Discover the Science of Health
President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in to law in March 2010 after a year of intense national debate. On Thursday last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld law, ruling that the individual mandate, which requires U.S. citizens and legal residents to have qualifying health coverage or pay a penalty, is constitutional as a tax. The ruling will have a far-reaching impact on healthcare providers, especially for those who work with underserved populations.
Roche is one of 10 biomedicine companies included in Technology Review’s 50 Most Innovative Companies (TR50) for 2012 [1].
New programs exploring novel approaches to cell-to-cell communication and understanding undiagnosed diseases, which represent challenges or scientific opportunities for a wide array of health research, are the latest priorities for the National Institutes of Health Common Fund. The funding was announced today by NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., after he received broad community input and recommendations from institute and center directors at NIH. The Common Fund targets strategic investments that have the potential for rapid and significant impact. The programs are scheduled to begin during fiscal year 2013.
The U.S. Surgeon General recently challenged mobile device application developers to come up with apps that would “provide tailored health information and empower users to engage in and enjoy healthy behavior.” The first place winner in the Fitness/Physical Activity category was Lose It!, an app designed to help users lose weight. According to the Lose It! website, the average user loses 12.3 pounds with the help of the app, with a 99% success rate (defined as losing any amount of weight) over 4 weeks.
With Americans becoming increasingly overweight each year, weight loss is big business. This paves the way for any number of diet books and fads. Some of these are based upon sound scientific principles, while others may not work at all, or may result in a modest weight loss followed by rebound weight gain.
A preliminary scientific study — one neither large enough nor strong enough to be considered conclusive at this point — suggests that low-fat diets may be less effective than other weight-loss strategies from a metabolic perspective [1].
