Researchers have long known that type-2 diabetes and depression often go hand in hand. However, it's been unclear which condition develops first in patients who end up with both. Now, a new study led by Johns Hopkins doctors suggests that this chicken-and-egg problem has a dual answer: Patients with depression have an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes, and patients with type-2 diabetes have an increased risk of developing depression.

For the study, published in the June 18 Journal of the American Medical Association, diabetes expert Sherita Hill Golden, M.D., M.H.S., and her colleagues took advantage of data generated by the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), which examined risk factors for atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, in an ethnically diverse group of 6,814 men and women between ages 45 to 84. Participants in the MESA study identified themselves when they enrolled as white, black, Hispanic or Chinese.

Meningiomas are tumors of the brain and nervous system and they account for 20% of all brain tumors. Doctors have a problem discriminating between the four different subtypes of meningiomas due to three key problems:

* The work can be painstakingly slow requiring up to two hours of analysis and expert consideration of a full "slide" of information.

* The finest histopathologists (tumor specialists) can at times come up with completely contradictory findings based on slight variations in their method of analysis.

* Currently the slides that specialists examine contain a few million pixels of data and the task of tumour diagnosis is painstakingly slow already. This problem is quite literally growing as medical equipment is coming out that can produce slides with hundreds of millions pixel resolution.

Clearly doctors would welcome any technological support which could speed up this process, use more of the information available and allow them time to diagnose and treat many more patients.

That convergence of media, telecommunication, information technology and consumer electronics you've been hearing about? Mostly hype, says new research from Cass Business School, London, and it's now over.

All that's left is a focus on exploiting the business opportunities created by the digital revolution, they say.

Dr Gianvito Lanzolla, Senior Lecturer in Strategy at Cass, suggests that because the revolutionary conceptual shifts from analogue to digital technology took place in 2003 – 2004, with a focus on first mover advantage and innovations, subsequent developments within digital technologies are adjustments rather than major changes.

A hernia is produced when the content of the abdominal cavity protrudes through a weakened natural orifice of the abdominal wall such as the inguinal canal, the umbilical area, the epigastrium or a previous incision in the abdomen such as from a surgical operation. The hernia manifests itself as a bulging lump since the internal lining of the abdomen protrudes in what is called a hernial sac that shrinks or grows depending on the effort exerted by the affected individual.

Hernias are more frequent in the groin or navel areas and in the area of an old surgical scar, and they never improve or disappear naturally; on the contrary, they tend to grow. Not only painful but unaesthetic too, hernias can produce complications such as bowel obstructions and strangulations.

A new study published today in Annals of Internal Medicine has good news for coffee drinkers: Regular coffee drinking (up to 6 cups per day) is not associated with increased deaths in either men or women. In fact, both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee consumption is associated with a somewhat smaller rate of death from heart disease.

Women consuming two to three cups of caffeinated coffee per day had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease during the follow-up period (which lasted from 1980 to 2004 and involved 84,214 women) as compared with non-consumers, and an 18 percent lower risk of death caused by something other than cancer or heart disease as compared with non-consumers during follow-up. For men, this level of consumption was associated with neither a higher nor a lower risk of death during the follow-up period (which lasted from 1986 to 2004 and involved 41,736 men).

Wang and colleagues performed a systematic review of safety studies of medical cannabinoids published over the past 40 years and found that short-term use appeared to increase the risk of non-serious adverse events.

Of all non-serious adverse events, dizziness was the most common (15.5%).

"We found that the rate of non-serious adverse events was 1.86 times higher among medical cannabinoid users than among controls," state the authors. "However, we did not find a higher incidence rate of serious adverse events associated with medical cannabinoid use." The authors note that 99% of the serious adverse events from randomized controlled trials were reported in only 2 trials, a fact the authors say suggests that more studies are required to further characterize safety issues.

LONDON, June 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Responding to reports in the media that Obecalp, a placebo pill for children, is due to be made available on the UK market, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain's (RPSGB) Chief Scientist, Jayne Lawrence said:

"The RPSGB is concerned that this product is due to be made available on the UK market as a placebo pill to give to children.

"As a dietary supplement, the manufacturers have not been required to carry out clinical trials. Further, the use of this drug indicates that symptoms diagnosis and advice have not been sought from a qualified healthcare professional, which runs the risk of misdiagnosis.

"We are also concerned that giving a child the pill reinforces the wrong message - that tablets are the answer for all of life's aches and pains."

Activities such as aquaculture, shipping and recreational boating have led to an army of marine alien species hitchhiking around the globe.

And only you can stop them.

Queen's University Belfast is attempting to find out exactly where and how non-native species get a foothold in a new area. To do this it is asking for help from the public to record what they have seen.

Part of the Marine Aliens consortium, co-ordinated by the Scottish Association for Marine Science, the project will use the information gathered to look at how invasions can be slowed or preferably prevented. It is very difficult to eradicate an organism once it has become established in a new area.

Residents of the central and southern Midwest are crossing their fingers, saying their prayers, planning evacuations, and in some cases filling sandbags in preparation for the excessive water ravishing communities in Iowa and Wisconsin.

"The flood wave is propagating down the Mississippi River towards St. Louis at about the pace of a brisk walk," said Robert E. Criss, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. "Some areas north of St. Louis in Missouri and southern Iowa are bracing for the second worst flood in their history. This is serious water."

Criss is a geologist. One of his specialties is hydrogeology. He said that the floodwaters are projected to crest at St. Louis at 38 feet on June 22 or 23, marking the 11th time since the Civil War that St. Louis has reached that flood stage. During the flood of 1993 waters at St. Louis crested at 49.6 feet.

Today, at an international conference, a team of European astronomers announced they have found a triple system of 'super-Earths' around the star HD 40307, called such because they are more massive than the Earth but less massive than Uranus and Neptune (about 15 Earth masses.)

These super-Earths are around a rather normal star, which is slightly less massive than our Sun, and is located 42 light-years away towards the southern Doradus and Pictor constellations.

Looking at their entire sample studied with HARPS, the astronomers count a total of 45 candidate planets with a mass below 30 Earth masses and an orbital period shorter than 50 days. This implies that one solar-like star out of three harbors such planets.