If you're concerned about losing your hearing because of noise exposure (earbud deafness syndrome), a new discovery published online in the FASEB Journal offers some hope. That's because scientists from Germany and Canada show that the protein, AMPK, which protects cells during a lack of energy, also activates a channel protein in the cell membrane that allows potassium to leave the cell. This activity is important because this mechanism helps protect sensory cells in the inner ear from permanent damage following acoustic noise exposure.

This information could lead to new strategies and therapies to prevent and treat trauma resulting from extreme noise, especially in people with AMPK gene variants that may make them more vulnerable to hearing loss.

"Future research on the basis of the present study may lead to the development of novel strategies preventing noise-induced hearing loss or accelerating recovery from acoustic trauma," said Florian Lang, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Physiology at the University of Tübingen, in Tübingen, Germany.

A study completed in 2009 and released by the U.S. government found that every single freshwater fish tested was contaminated with mercury. They tested fish from 291 different streams across the country and didn't find a single mercury-free fish. What's more, fish mercury levels were often alarming.

According to the report, fish mercury levels in more than one-fourth of the fish tested contained mercury levels exceeding those set forth for people by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). More than two-thirds exceeded EPA levels for other mammals.

Many people opt for fish over other "meats" to avoid many of the toxins found in modern livestock, but this research sheds light yet again on the toxicity and contamination of fish, and that these creatures are often not healthful alternatives to other animals.

The EPA's website cautions that a little mercury isn't necessarily bad for the average person, that all fish naturally contain mercury. But if 25% of freshwater fish had more mercury than the FDA prescribed back in 2009, how many of them are over that limit now?

Mercury enters the water system through contaminants "spewed" into the atmosphere, according to Reuters. They say these emissions from industrial plants (particularly coal-fired plants) then settles into the water systems.

Feeling full involves more than just the uncomfortable sensation that your waistband is getting tight. Investigators reporting online on July 5th in the Cell Press journal Cell have now mapped out the signals that travel between your gut and your brain to generate the feeling of satiety after eating a protein-rich meal. Understanding this back and forth loop between the brain and gut may pave the way for future approaches in the treatment and/or prevention of obesity.

Although levels of fats and sugars have been shown to influence the desire to eat, until now no team had demonstrated how protein molecules regulate appetite.

Food intake can be modulated through mu-opioid receptors (MORs, which also bind morphine) on nerves found in the walls of the portal vein, the major blood vessel that drains blood from the gut. Specifically, stimulating the receptors enhances food intake, while blocking them suppresses intake. Investigators have now found that peptides, the products of digested dietary proteins, block MORs, curbing appetite. The peptides send signals to the brain that are then transmitted back to the gut to stimulate the intestine to release glucose, suppressing the desire to eat. Mice that were genetically engineered to lack MORs did not carry out this release of glucose, nor did they show signs of 'feeling full', after eating high-protein foods. Giving them MOR stimulators or inhibitors did not affect their food intake, unlike normal mice.

Diseases that can be transmitted between animals and humans, such as bird flu and tuberculosis, can wreak havoc on the health of both organisms. Now researchers have found 13 so-called zoonoses are responsible for 2.2 million human deaths every year.

The study, detailed this week in the report "Mapping of Poverty and Likely Zoonoses Hotspots," shows the vast majority of these illnesses and deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. For instance, Africa's Ethiopia, Nigeria and Tanzania, along with India, had the highest rates of associated illness and death.

"From cyst-causing tapeworms to avian flu, zoonoses present a major threat to human and animal health," lead study author Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya, said in a statement. "Targeting the diseases in the hardest-hit countries is crucial to protecting global health as well as to reducing severe levels of poverty and illness among the world's 1 billion poor livestock keepers."

The new global zoonosis map, an update of one published in the journal Nature in 2008, also revealed the northeastern United States, Western Europe (particularly the United Kingdom), Brazil and parts of Southeast Asia may be hotspots of "emerging zoonoses."

An emerging zoonosis is a disease that is newly infecting humans, has just become virulent, or has just become drug-resistant.

Dr. Drew Pinsky has come under fire for helping to market an antidepressant for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

A Boston judge on Thursday approved a record $3 billion guilty plea by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline, which paid the "Celebrity Rehab" doctor -- known as Dr. Drew -- $275,000 to tout Wellbutrin, approved by the FDA to treat depression, as a drug to treat other conditions including obesity, addictions and sexual dysfunction.

At one point, Pinsky, then hosting sex and romance radio program "Loveline," told a woman that ingredients in the drug explained her having 60 orgasms in one night, a by-the-books talking point from Glaxo in what the federal government called its "nationwide scheme" to market the drug for alternative uses.

In a statement to Forbes, Pinsky defended his comments about the drug, claiming they were in line with his clinical observations of its side effects.

"In the late 90s I was hired to participate in a 2 year initiative discussing intimacy and depression which was funded by an educational grant by Glaxo Wellcome," he wrote in the e-mailed statement. "Services for the non branded campaign included town hall meetings, writings and multimedia activities in conjunction with the patient advocacy group the National Depressive and Manic Depressive Association. My comments were consistent with my clinical experience."

But the Justice Department's complaint against Glaxo alleged that Pinsky highlighted the drug's libido-enhancing effects without revealing that he was a paid spokesman.

It is unclear whether Pinsky will face any legal issues.

Neither Pinsky nor Glaxo responded to emails and calls from TheWrap for comment.

A global study mapping human diseases that come from animals like tuberculosis, AIDS, bird flu or Rift Valley fever has found that just 13 such diseases are responsible for 2.4 billion cases of human illness and 2.2 million deaths a year.

