For “the first time in more than a decade, the debate over how to provide health care for the uninsured is moving back to center stage in Washington and many state capitals,” USA Today reports. Lawmakers, business leaders and unions, among other groups, are coming together “in calling for health system change,” according to USA Today. [click link for full article]

As scientists learn more about the key role of inflammation in diabetes, heart disease and other disorders, new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that fat in the belly may be an important promoter of that inflammation.Excess fat is known to be associated with disease, but now the researchers have confirmed that fat cells inside the abdomen are secreting molecules that increase inflammation. [click link for full article]

Scientists at University College London and Imperial College London have shown how the brain makes sense of speech in a noisy environment, such as a pub or in a crowd. The research suggests that various regions of the brain work together to make sense of what it hears, but that when the speech is completely incomprehensible, the brain appears to give up trying. [click link for full article]

The federal government’s spending on children’s programs, including health care and education, is limited by the growing proportion of the budget spent on older U.S. residents, according to a study released Thursday by the Urban Institute, USA Today reports. [click link for full article]

Obstetrical anesthesia, whether provided by Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) or anesthesiologists, is extremely safe, and there is no difference in safety between hospitals that use only CRNAs compared with those that use only anesthesiologists, according to the results of a new study published in a recent issue of Nursing Research (Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 9-17). [click link for full article]

A new study reported that zolpidem, a drug normally used to treat insomnia, temporarily improved brain function in a patient suffering from akinetic mutism, a condition in which the person is alert but cannot speak or move. The patient was able to communicate, walk, and eat without assistance after receiving the drug for a bout of insomnia. The study was published in the March 2007 issue of [click link for full article]

A study in Switzerland uses the tools of physics to show how our circadian clocks manage to keep accurate time in the noisy cellular environment.In an article appearing in the journal Molecular Systems Biology, researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne demonstrate that the stability of cellular oscillators depends on specific biochemical processes, reflecting recent association studies in families affected by advanced sleep phase syndrome. [click link for full article]

The following highlights recent state news related to human papillomavirus vaccines. Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline’s HPV vaccine Cervarix in clinical trials have been shown to be 100% effective in preventing infection with HPV strains 16 and 18, which together cause about 70% of cervical cancer cases. [click link for full article]

A prize-winning paper suggests that humans are hairless apes because Stone-Age mothers regarded furry babies as unattractiveMedical Hypotheses, an Elsevier publication, has announced the winner of the 2006 David Horrobin Prize for medical theory. [click link for full article]

A physician at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), and his colleagues, have found that fiber can affect a major heart attack risk indicator called C-reactive protein (CRP). Results of the study, lead by Dana King, MD, a family medicine physician with an interest in preventive cardiology, appeared in a recent issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. [click link for full article]