In Canada, health care is paid for by taxpayers, but it doesn't reduce expensive emergency room visits by people with disabilities - a key argument the Obama administration claimed in passing the Affordable Care Act.

But it's a small study published in the journal Canadian Family Physician - the larger study is being done in the U.S., where Obamacare premiums are going up another 18-23 percent. None of the savings have been realized yet, nor are insurers making more money from premiums. Instead, people who had insurance kept it if they could, and now pay higher premiums so that people who didn't want insurance could get it in case they need it 20 years from now.

A new study correlates Finland's national tobacco policies - less smoking, more snus, for those addicted to nicotine - seem to be radically reducing the incidence of subarachnoid hemorrhage, the most fatal form of stroke.

Previously it was thought that in Finland approximately a thousand people suffer subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) every year - most of them adults of working age. Up to half of those afflicted die within a year. Subarachnoid hemorrhage is typically caused by a ruptured cerebral aneurysm, which leads to a sudden increase in the intracranial pressure. Smoking is a key risk factor for SAH and lots of other diseases, whereas nicotine, the addictive component, is not. 

Atmospheric scientists overwhelmingly deny the existence of a secret, elite-driven plot to release harmful chemicals into the air from high-flying aircraft, according to the first peer-reviewed journal paper to address the "chemtrails" conspiracy theory.

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine, the Carnegie Institution for Science and the nonprofit Near Zero organization asked 77 atmospheric chemists and geochemists if they had come across evidence of such a large-scale spraying program, and 76 responded that they had not. The survey results were published Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters.

Plant scientists at the University of Cambridge have found that the cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) alters gene expression in the tomato plants it infects, causing changes to air-borne chemicals - the scent - emitted by the plants. Bees can smell these subtle changes, and glasshouse experiments have shown that bumblebees prefer infected plants over healthy ones.

Scientists say that by indirectly manipulating bee behaviour to improve pollination of infected plants by changing their scent, the virus is effectively paying its host back. This may also benefit the virus: helping to spread the pollen of plants susceptible to infection and, in doing so, inhibiting the chance of virus-resistant plant strains emerging.

Researchers at Technical University of Munich discovered that our brain actively takes sugar from the blood. Prior to this, researchers around the world had assumed that this was a purely passive process. An international team led by diabetes expert Matthias Tschöp reported in the journal 'Cell' that transportation of sugar into the brain is regulated by so-called glia cells that react to hormones such as insulin or leptin; previously it was thought that this was only possible for neurons.

You shouldn't believe everything you read. The CDC insists salt is a problem, and the FDA asked for voluntary warning labels after the sue-and-settle lawyer group Center for Science in the Public Interest kept harassing them. Yet the evidence shows salt in a normal diet is no problem. And no quote on Facebook that has a picture of Einstein included is any more accurate. The US government promotes a prediabetes designation that has the rest of the world scratching their heads.

Even textbooks are often wrong. That is the problem with voting on science. 

Being hospitalized with infection was associated with an increased risk of suicide death and the highest risk of suicide was among those individuals with hepatitis and HIV or AIDS, according to a study published online by JAMA Psychiatry.

While psychological predictors of suicide have been studied extensively, less attention has been paid to the effect of biological factors, such as infection.

Helene Lund-Sørensen, B.M., of Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark, and coauthors used Danish nationwide registers to investigate associations between infectious diseases and the risk of death by suicide.

Eight people who have spent years paralyzed from spinal cord injuries have regained partial sensation and muscle control in their lower limbs after training with brain-controlled robotics, according to a study published Aug. 11 in Scientific Reports.

The patients used brain-machine interfaces, including a virtual reality system that used their own brain activity to simulate full control of their legs. Videos accompanying the study illustrate their progress.

Blood stem cell transplantation, widely known as bone marrow transplantation, is a powerful technique that potentially can provide a lifelong cure for a variety of diseases. But the procedure is so toxic that it is currently used to treat only the most critical cases.

Now, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have come up with a way of conducting the therapy that, in mice, dramatically lowers its toxicity. If the method eventually proves safe and effective for humans, it potentially could be used to cure autoimmune diseases like lupus, juvenile diabetes and multiple sclerosis; fix congenital metabolic disorders like "bubble boy" disease; and treat many more kinds of cancer, as well as make organ transplants safer and more successful.

 By assessing electronic medical records (EMR) of 32,835 unique individuals from six Dallas-Fort Worth area hospitals, and noting abnormalities in temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, and oxygen saturation within 24 hours of discharge, scholars determined that nearly 20 percent had one or more abnormalities, with elevated heart rate being the most common vital sign instability (affecting about 10 percent.) About 13 percent were readmitted or died, and individuals with three or more instabilities had a nearly four-fold increase in the odds of death.