Well, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you: You walk wrong.

Look, it’s not your fault. It’s your shoes. Shoes are bad. I don’t just mean stiletto heels, or cowboy boots, or tottering espadrilles, or any of the other fairly obvious foot-torture devices into which we wincingly jam our feet. I mean all shoes. Shoes hurt your feet. They change how you walk. In fact, your feet—your poor, tender, abused, ignored, maligned, misunderstood feet—are getting trounced in a war that’s been raging for roughly a thousand years: the battle of shoes versus feet..."

Read the full article by Adam Sternbergh, at NY Mag

Current cancer therapies aim to kill blood vessels in tumors, which experts believe feed cancer cells, allowing them to multiply and stopping the immune system from attacking them.

In an article in Nature, the researchers said they identified a gene which appeared to be responsible for blood vessel growth in tumors.

"People now focus on blood vessels in cancer therapy and they try to kill them off. What I am showing is an alternative to just killing the blood vessels. We can modulate ... the blood vessels within the tumor, change the whole tumor environment and make it more susceptible for treatment," said Ruth Ganss at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research.

The scientists used genetically-altered mice which developed pancreatic cancer, but half of them had the RGS5 gene missing..."

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America released its annual list of the Top 100 most challenging places to live with spring allergies for 2008 last week.

The AAFA used pollen counts and medication utilization data from last year and the number of board-certified allergists per patient in an area to rank the 100 largest cities in the country.

These criteria counterbalanced each other, according to Mike Tringale, director of external affairs for the AAFA. When the pollen count or medication usage is very high, a city will move up in the ranks. However, if there is a large number of allergists available to treat those affected, the city's ranking will drop..."

Read the full article at ABC News

DRE distributes the Universal ECG at a price that is less expensive than most standalone EKG machines. The Universal ECG provides additional cost savings upon use: It allows physicians to print EKG reports on standard computer paper, reducing thermal paper costs by as much as $700 per year. The Universal ECG also requires no calibration or annual maintenance and it draws all power from the PC, eliminating battery costs.

Experts hope bystanders will now be more willing to jump in and help if they see someone suddenly collapse. Hands-only CPR is simpler and easier to remember and removes a big barrier for people skittish about the mouth-to-mouth breathing.

"You only have to do two things. Call 911 and push hard and fast on the middle of the person's chest," said Dr. Michael Sayre, an emergency medicine professor at Ohio State University who headed the committee that made the recommendation.

Hands-only CPR calls for uninterrupted chest presses - 100 a minute - until paramedics take over or an automated external defibrillator is available to restore a normal heart rhythm.

This action should be taken only for adults who unexpectedly collapse, stop breathing and are unresponsive. The odds are that the person is having cardiac arrest - the heart suddenly stops - which can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems. In such a case, the victim still has ample air in the lungs and blood and compressions keep blood flowing to the brain, heart and other organs...."

Read the full article by Stephanie Nano, at Associated Press

"Engineering blood vessels for bypass surgery, promoting the formation of new blood vessels or regenerating new skin tissue using stem cells obtained from the most accessible source -- hair follicles -- is a real possibility," said Stelios T. Andreadis, Ph.D., co-author of the paper in Cardiovascular Research and associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Researchers from other institutions previously had shown that hair follicles contain stem cells.

In the current paper, the UB researchers demonstrate that stem cells isolated from sheep hair follicles contain the smooth muscle cells that grow new vasculature. The group recently produced data showing that stem cells from human hair follicles also differentiate into contractile smooth muscle cells...."

But on Monday, Ms. Zepp watched in awe as doctors at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center explained how they detached and removed six of her organs, cut out the cancerous tumor, then reassembled her insides. With a video of the March 4 operation on display at a news conference here, she wiped away tears and said: “I feel like I’m coming through the tunnel and I have a whole life.”

Her doctors smiled with pride. The surgery lasted 15 hours and was one of the first to involve taking so many organs out of the body: the stomach, liver, pancreas, spleen, small intestine and two-thirds of the large intestine..."

Read the full article by Damien Cave, at NY Times