A paper in the International Journal of Epidemiology seeks to dismiss the concept of 'fat but fit' and instead suggest that the protective effects of high fitness against early death are reduced in obese people. 

The detrimental effects of low aerobic fitness in older people have been well documented but few studies have investigated a direct link between aerobic fitness and health in younger populations. A study in Sweden followed 1,317,713 men for a median average of 29 years to examine the association between aerobic fitness and death later in life, as well as how obesity affected these results. The subjects' aerobic fitness was tested by asking them to cycle until they had to stop due to fatigue.

About 25 years ago, Michael Hall discovered the protein "Target of Rapamycin" (TOR) in yeast. It is one of the most studied members of the protein kinase family, an important family of regulatory proteins that control many cellular processes. Later, a TOR kinase was also found in mammalian cells, where it is known as mTOR - the mammalian Target of Rapamycin.

Follow-up times of abnormal screening exams were shorter for breast cancer than they were for colorectal and cervical cancers, according to a recent study involving more than one million individuals who underwent these screenings. Recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the study reported the percentages of individuals with abnormal screening exams receiving timely follow-up were: 93.2% to 96.7% of women across breast centers, 46.8% to 68.7% of individuals across colorectal centers, and 46.6% of women at the cervical center.

Chronic inflammation in the bloodstream can 'fan the flames' of depression, much like throwing gasoline on a fire, according to a new paper from researchers at Rice University and Ohio State University.

'Inflammation: Depression Fans the Flames and Feasts on the Heat' appeared in a recent edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry. The study reviewed 200 existing papers on depression and inflammation.

Some biologists resist the idea of intelligence in evolution because they are in a culture war against religious opponents who believe descent with modification was guided by a higher being. By being forced to abandon terms in response to encroachment by a few in the religious movement, they are missing the point that evolution is intelligent by its very nature; evolution 'learns' by experience, that is what survival of the fitter means.

When it comes to trust in their physicians, minority groups in the United States are less likely than white people to believe their doctors care about them, according to research by University of Pennsylvania's Abigail Sewell.

"That's one of the biggest takeaways of this work," said Sewell, a Vice Provost Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Penn's Population Studies Center in the School of Arts&Sciences. "African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to think this," though the latter group, she showed, has even deeper mistrust of physicians, likely because one or both Latino parents originally came from somewhere else.