At 78 percent among people aged 50 and over, South Africa has the highest rate of high blood pressure reported for any country in the world, at any time in history. And less than 10 percent of people are effectively controlling their condition with medication, according to an analysis of data from the Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which surveyed more than 35,000 people aged 50 and over in South Africa, China, Ghana, India, Mexico and Russia. 

British people traveling abroad for medical treatment are often unaware of the potential health and financial consequences they could face - with sometimes catastrophic effects for individual patients.

More than 63,000 UK residents travel abroad for medical treatment each year but many are embarking on medical tourism without doing research about the risks involved. These include a lack of redress in many countries should things go wrong, and the costs of non-emergency care at home to rectify poor outcomes of treatments received overseas. Since the UK has government-controlled health care, individuals are personally liable for those costs.

Exposure to short wavelength, blue, light during the biological day directly and immediately improves alertness and performance.

In order to determine which wavelengths of light were most effective in warding off fatigue, the researchers teamed with George Brainard, PhD, a professor of neurology at Thomas Jefferson University, who developed the specialized light equipment used in the study. Researchers compared the effects of blue light with exposure to an equal amount of green light on alertness and performance in 16 study participants for 6.5 hours over a day. Participants then rated how sleepy they felt, had their reaction times measured and wore electrodes to assess changes in brain activity patterns during the light exposure.  

Women who take nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen, naproxen and diclofenac during pregnancy are not at increased risk of miscarriages.

NSAIDs are used by pregnant women in the first trimester to combat pain, fever and inflammation.  Previous studies on whether they increase the risk of pregnancy loss have shown inconsistent results.

People with high blood pressure are familiar with ACE inhibitors, drugs that widen blood vessels by limiting activity of ACE, angiotensin-converting enzyme, a naturally occurring protein found in tissues throughout the body. 

But high activity of ACE may sometimes be a good thing. A study conducted by Cedars-Sinai scientists found that genetically targeting certain immune blood cells to overproduce the enzyme broke down defective proteins in the brain associated with Alzheimer's disease and prevented cognitive decline in laboratory mice bred to model the disease.

This build is a simplified Leeuwenhoek microscope made from CD-ROM drive parts and construction toys. My initial design was simply a rectangle of corrugated cardboard with a hole punched in it and one of the glass spheres from the Chem C3000 kit, but the magnification was disappointing and the field of view surprisingly narrow. Another method would have been to demonstrate melting a glass rod, drawing it to a thin glass fiber and then heating the fiber into a glass sphere. Though this would have been historically appropriate, it might be difficult to find this type of glass rod and they might be expensive.

Added sugar during processing or preparing of foods remain at unhealthy levels, according to a study published by JAMA Internal Medicine.

What exactly are healthy levels? Well, there is no clear answer. Recommendations for added sugar consumption vary and there is no universally accepted threshold for unhealthy levels. For example, the Institute of Medicine recommends that added sugar make up less than 25 percent of total calories while the World Health Organization recommends less than 10 percent and the American Heart Association recommends limiting added sugars to less than 100 calories daily for women and 150 calories daily for men.

Don't count nature out yet.

Some aspects of climate change are natural. And some mitigation will be also, according to researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Johns Hopkins University in the US and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. As the globe warms, ocean temperatures rise, leading to increased water vapor escaping into the atmosphere. Water vapor is really the most important greenhouse gas and its impact on climate is amplified in the stratosphere.

Heat engines transform heat into mechanical energy with the corresponding efficiency of an Otto engine amounting to only about 25 percent, which is what your automobile gets.

The efficiency of heat engines powered by thermal heat reservoirs is determined by the second law of thermodynamics, one of the fundamental concepts in physics. It was as far back as 1824 that Frenchman Nicolas Carnot calculated the maximum possible efficiency limit of such engines, now known as the Carnot limit.

Agriculture in Finland is becoming more market driven.

What will that mean? Fluctuation in prices, more so than with current EU and Finland subsidies and quotas, but better efficiency. Competition will mean fewer farms.  The reason for the changes is because profitability continues to be poor despite strong spending by the government. The return on investment for taxpayer spending has been negative on average for the last 10 years. In 2011 in Finland, it was the third weakest in the EU, at -1.1 per cent.  The brunt of that inefficiency is small farms kept going only because of subsidies. Half of the farms in Finland produce only 5 percent of the food.