The vast majority of infections and deaths from so-called zoonotic diseases are in poor or middle-income countries, but "hotspots" are also cropping up in the United States and Europe where diseases are newly infecting humans, becoming particularly virulent, or are developing drug resistance.

And exploding global demand for livestock products means the problem is likely to get worse, researchers said.

"From cyst-causing tapeworms to avian flu, zoonoses present a major threat to human and animal health," said Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Kenya and lead author of the study.

She said targeting these diseases in the hardest hit countries is crucial to protecting global health, and failing to tackle them would allow demand for meat products to "fuel the spread of a wide range of human-animal infectious diseases."

Last month's news that Jennifer Aniston has become a veg juice devotee, regularly slugging back a concoction of cucumbers, beetroot, spinach, kale, garlic, ginger, carrots and celery, will only fuel the juicing fad.

Because look around any high-end gym or yoga studio these days and you'll see women swigging something that looks like it's been scooped from a pond. This is the juice cleanse, or the juice detox - don't ever refer to it as a diet, that would sound like you're doing it to lose weight, whereas, of course, this is all about purifying your body.

Popular among A-listers including Salma Hayek, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sarah Jessica Parker, juice detoxes have gone mainstream, with legions of women pulping Tesco's entire fruit and veg aisle themselves, or paying up to £40 a day - yes, really - to have supplies delivered to their door.

It sounds terribly good for you - just masses of fruit and vegetables all juiced together, filling you full of vitamins, minerals and anti-oxidants. But while if you're doing it Aniston-style and eating normally for most of the week, it probably won't do you any serious harm, the truth is that a juice regime that lasts several weeks - or even just several days - could actually be wreaking all sorts of havoc on your health.

Think of it as Liquid-Plumr for the circulatory system. Researchers have designed a clump of tiny particles that rides the current of the bloodstream, seeks out life-threatening blood clots, and obliterates them. The approach works in mice and could soon move on to human trials.

Blood clots are bad news for the brain, heart, and other organs. These masses of blood cells can grow big enough to choke off veins and arteries, preventing oxygen from flowing to critical organs. One of the chief obstacles to dealing with blood clots is finding where they have lodged in the body. Even if doctors locate clots, they're hard to get rid of. Doctors often prescribe blood thinners that slow down the time it takes a clot to form, but such medication can also cause excessive bleeding. Another method is stenting, a procedure in which a flexible wire or tube is used to reopen a vessel. Patients recover quickly but often spend at least 1 night in the hospital.

Looking for a better approach, biomedical engineer Donald Ingber of Harvard University and colleagues turned to nanoparticles. Modeled after platelets - cells that circulate in the blood and help stop bleeding by forming clots - the nanoparticles are less than 100 nm wide and made of synthetic polymers stuck together like a ball of wet sand. Like platelets, clumps of the particles flow freely in the blood and gravitate toward blocked vessels by sensing a change in blood flow. Once there, they break apart into individual particles that stick to the clot, releasing a drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) that dissolves it.

Vaccinationists tell us we don't understand science. Well maybe they are right. "Science" in the world of vaccines could mean, throwing out results that don't fit the desired outcome, throwing out the evidence before the FDA comes to inspect, offering bonuses to scientists to deliver the necessary results ...I was the head technician in a biochemistry lab for two years prior to medical school, yet I never saw science carried out like that. Maybe Temple University was just a bit behind the times in its evolution of "science."

This is the story of the MMR vaccine and two Merck scientists who filed a lawsuit in 2010 over Merck's efforts to allegedly "defraud the United States through Merck's ongoing scheme to sell the government a mumps vaccine that is mislabeled, misbranded, adulterated and falsely certified as having an efficacy rate that is significantly higher than it actually is." Merck allegedly did this from 2000 onwards in order to maintain its exclusive license to sell the MMR vaccine and keep its monopoly of the US market.

Folks, if you haven't already heard this elsewhere, this is HUGE news. HERE is Hilary Butler's excellent account of the ordeal as well as both the 2010 and 2012 official legal complaints.

In the complaint, the scientists outline in great detail exactly how Merck manipulated the efficacy results in order to be able to say they had a 95% effective vaccine so that they could meet the fairytale goal of vaccine-induced "herd immunity by 2010." Well, it turns out that the vaccine could not meet the goal that CDC projected to eradicate mumps by 2010, BECAUSE the vaccine, in its current state cannot reliably confer immunity, and is in fact a dilute version of what it once was when Maurice Hilleman invented it using the virus of his five year old daughter. The same viral mumps strain has been in use in every mumps or MMR vaccine Merck has made since 1967.

The Food Standards Agency is renewing its warning that Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) should not be consumed. A similar product, Chlorine Dioxide Solution (CDS), should also be avoided.

Miracle Mineral Solution, also known as Miracle Mineral Supplement, is sold as an oral supplement. MMS is a 28% sodium chlorite solution, which is equivalent to industrial-strength bleach. When taken as directed it could cause severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, potentially leading to dehydration and reduced blood pressure. If the solution is diluted less than instructed, it could cause damage to the gut and red blood cells, potentially resulting in respiratory failure.

Although CDS is a more dilute product and not as potentially dangerous as MMS, it could irritate and damage the skin and gastrointestinal tract if swallowed. Other similar products containing chlorine solutions in varying strengths are available. These should also be avoided.

MMS, CDS and similar products are available via the internet. The Agency has reminded local authorities that these products should not be on sale. Anyone who is aware of these products being sold in retail outlets should notify their local authority trading standards department. Contact details of local authorities can be found using the link below.

Anyone who has any of these products should throw them away. If someone has consumed MMS, CDS or similar products and feels unwell, they should consult their doctor.