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A hernia is produced when the content of the abdominal cavity protrudes through a weakened natural orifice of the abdominal wall such as the inguinal canal, the umbilical area, the epigastrium or a previous incision in the abdomen such as from a surgical operation. The hernia manifests itself as a bulging lump since the internal lining of the abdomen protrudes in what is called a hernial sac that shrinks or grows depending on the effort exerted by the affected individual.
Hernias are more frequent in the groin or navel areas and in the area of an old surgical scar, and they never improve or disappear naturally; on the contrary, they tend to grow. Not only painful but unaesthetic too, hernias can produce complications such as bowel obstructions and strangulations.

A new study published today in Annals of Internal Medicine has good news for coffee drinkers: Regular coffee drinking (up to 6 cups per day) is not associated with increased deaths in either men or women. In fact, both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee consumption is associated with a somewhat smaller rate of death from heart disease.
Women consuming two to three cups of caffeinated coffee per day had a 25 percent lower risk of death from heart disease during the follow-up period (which lasted from 1980 to 2004 and involved 84,214 women) as compared with non-consumers, and an 18 percent lower risk of death caused by something other than cancer or heart disease as compared with non-consumers during follow-up. For men, this level of consumption was associated with neither a higher nor a lower risk of death during the follow-up period (which lasted from 1986 to 2004 and involved 41,736 men).

Wang and colleagues performed a systematic review of safety studies of medical cannabinoids published over the past 40 years and found that short-term use appeared to increase the risk of non-serious adverse events.
Of all non-serious adverse events, dizziness was the most common (15.5%).
"We found that the rate of non-serious adverse events was 1.86 times higher among medical cannabinoid users than among controls," state the authors. "However, we did not find a higher incidence rate of serious adverse events associated with medical cannabinoid use." The authors note that 99% of the serious adverse events from randomized controlled trials were reported in only 2 trials, a fact the authors say suggests that more studies are required to further characterize safety issues.

LONDON, June 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Responding to reports in the media that Obecalp, a placebo pill for children, is due to be made available on the UK market, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain's (RPSGB) Chief Scientist, Jayne Lawrence said:
"The RPSGB is concerned that this product is due to be made available on the UK market as a placebo pill to give to children.
"As a dietary supplement, the manufacturers have not been required to carry out clinical trials. Further, the use of this drug indicates that symptoms diagnosis and advice have not been sought from a qualified healthcare professional, which runs the risk of misdiagnosis.
"We are also concerned that giving a child the pill reinforces the wrong message - that tablets are the answer for all of life's aches and pains."

Activities such as aquaculture, shipping and recreational boating have led to an army of marine alien species hitchhiking around the globe.
And only you can stop them.
Queen's University Belfast is attempting to find out exactly where and how non-native species get a foothold in a new area. To do this it is asking for help from the public to record what they have seen.
Part of the Marine Aliens consortium, co-ordinated by the Scottish Association for Marine Science, the project will use the information gathered to look at how invasions can be slowed or preferably prevented. It is very difficult to eradicate an organism once it has become established in a new area.

Residents of the central and southern Midwest are crossing their fingers, saying their prayers, planning evacuations, and in some cases filling sandbags in preparation for the excessive water ravishing communities in Iowa and Wisconsin.
"The flood wave is propagating down the Mississippi River towards St. Louis at about the pace of a brisk walk," said Robert E. Criss, Ph.D., professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. "Some areas north of St. Louis in Missouri and southern Iowa are bracing for the second worst flood in their history. This is serious water."
Criss is a geologist. One of his specialties is hydrogeology. He said that the floodwaters are projected to crest at St. Louis at 38 feet on June 22 or 23, marking the 11th time since the Civil War that St. Louis has reached that flood stage. During the flood of 1993 waters at St. Louis crested at 49.6 feet.

Today, at an international conference, a team of European astronomers announced they have found a triple system of 'super-Earths' around the star HD 40307, called such because they are more massive than the Earth but less massive than Uranus and Neptune (about 15 Earth masses.)
These super-Earths are around a rather normal star, which is slightly less massive than our Sun, and is located 42 light-years away towards the southern Doradus and Pictor constellations.
Looking at their entire sample studied with HARPS, the astronomers count a total of 45 candidate planets with a mass below 30 Earth masses and an orbital period shorter than 50 days. This implies that one solar-like star out of three harbors such planets.

When smoked, crystal meth rapidly achieves high concentrations in the brain without the burdens of the intravenous route. Stephen J. Kish PhD of the Departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology, University of Toronto, and the Human Neurochemical Pathology Laboratory, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, reviews the actions of methamphetamine and explains the potential role of dopamine in methamphetamine craving.
Kish states that there is no medication approved for the treatment of relapses of methamphetamine addiction, but potential therapeutic agents targeted to dopamine and non-dopamine systems are in clinical testing.

Amenorrhea, or absence of menstruation, occurs in as many as 25 percent of female high school athletes, compared with 2 to 5 percent in the general population, according to the study's presenter, Madhusmita Misra, MD, a pediatric endocrinologist at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston.
Amenorrhea in athletes is known to cause infertility and early onset of low bone density and may increase the risk of breaking bones. Evidence suggests that intense exercise associated with caloric restriction, and therefore a state of energy deficit, is most responsible for menstrual irregularities among athletes.
In females ages 12 to 18, Misra and her colleagues measured levels of various hormones, including ghrelin. Giving ghrelin to animals and humans has been shown to cause impaired secretion of hormones that regulate ovarian and menstrual function, and ghrelin levels are elevated in people with anorexia nervosa, another condition of severe energy deficit, she said. Until now, ghrelin levels have not been studied in teenage athletes in relation to ovarian hormones.

There are microbialites, strange coral-like growths, at the bottom of Pavilion Lake in British Columbia. They have been out of the reach of scientists but with the addition of new submersible technology they can now be studied.
The growths might, says Greg Slater, an environmental geochemist at McMaster University, hold the key to life beyond Earth.
These unique carbonate rock structures are known as microbialites because they are covered with microbes. Some of these microbialites grow at depths up to 180 feet below the water's surface, too deep to reach by non-decompression SCUBA diving.

The Y chromosome is an established evolutionary tool and has been used in many evolutionary studies. While easy to use, it has limitations which prevent it from full utilization about the most evolutionary informative DNA segments in the Human genome.
As part of her doctoral studies, Holly Leung in the Department of Genetics at University of Leicesteris has been investigating the potential of the X chromosome as another evolutionary informative segment in the human genome.
The University of Leicester has done many human population studies with the Y chromosome, including the relationship between the male surname and the Y chromosome, as well as a better understanding of the Viking settlement in the Northwest England.

In an effort to reconcile the science stating that power leads to action and lack of power leads to inhibition -- despite constant historical reminders of the powerless rising up and taking action -- new research in the June issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that the legitimacy of the power relationship is an important determinant of whether power leads to action.
The research, led in part by Kellogg School of Management Professor Adam Galinsky, sought to determine at what point the powerless rise up and take action. Galinsky collaborated with psychologist Joris Lammers of Tilburg University and Ernestine Gordijn and Sabine Otten of the University of Groninengen on the study. These findings are the first to clarify when, and lend insight into why, power leads to behavioral approach, or action.