Feature Article

India has the highest burden of acute coronary syndromes in the world, yet little is known about the treatments and outcomes of these diseases. The researchers aimed to document the characteristics, treatments, and outcomes of patients with acute coronary syndromes who were admitted to hospitals in India.

In Tanzania, millions of people seek treatment for malaria through the private sector. But most cannot afford effective medicines. Now a pilot study is testing whether a drug subsidy scheme could help these patients, with some positive preliminary results.

Although cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, its epidemic shows remarkable geographic variation. While the mortality associated with cardio vascular dis ease seems to be declining in western Europe and North America, the burden of cardiovascular diseases in developing countries continues to rise and is expected to be a major cause of death in adults from low-income and middle-income countries worldwide.

While customers at restaurants in New York City will soon be able to count the calories of their meals in an attempt to curb the obesity epidemic, people in New Delhi are currently counting their grains of rice. From Bolivia to Yemen, people around the world are taking to the streets in protest at the spiralling increases in food prices. Politicians have been sacked, protesters have died, and some governments are imposing extreme measures to ration food and control their hungry populations. (Editorial)

When Edzard Ernst became the UK's first professor of complementary medicine, he was attacked by both alternative therapists and conventional doctors. The doctors have come round, but he is now alternative medicine's public enemy number one after sticking the needle into everything from acupuncture to homeopathy. He insists he is just being a good scientist, but it has been a long journey for someone whose family doctor was a homeopath.

Among the many environmental concerns surrounding nuclear power plants, there is one that provokes public anxiety like no other: the fear that children living near nuclear facilities face an increased risk of cancer. Though a link has long been suspected, it has never been proven. Now that seems likely to change.

Decades of misguided policies and untrained or weak leadership have left the children of India defenceless, threatening the future of the country. What are the solutions? April 26-May 2, 2008

Tens of thousands of American families may be living in buildings once used as methamphetamine labs - most of them oblivious to the fact. Some who have learned of their home's history similarly attribute mysterious ailments to the toxic legacy of illicit drug manufacture, but like Katrina Evans they are finding that there is precious little firm knowledge about what risks they are running. Only now is a new federal law authorising more research into the problem, and promising to fill in some gaps.

Livestock auctions are not normally the stuff of headlines, but then it's not every day that cows as unusual as Dundee Paradise and Dundee Paratrooper are going under the hammer. The dairy cows were due to be sold at Easter Compton cattle market near Bristol, UK, last month, but at the last minute their owner withdrew them, reportedly unsettled by negative media coverage and local opposition. The problem? The cows' mother was a clone, conceived in a laboratory from a cell taken from the ear of a prize-winning Holstein in Wisconsin.

If war ever breaks out in space it's not the loss of individual satellites that will do the damage, but the debris this produces. It will stay in orbit and go on harming satellites for decades, according to two studies presented at the American Physical Society meeting in St Louis, Missouri, last week.