A new review
in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians
summarizes what is known about economic factors tied to the obesity epidemic in the United States.

It includes what most people knew; despite claims of 40 years ago that a population bomb was going to cause mass starvation, agricultural science instead caused the food curve to rise sharply. For the first time in the history of the world, the poorest people can afford to be fat, a privilege only available to the wealthy in past years.

The therapeutic potential of marijuana and pure cannabidiol (CBD), an active substance in the cannabis plant, for neurologic conditions is debatable - though so far the debate has mostly been anecdotes against science.

A series of articles published in Epilepsia examine the potential use of medical marijuana and CBD in treating severe forms of epilepsy such as Dravet syndrome.

Most schools in the United States provide simple vision tests to their students; not to prescribe glasses, but to identify potential problems and recommend a trip to the optometrist.

Researchers
at Duke University
are now on the cusp of providing the same kind of service for autism. They have developed software that tracks and records infants' activity during videotaped autism screening tests. 

Their results show that the program is as good at spotting behavioral markers of autism as experts giving the test themselves, and better than non-expert medical clinicians and students in training.

People exercise quite a lot, society has access to diverse fresh fruits and vegetables and yet most economic, educational, and racial or ethnic groups have seen their obesity levels rise at similar rates since the mid-1980s, so there is no demographic correlation to obesity. Yet the social sciences draw maps to city parks and farmer's markets and claim more of those would keep people from getting fat, or tout that economic redistribution would lead to less fast food.

Cars, fast food, iPads, city living, even women in the work force - if it is something in culture, someone has implicated it. 

Mu Delta Kappa is a key
brain receptor targets for opiates
because the mu opioid receptor is the primary target for morphine and endogenous opioids like endorphin. The delta opioid receptor shows the highest affinity for endogenous enkephalins. The kappa opioid receptor (KOR) is very interesting, but the least understood of the opiate receptor family.

Lubricants are used in motors, axels, ventilators and manufacturing machines. Although lubricants are widely used, there have been almost no fundamental innovations for this product in the last twenty years. Together with a consortium, the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg has developed an entirely new class of substance that could change everything: liquid crystalline lubricant. Its chemical makeup sets it apart; although it is a liquid, the molecules display directional properties like crystals do. When two surfaces move in opposite directions, the liquid crystal molecules between the two surfaces align themselves so that the frictional resistance is extremely low. This enables nearly frictionless sliding.

The Deadliest Catch details the work travails of Bering Sea crab fishermen, but African wives of fishermen may be having adventures of their own.

The authors of a recent paper estimated that up to 60% of men and 50% of women report extra-marital partnerships in their lifetime - and they believe those numbers are under-reported, especially among women, due to cultural constraints. In reality, range estimates are so broad as to be almost meaningless but even if it's 20% it's a lot.

Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease that infects 243million people worldwide, and kills about 200 thousand every year. Theinfection is contracted through contaminated waters, and in the developingworld, where is most common, is 2nd only to malaria in rates of infection andpublic health impact.

To make things worse, women, already one of the most vulnerable groups in these regions, often develop infertility secondary to the infection, with the parasite being a main cause for the problem in these regions . Places where female role is centred on being a mother, and gynaecological medical care is next to inexistent. 

The decision to jettison the controversial approach to dying known as the Liverpool Care Pathway was "too extreme" given that its principles were considered by proponents as the best examples of palliative care in the world, argues a senior ethicist in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Whether an insect will have a male or female offspring depends on the weather and temperature, according to a study led by Joffrey Moiroux and Jacques Brodeur of the University of Montreal's Department of Biological Sciences.

As part of this study, which was funded by the Ouranos Consortium, Moiroux tried to understand the possible role of global warming on the relationship between crop pests and their natural enemies – parasitoids and predators. Among the issues addressed, he sought to determine whether there is an effect of "phenological asynchrony" between parasitoids and their hosts, and therefore an impact on the availability of host eggs and on pest control by their natural enemies.