There's been a lot of interest in the harmful effects of prolonged sitting at work, from academics and the public alike. The attention being paid to sitting – or rather, not sitting – while on the job stems from the scientifically validated message that being sedentary in general, both indoors and outdoors, is bad for your health.

However, comparatively little attention has been devoted to the harmful effects of prolonged standing at work, despite past studies linking it to chronic back pain and musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in the lower limbs.

Human populations have always been exposed to ionizing radiation, and more so in modern life due to its use in medicine, industry and the armed forces. Whilst the risks to human health from medium and high-level radiation are relatively well-understood, the risks at lower levels are less clear.  Mixed messages about the safety of low doses of radiation from different sources have created confusion for the public and for policy makers.  

A body of research putting people with Type 2 diabetes on a low calorie diet has confirmed the underlying causes of the condition and established that it is reversible.

Lung cancer survivors who quit smoking within a year of diagnosis will live for longer than those who continue to smoke, according to new research led by the Universities of Oxford and Birmingham.

Researchers at Caltech have developed a prototype miniature medical device that could ultimately be used in "smart pills" to diagnose and treat diseases. A key to the new technology—and what makes it unique among other microscale medical devices—is that its location can be precisely identified within the body, something that proved challenging before.

A new study has demonstrated the potential to use a frequency distribution-based index of brain functional connectivity as a biomarker for detecting Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). These new findings, which show the index of functional connectivity to have good accuracy across databases and test sites, are published in Brain Connectivity, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Brain Connectivity website until October 13, 2017.

Johns Hopkins researchers have set a new delivery distance record for medical drones, successfully transporting human blood samples across 161 miles of Arizona desert. Throughout the three-hour flight, they report, the on-board payload system maintained temperature control, ensuring the samples were viable for laboratory analysis after landing.

Clinicians are being warned not to ignore the increased cardiovascular health risks of those who are classed as either ‘healthy obese’ or deemed to be ‘normal weight’ but have metabolic abnormalities such as diabetes.

There are currently an estimated 4.5 billion people around the world exposed to levels of particulate air pollution that are at least twice what the World Health Organization considers safe. Yet the impact of sustained exposure to pollution on a person’s life expectancy has largely remained a vexingly unanswered question—until now.

As Hurricane Irma bears down on the U.S., the MIT Urban Risk Lab has launched a free, open-source platform that will help residents and government officials track flooding in Broward County, Florida. The platform, RiskMap.us, is being piloted to enable both residents and emergency managers to obtain better information on flooding conditions in near-real time.