Body

"A major intent of the ACA is to control health care spending and increase access to necessary services for those who need it most," said Alliance Director Christine Ferguson, J.D. "With America's rising obesity rates leading to worsening health outcomes and equally alarming cost projections, leaving obesity unaddressed is both unsustainable and unacceptable."

One of the world's strangest animals – a unique fish that lives on land and can leap large distances despite having no legs – has a rich and complex social life, a new study has found.

The odd lifestyle of the Pacific leaping blenny (Alticus arnoldorum) has been detailed for the first time in research findings that throw new light on how animal life first evolved to colonise the land.

Women who commit suicide are more likely than men to avoid facial disfiguration, but not necessarily in the name of vanity. Valerie Callanan from the University of Akron and Mark Davis from the Criminal Justice Research Center at the Ohio State University, USA, show that there are marked gender differences in the use of suicide methods that disfigure the face or head. While firearms are the preferred method for both men and women, women are less likely to shoot themselves in the head. The study is published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles.

STANFORD, Calif. — A team at the Stanford University School of Medicine has cataloged, down to the letter, exactly what parts of the genetic code are essential for survival in one bacterial species, Caulobacter crescentus.

Thrombotic (clotting) and bleeding events are complications that may occur after surgery. With the aging population in the western world, there are more patients undergoing orthopedic surgery than ever before. This makes understanding the risk of complications from orthopedic surgery exceedingly important. However, there is a lack of data investigating the incidence of thrombotic and bleeding complications in orthopedic surgery.

Pre-existing heart disease in pregnancy remains a concern. Complications are frequent and in some cases may be life-threatening for both the mother and her child. In Europe maternal heart disease has now become the major cause of maternal death during pregnancy.

As interim data from the ESC's special registry on pregnancy in cardiac disease suggests, the numbers of women at risk is not in decline, mainly because of today's older age at first pregnancy and with it a concomitant increase in risks of diabetes, hypertension and obesity.

As children move toward adolescence, they rely increasingly on close relationships with peers. Socially withdrawn children, who have less contact with peers, may miss out on the support that friendships provide. In a new study about the peer relationships of almost 2,500 fifth graders who are socially withdrawn in different ways and those who aren't withdrawn, researchers have found that withdrawn children who can be described as "anxious-solitary" differ considerably in their relationships with peers, compared to other withdrawn children and children who aren't withdrawn.

[EMBARGOED FOR AUG. 30, 2011] Vaccinating infants against rotavirus also prevents serious disease in unvaccinated older children and adults, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This helps reduce rotavirus-related hospital costs in these older groups. The results of the study are published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases and are now available online.

Bleeding calf syndrome (bovine neonatal pancytopenia or BNP) affects new born calves resulting in low blood cell counts and depletion of the bone marrow. It first emerged in 2007 and a number of cases are reported each year. In affected calves, bone marrow cells which produce platelets are also destroyed. Consequently the calves' blood does not clot and they appear to bleed through undamaged skin. There is evidence that BNP is linked to the use of a particular vaccine against "Bovine viral diarrhea virus" (BVDV).

As we grow older, our bones become more brittle and prone to fracturing and that loss of mass is a factor in why older bones fracturing more readily than younger bones and we should slow down loss, but new research from scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows that at microscopic dimensions, the age-related loss of bone quality can be every bit as important as the loss of quantity in the susceptibility of bone to fracturing.

New research in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association. says reduced slow wave sleep (SWS) is a powerful predictor for developing high blood pressure in older men, .

A new study has shown that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) used to evaluate responses to pre-surgery (neo-adjuvant) chemotherapy or radiation may predict survival among patients with advanced rectal cancer. The findings suggest that MRI-assessed tumor responses to neoadjuvant therapy can help physicians to better plan their patients' subsequent treatments.

African-Americans are disproportionately affected by hypertension, a puzzle whose solutions has eluded medical science. It may be how people respond to inflammation.

In a study published in Vascular Health and Risk Management, lead author Michael Brown and his team tested the effects of TNF-ά, a protein that causes inflammation when cells are damaged, on endothelial cells, which line blood vessels, in both African-Americans and Caucasians, to determine whether the inflammation affected the cells differently.

Understanding how bacteria infect cells is crucial to preventing countless human diseases. In a recent breakthrough, scientists from the University of Bristol have discovered a new approach for studying molecules within their natural environment, opening the door to understanding the complexity of how bacteria infect people.

Plants produce a vast array of natural products, many of which we find useful for making things such as drugs. There are likely to be many other plant natural products that remain undiscovered or under-exploited, and research from The John Innes Centre, which is strategically funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), is uncovering more about the genetics and evolution of natural product pathways in plants.