Month: May 2015

Obese children are far less likely to finish school than peers of normal weight, according to European research Thursday which also highlighted body image problems in kids as young as six. Britain had the second-highest rate with 23.1 percent, followed by Albania with 22 percent and Georgia with 20 percent, Bulgaria with 19.8 percent and Spain with 18.4 percent, said an analysis of data provided by 32 countries in the World Health Organization's 53-member Europe region. People are classified overweight if they have a BMI (body weight index, a ratio of weight to height) of 25 and higher, and obese from a BMI of 30. A second study presented at the congress said only 56 percent of children in Sweden who had received treatment for obesity completed 12 years or more of school, compared to 76 percent of normal-weight peers.

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By Kieran Guilbert LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Tackling an “epidemic” of sexual violence in Uganda, in which disabled women and girls are most vulnerable to abuse, and seeking justice for the victims are at the heart of a campaign launched by the rights group Equality Now on Thursday. The #justiceforgirls initiative will enable women and girls who suffer sexual violence to pursue justice through local channels, avoiding the slow, complex and expensive process of taking a case to court, Equality Now said. Victims have a “bleak prospect of accessing justice for such atrocious crimes”, said the group’s legal consultant, Kimberly Brown. Uganda is in the midst of a sexual violence epidemic, and most perpetrators go unpunished, the rights group said.
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More and more people want to learn how to practice mindfulness meditation. This is wonderful, really, because the practice brings many benefits directly to individuals and, through them, to society at large. And, as demand increases so too does supply. As a result, there are more and more opportunities for learning mindfulness, both in secular…
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(This version of the story has been refiled to correct name of USC unit participating in program, in the 12th paragraph) By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fourteen U.S. and Canadian cancer institutes will use International Business Machines Corp's Watson computer system to choose therapies based on a tumor's genetic fingerprints, the company said on Tuesday, the latest step toward bringing personalized cancer treatments to more patients. Oncology is the first specialty where matching therapy to DNA has improved outcomes for some patients, inspiring the "precision medicine initiative" President Barack Obama announced in January. Watson can do it in minutes and has in its database the findings of scientific papers and clinical trials on particular cancers and potential therapies. Faced with such a data deluge, "the solution is going to be Watson or something like it," said oncologist Norman Sharpless of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Cancer Center.

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By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) – The maker of Life Alert, known for its television ad slogan “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up,” has been sued by a former sales manager who claims he was fired because of his age and cancer diagnosis, and his complaints about “rampant” sexual harassment in the company’s Manhattan office. In a $7 million lawsuit filed on Wednesday in the New York state court in Manhattan, Leon Hayblum claimed that Life Alert Emergency Response Inc illegally terminated him without warning last Nov. 10, when he was 71, after a dozen years on the job. Hayblum said this was done in retaliation for his “years” of complaints about the alleged harassment and Life Alert’s alleged misclassification of sales staff as independent contractors, and because he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Life Alert is based in Encino, California, and sells wearable devices intended to help elderly or disabled people call for assistance when they face medical or other emergencies.
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May 6 is No Diet Day — an annual holiday devoted to raising awareness about how destructive to your health, body image, and well-being dieting can …
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If you are a diet soda drinker thinking that it will help you lose weight, think again. New research from Johns Hopkins says that adults who drink diet …
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