months combine to stretch ambulance services in England, which have a target of reaching 75% of immediately life-threatening (category A) calls within ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Hailed as a major step forward in the effort to develop targeted cancer therapies, a recently approved drug for the most common type of skin cancer has been a mixed blessing for patients. Although the initial response is usually dramatic, the tumors often recur as the cancer becomes resistant to treatment. Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a second way to block the activity of the signaling cascade, called the Hedgehog pathway, that is abnormally active in these cancers. The researchers hope the new approach ...

An extraordinary find allowing scientists to see through the head of the 'fuxianhuiid' arthropod has revealed one of the earliest evolutionary examples of limbs used for feeding, along with the oldest nervous system to stretch beyond the head in fossil record. Until now, all fossils found of this extremely early soft-bodied animal featured heads covered by a wide shell or 'carapace', obscuring underlying contents from detailed study. But a new fossil-rich site in South China has been found to contain arthropod examples where the carapace has literally been 'flipped' over ...

What is the cost of rare diseases such as Friedreich's Ataxia? By analyzing direct and indirect costs of care research in BioMed Central's open access journal Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases calculated that conservatively this rare disease costs between £11,000 and £19,000 per person per year. Proper understanding resource allocation is important in minimizing the effect of Friedreich's Ataxia on people's lives while maximizing their quality of life. Diseases are classified as 'rare' if they affect less than 1 in 2000 people. Lack of scientific knowledge means that ...

Starch-based intravenous (IV) fluids used by the NHS to treat seriously ill patients are causing unnecessary deaths, according to a new Cochrane systematic review by researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Based on data from 25 randomised control trials, the researchers concluded that starch-based colloid fluids, used to stabilise patients with low blood pressure, are not only more expensive than saline-based crystalloid fluids, but may also be causing around 250 unnecessary deaths in the UK every year. The study included 9,147 seriously ill ...

Imagine a sphere more than 2 million miles across - eight times the distance from Earth to the Moon - spinning so fast that its surface is traveling at nearly the speed of light. Such an object exists: the supermassive black hole at the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 1365. Astronomers measured its jaw-dropping spin rate using new data from the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray satellites. "This is the first time anyone has accurately measured the spin of a supermassive black hole," said lead author Guido ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- In experiments mimicking a natural environment, Duke University researchers have demonstrated that the silver nanoparticles used in many consumer products can have an adverse effect on plants and microorganisms. Fifty days after scientists applied a single low dose of silver nanoparticles, the experimental environments produced about a third less biomass in some plants and microbes. These preliminary findings are important, the researchers said, because little is known about the environmental effects of silver nanoparticles, which are found in textiles, ...

Research indicates that half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14, well before adulthood. Three new studies investigate the cognitive, genetic and environmental factors that may contribute to mental health disorders in adolescence. The studies are published in Psychological Science and Clinical Psychological Science, journals of the Association for Psychological Science. Social-Information-Processing Patterns Mediate the Impact of Preventive Intervention on Adolescent Antisocial Behavior Kenneth A. Dodge, Jennifer Godwin, and The Conduct Problems ...

An international team including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists has definitively measured the spin rate of a supermassive black hole for the first time. The findings, made by the two X-ray space observatories, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton, solve a long-standing debate about similar measurements in other black holes and will lead to a better understanding of how black holes and galaxies evolve. "We can trace matter as it swirls into a black hole using X-rays emitted from regions very ...

Children who failed to acquire a basic math skill in first grade scored far behind their peers by seventh grade on a test of the mathematical abilities needed to function in adult life, according to researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. The basic math skill, number system knowledge, is the ability to relate a quantity to the numerical symbol that represents it, and to manipulate quantities and make calculations. This skill is the basis for all other mathematics abilities, including those necessary for functioning as an adult member of society, a ...

