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WASHINGTON: Painting all the world's city rooftops white could significantly cool urban areas and perhaps ease the impact of global warming, according to a climate study released on Thursday. Considered a fanciful notion by some critics, the white-roof idea was championed last year by U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu, a Nobel Physics laureate, and research by scientists at the U.S. National Center for Climate Research indicates it has possibilities. "Our research demonstrates that white roofs, at least in theory, can be an effective method for reducing urban heat," Keith Oleson, the study's lead author said in a statement. "It remains to be seen if it's actually feasible for cities to paint their roofs white, but the idea certainly warrants further investigation." Climate change hits cities harder than rural areas because many urban surfaces, including dark-colored asphalt roads and tar-covered roofs, absorb heat from the sun. This creates so-call...

WASHINGTON: A vaccination campaign to combat rotavirus in the world's poorest countries could save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, according to a pair of studies published this week. Around the world, more than half a million infants and children die each year from rotavirus infection, a leading cause of severe diarrhoea in children under the age of five, with more than half of the reported cases in sub-Saharan Africa. The studies published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine found that vaccination campaigns in Malawi and South Africa reduced the rate of rotavirus infections by 61.2 percent during the first year of life, while another campaign in Mexico saw diarrhoeal disease rates drop by over 65 percent. In industrialized countries, the vaccine is part of a standard paediatric immunization protocol. "We now have another powerful weapon to add to our armamentarium to combat diarrhoeal deaths -- rotavirus vaccines," John Hopkins Univ...

WASHINGTON: Overweight septuagenarians are less likely to die within 10 years than people of "normal" weight in the same age group, an Australian study said Thursday. The study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society followed 4,677 men and 4,563 women aged 70 to 75 for a ten-year period from 1996. In addition to their "body mass index," or BMI, which estimates a person's body fat, the researchers also took into account the state of their health and their lifestyle. Participants whose body mass index was classified as overweight were 13 percent less likely to die than those classified as being of normal weight. The benefits, however, were seen only in those who were overweight but not obese. "These results add evidence to the claims that the WHO (World Health Organization) BMI thresholds for overweight and obese are overly restrictive for older people. It may be timely to review the BMI classification for older adults," said Leon Fli...