Body

The American obesity epidemic is out of control, and health advocates are working hard to ensure that food labels clearly list calorie content and all unhealthy ingredients. But according to a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research, labeling alone contributes little to healthier eating decisions unless the item also costs more.

Cities around the world are pouring money into beautiful bicycle paths in hopes of convincing citizens to drive less and bike more. According to a new study in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, however, getting people to go from four to two wheels isn't quite that simple.

• Reserve's borders have erroneously moved 50 kilometers
• New species, named after the Luama Katanga Reserve, is now threatened by cattle ranches and forest destruction

When consumers see a company performing good deeds, they often assume that the company's products are healthy. According to a new study in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing this may be far from true, and the company's socially responsible behavior may be creating a "health halo" over unhealthy foods.

A novel method of altering a protein in milk to bind with an antiretroviral drug promises to greatly improve treatment for infants and young children suffering from HIV/AIDS, according to a researcher in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) bacteria are responsible each year for around 400 million cases of diarrhoea and 400,000 deaths in the world's low- and middle-income countries. Children under the age of five are most affected.

ETEC bacteria also cause diarrhoea in nearly one in two travellers to these areas.

Major breakthrough

Technology developed at the University of Sussex helps hospitals make earlier and more accurate treatment decisions and survival assessments for patients with bowel cancer.

Bowel cancer kills more than 16,000 people a year in the UK, making it the nation's second-most common cause of cancer death (after lung cancer).

A novel medical-imaging technology, TexRAD, which analyses the texture of tumours, has been shown in trials to enable early diagnosis of those bowel-cancer patients not responding to the standard cancer therapy better than other available tumour markers.

Like a skin, the sea-surface microlayer separates the ocean from the atmosphere. The exchange of gases and the emission of sea-spray aerosols - two functions that are crucial for climate - take place in this boundary film.

Using community pharmacies to identify undiagnosed cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at an early stage could save £264 million a year according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA).

A report published today shows the value of pharmacies in addressing diseases at an early stage. It reveals that case-finding would provide "significant NHS and societal benefits" and save the NHS more money than the service costs to deliver.

Lead researcher, Dr Sarah Dunstan from the Nossal Institute of Global Health at the University of Melbourne said the study is the first large-scale, unbiased search for human genes that affect a person's risk of typhoid.

Enteric fever, or typhoid fever as it more commonly known, is a considerable health burden to lower-income countries.

This finding is important because this natural resistance represents one of the largest human gene effects on an infectious disease.

Weeds in the UK are still evolving hundreds of years after their introduction and are unlikely to have yet reached their full potential as invaders, UNSW Australia scientists have discovered.

The study is the first to have tracked the physical evolution of introduced plant species from the beginning of their invasion to the present day, and was made possible by the centuries-old British tradition of storing plant specimens in herbaria.

A controversial medication used by breastfeeding women should not be restricted because of the benefits it offers mothers and their babies, according to researchers at the University of Adelaide.

The medication domperidone has recently been the subject of warnings from the European Medicines Agency based on research that there is a link between the medication and fatal heart conditions.

INDIANAPOLIS -- A new treatment regimen for hepatitis C, the most common cause of liver cancer and transplantation, has produced results that will transform treatment protocols for transplant patients, according to research published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

A newly identified signaling pathway that stimulates glucose uptake in brown fat cells might be useful for treating type 2 diabetes and obesity, according to a study in The Journal of Cell Biology.

Clinicians should make better use of opportunities to help people quit smoking when people are in hospitals in England for the 2.6million episodes of care that take place every year for smokers.

It is estimated that around 460,000 adult admissions to NHS hospitals in England every year are due to smoking. Treating diseases caused by smoking costs the NHS more than £5 billion per year, about 5% of its annual budget, despite the fact that smoking is preventable and treatable.