Researchers have successfully piloted a process that enables natural resource managers to take action to conserve particular wildlife, plants and ecosystems as climate changes. The Adaptation for Conservation Targets (ACT) framework is a practical approach to assessing how future changes in air and water temperatures, precipitation, stream flows, snowpack, and other environmental conditions might affect natural resources. ACT enables scientists and managers to work hand-in-hand to consider how management actions may need to be adjusted to address those impacts. "As ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif. –) Bioengineering researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara have found that changing the shape of chemotherapy drug nanoparticles from spherical to rod-shaped made them up to 10,000 times more effective at specifically targeting and delivering anti-cancer drugs to breast cancer cells. Their findings could have a game-changing impact on the effectiveness of anti-cancer therapies and reducing the side effects of chemotherapy, according to the researchers. Results of their study were published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Fashion retailers have seen an increase in demand for maternity wear in recent years, as sales for maternity clothing have increased while overall women's apparel sales have declined. Currently, most retailers produce maternity wear using a standardized size chart that begins with women in their seventh month of pregnancy. Retailers produce garments for women who are earlier in their terms by adjusting the sizes smaller proportionally based on the standardized chart. In a recent study, University of Missouri researcher MyungHee Sohn, an assistant professor ...

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have achieved a major advance in understanding how genetic information is transcribed from DNA to RNA by providing the first step-by-step look at the biomolecular machinery that reads the human genome. "We've provided a series of snapshots that shows how the genome is read one gene at a time," says biophysicist Eva Nogales who led this research. "For the genetic code to be transcribed into messenger RNA, the DNA double helix has to be opened and the strand of gene ...

The U.S. Department of Defense reports that drone accidents in which personnel or aircraft are damaged or destroyed occur 50 times more often than mishaps involving human-operated aircraft. The U.S. Marines and Army reported 43 mishaps that involved human factors issues associated with drone ground control workstations and technology during 2006−2007. Human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) researchers Qaisar Waraich, Thomas Mazzuchi, Shahram Sarkani, and David F. Rico suggest that multimillion-dollar drone losses might be prevented if long-established and broadly applied ...

PHILADELPHIA, PA (February 27, 2013)—Two proteins that scientists once thought carried out the same functions are actually antagonists of each other, and keeping them in balance is key to preventing diseases such as cancer, according to new findings published in the February 25 issue of Developmental Cell by scientists at Fox Chase Cancer Center. The results suggest that new compounds could fight cancer by targeting the pathways responsible for maintaining the proper balance between the proteins. "It's our job now to understand how we can intervene therapeutically in ...

The colorful images chronicle the seasonal stirrings of our salty world: Pulses of freshwater gush from the Amazon River's mouth; an invisible seam divides the salty Arabian Sea from the fresher waters of the Bay of Bengal; a large patch of freshwater appears in the eastern tropical Pacific in the winter. These and other changes in ocean salinity patterns are revealed by the first full year of surface salinity data captured by NASA's Aquarius instrument. "With a bit more than a year of data, we are seeing some surprising patterns, especially in the tropics," said Aquarius ...

Boulder, Colorado, USA – In the March issue of GSA Today, seven scientists from six countries, led by Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester, propose a realignment of the terms "geochronology" and "chronostratigraphy" in an attempt to resolve the debate of whether units of the Geological Time Scale should have a single (time) or dual (time and time-rock) hierarchy. In their system, which retains both parallel sets of units, with an option to adopt one or other when appropriate, geochronology refers to all methods of numerical dating and is used to express the ...

VIDEO: The Vela pulsar outlines a fascinating pattern in this movie showing 51 months of position and exposure data from Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT). The pattern reflects numerous motions of... Click here for more information. NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbits our planet every 95 minutes, building up increasingly deeper views of the universe with every circuit. Its wide-eyed Large Area Telescope (LAT) sweeps across the entire sky every three hours, capturing ...

Montreal, February 27th – Syphilis is on the rise worldwide and there is an urgent need for reliable and rapid screening, particularly for people who live in areas where access to healthcare is limited. An international research team, led by scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) in Montreal, has demonstrated that rapid and point-of-care tests (POC) for syphilis are as accurate as conventional laboratory tests. The findings, which were published in PLoS ONE, call for a major change in approach to syphilis testing and recommend ...

Cincinnati, OH, February 28, 2013 -- Although the long-term consequences of childhood obesity are well documented, some school districts have reduced physical education classes to devote more time to the 3 Rs in education—reading, writing, and arithmetic. However, there is new evidence that leaving out an important fourth R—aerobics—could actually be counterproductive for increasing test scores. A new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics studied the associations between aerobic fitness, body mass index (BMI), and passing scores on standardized ...