Washington, Apr 12 : For those wondering how to improve their employees' productivity, `Meetings on Move' concept might do the needful.

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have revealed that implementing the `Meetings on Move' concept would significantly increase productivity and improve employees'' health by getting them up from their desks and on the move.

"Forty percent of the population are absolute couch potatoes," said Dr Debra Haire-Joshu, and professor of social work at Washington University.

Hong Kong- A Hong Kong anti-smoking campaigner who for a quarter of a century has been a thorn in the side of the tobacco industry in Asia was Sunday celebrating a major international award for her crusading work. Dr Judith Mackay, labeled one of the three most dangerous people in the world in a leaked tobacco industry document in the 1980s, has received the British Medical Journal Group's first ever lifetime achievement award.

Beijing - Chinese authorities released a long-awaited health reform action plan last week, but it is only the first step in a long march towards curing endemic problems marring the country's medical system, analysts say. Over the next three years, 850 billion yuan (124 billion dollars) will be spent on lowering the costs of medicines, building and renovating hospitals and clinics, training medical staff, and improving and expanding the current medical insurance scheme.

Washington, Apr 11: Mount Sinai researchers have identified a novel mechanism that might link type 2 diabetes to Alzheimer’s disease.

Lead researcher Dr. Giulio Maria Pasinetti said that the relationship between type-2 diabetes and Alzheimer''s disease is elusive. Not all subjects with type-2 diabetes are affected by Alzheimer''s disease, and similarly, not all Alzheimer''s disease cases are diabetic.

However, recent studies have shown that people affected by type-2 diabetes are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer''s disease dementia. But the reason is not known.

Washington, April 11 : A novel therapy for metastatic prostate cancer has shown considerable promise in early clinical trials by reducing signs of the disease in patients with drug-resistant cancer.

Of 30 men who received low doses of one the drugs in a multisite phase I/II trial designed to evaluate safety, 22 showed a sustained decline in the level of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in their blood.

Washington, Apr 11 : Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Centre have identified a molecule that prompts damaged heart cells to repair themselves after a heart attack.

The research team led by Drs. J. Michael DiMaio and Ildiko Bock-Marquette has discovered a molecule called, Thymosin beta-4 (TB4), which is expressed by embryos during the heart's development and encourages migration of heart cells.

They showed that introducing TB4 systemically after a heart attack encourages new growth and repair of heart cells as early as 24 hours after systemic injection.

In the mouse study, researchers found that TB4 initiates capillary tube formation of adult coronary endothelial cells in tissue culture.