News Inventory

Cannabis may help keep Alzheimer's disease at bay. In experiments, a marijuana-based medicine triggered the formation of new brain cells and cut inflammation linked to dementia. The researchers say that using the information to create a pill suitable for people could help prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer's. The incurable disease affects 400,000 Britons, with around 500 new cases diagnosed every day as people live longer. For some sufferers, drugs can delay the progress of devastating symptoms such as memory loss and the erosion of ... Read More

About 80 percent of all cancers are diagnosed in the elderly, and more than 80 percent of known risk factors are potentially preventable, U.S. researchers say. Igor Akushevich of Duke University in Durham, N.C., said the primary purpose of the study was to develop an approach to estimate the contributions of measurable risk factors to cancer risk among the elderly. "So far, we have not come to the stage where we are able to make specific recommendations regarding risk factors," Akushevich said in a ... Read More

Dorthea, 72, a retired bank teller, lives in Harlingen, Texas, a city of about 67,000 in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley. Like a lot of Texans, she's crossed the border to Mexico a few times to buy cheap medication. But she'd never considered undergoing complicated medical procedures there—at least, not until she was quoted the prohibitive price of $30,000 for a gastric-band procedure, a treatment for obesity in which a band is placed around the stomach to limit food intake. ... Read More

Four square metres of rainforest are destroyed for every gram of cocaine snorted in the UK, a conference of senior police officers as told yesterday. Francisco Santos Calderón, the vice-president of Colombia, appealed to British users of the class A drug to consider the impact on the environment. He said that while the green agenda would not persuade addicts to give up, the middle-class social user who drove a hybrid car and was concerned about the environment might not take the drug if ... Read More

WANTED: Rocky planet outside of our solar system. Must not be too hot or too cold, but just the right temperature to support life. It sounds like a simple enough wish list, but finding a planet that fulfils all of these criteria has kept astronomers busy for decades. Until recently, it meant finding a planet in the "Goldilocks zone" - orbiting its star at just the right distance to keep surface water liquid rather than being boiled off or frozen solid. Now, though, it's ... Read More