Unauthorized GM crops face intensified oversight

China will further step up the supervision of genetically modified food technologies to prevent commercial cultivation of unauthorized varieties, a senior rural affairs official said. The call follows several suspected cases of farmers illegally growing genetically modified crops in the country. “We need to work to prevent unauthorized varieties from entering markets illegally, starting from the very beginning of the […]

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Standing at work to stay healthy

If you work at a desk, you should get up on your feet for at least two hours a day to avoid the serious health consequences of prolonged sitting, a panel of scientists has recommended.The average office worker sits for 10 hours a day, then heads home to spend the evening glued to a television or computer screen. A growing […]

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How elephants defy getting cancer

How elephants defy getting cancer

As the world’s largest land mammals, elephants should suffer one of the highest cancer rates—they simply have far more cells that could potentially mutate and become malignant. But new research reveals that elephants rarely get cancer—and the reason why may help in the search for human treatments. Only about 4.8 percent of elephants die from cancer, compared with up to […]

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Bacteria That Make You Thin

The species of bacteria that dominate our guts may strongly affect whether we’re thin or fat. Researchers at Washington University collected samples of gut bacteria from pairs of twins in which one was obese and the other thin. Then they transplanted the bacteria into mice. The mice that received the bacteria from the obese twins became obese; the mice that […]

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Heavy drinking and binge drinking rise sharply in US counties

As rates of any drinking remained largely unchanged, binge drinking and heavy drinking have increased at the county level, influenced mainly by higher rates of drinking among women SEATTLE – Today, Americans are more likely to be heavy drinkers and binge drinkers than in recent years due in large part to rising rates of drinking among women, according to a […]

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Qatar’s weighty problem

The emirate isn’t just the world’s richest country, it’s also one of the fattest. Half of adults and a third of children are obese, and almost 17 percent of the native population suffers from diabetes. By comparison, about a third of Americans are obese, and 8 percent diabetic. The problem is that Qataris are so rich that they don’t need […]

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