Radiation: Mobile Phones Affect Memory
Radiation from cell phones can affect the memory. This is the result of experiments in rats from researchers at Lund University in Sweden.
Henrietta Nittby studied rats that were exposed to mobile phone radiation for two hours a week for more than a year. These rats had poorer results on a memory test than rats that had not been exposed to radiation.

The memory test consisted of releasing the rats in a box with four objects mounted in it. These objects were different on the two occasions, and the placement of the objects was different from one time to the other. The actual test trial was the third occasion. This time the rats encountered two of the objects from the first and two of the objects from the second occasion. The control rats spent more time exploring the objects from the first occasion, which were more interesting since the rats had not seen them for some time. The experiment rats, on the other hand, evinced less pronounced differences in interest.

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If you're feeling great today, you may end up inadvertently spreading the joy to someone you don't even know. New research shows that in a social network, happiness spreads among people up to three degrees removed from one another. That means when you feel happy, a friend of a friend of a friend has a slightly higher likelihood of feeling happy too. The lesson is that taking control of your own happiness can positively affect others, says James Fowler, co-author of the study and professor of political science at the University of California in San Diego.

"We get this chain reaction in happiness that I think increases the stakes in terms of us trying to shape our own moods to make sure we have a positive impact on people we know and love," he said.
Sadness also spreads in a network, but not as quickly, the researchers found. Each happy friend increases your own chance of being happy by 9 percent, whereas each unhappy friend decreases it by 7 percent. This reflects the total effect of all social contacts.

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The workings of our internal body clock appear to be directly connected to our risk of diabetes, researchers claim. International research published in the journal Nature Genetics found faults in a key 'clock gene' were linked to blood sugar levels and type II diabetes. Some scientists already believe that our circadian rhythms (body clock) have a role to play in the condition, which affects millions worldwide.

But one expert said more evidence was needed, before a link was proved. Scientists say that unravelling the links between obesity, type II diabetes, and circadian rhythms could point the way towards new strategies to control or prevent the illness. The fact that humans work on a rough 24-hour cycle, sleeping at night, and waking to be more active during the day, is controlled partly by hormones released by the body.

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Cynthia Scott is your average health-conscious 56-year-old. She watches what she eats, drinks lots of water and takes a multivitamin every morning. She goes for frequent walks and visits her doctor regularly for checkups, including cholesterol and diabetes screenings.

Scott also has schizoaffective bipolar disorder, a mental illness she keeps in check with a low dose of Zyprexa. If you were to ask Scott, she would say she is a healthy person overall. So she was shocked when the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) published a study two years ago called Morbidity and Mortality in People with Serious Mental Illness. The report analyzed data from 16 states and found that, on average, people with severe mental illness die 25 years earlier than the general population. "Hearing that made me so sad," says Scott.

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Beginning in 2008, the three year programme will bring together the expertise of healthcare companies with leading academic institutions. The consortium will develop integrated systems and processes for the remote monitoring of the health of elderly citizens, particularly those who suffer from neurological diseases such as stroke, dementia and depression.  The consortium will also research and develop remote telemonitoring systems which monitor both activity levels and vital signs such as blood pressure and heart rate, alerting caregivers to changes that may signal potential health issues or emergency situations.  

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The NHS needs to use more sophisticated marketing techniques to convince people of the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, a leading think tank says. Copying strategies usually employed by commercial advertisers is just one of a range of tactics needed to tackle bad habits, a King's Fund report warned. NHS staff also need more training in promoting healthiness, the report said.

Unhealthy behaviour such as smoking and obesity is thought to cost the NHS in England more than £6bn a year. The latest report is the conclusion of a year-long investigation into the effectiveness of different programmes to tackle smoking, alcohol misuse, poor diet and lack of exercise. It found that the behaviours are "deep-rooted social habits" that cannot be easily changed. And although the Department of Health invests heavily in publicity campaigns to promote healthy lifestyles - £50m in 2007/08 - providing information on its own has little effect, the King's Fund said.

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The maxim holds true: too much of anything is bad for you. Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group, and researchers from the National Institutes of Health, Yale University and California Pacific Medical Center have published a report that draws links between media consumption and children's health. After reviewing 173 studies in various categories, the researchers found that the more TV, movies, music and technology a child is exposed to, the higher the health risks they face. TIME spoke with Stanford University professor James Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, about how parents can keep their kids on the media straight and narrow.

It seems that the takeaway from this report is that heavy consumption of media makes kids fatter, more likely to smoke, use drugs and get bad grades. Is that the sum of it?

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On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, Barb Lighthall was walking into church when her feet slipped out from under her and she hit her head on the parking lot's black ice."You know how most people break their fall with their hands? I broke my fall with my head," says Lighthall. An ambulance took her to the emergency room, where she was prescribed pain pills, discharged, and told to check in with her regular doctor in the next three days.

But that would prove impossible. When Lighthall called her internist the next day, the appointment secretary said the doctor wouldn't be able to see her for another week. "I told them I'd take a cancellation, I'd do anything, but they said she was all booked up," says Lighthall, who lives in Munnsville, New York. "So I spent the week of Thanksgiving dizzy. When I walked from my bed to the bathroom, I hit every piece of furniture and every wall in between." When Lighthall did finally get in to see her physician the next week, she was prescribed medicine to treat the dizziness, and felt much better.

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