Paradise is packed full of heavenly adventures

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Swimming at To Sua Ocean Trench

Swimming with Humpback whale

Pa Teuruaa, hiking guide on Rarotonga's Cross-Island Trek

Hiker at the base of the Needle on Rarotonga's Cross-Island Trek

Land diver jumping off vine tower, Pentecost

People getting into their sea kayaks near shore. Yasawa Group

Pacific islands package lethargy like few other places. Encased in sluggish heat and a warm ocean, they're typically places where doing nothing can feel like doing everything. But what happens when doing nothing isn't enough?

Crawl off the beach towel and there are opportunities on many Pacific islands for particular, and often unique, adventure activities.

Here's our pick of the adventures in paradise.

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Paradise is packed full of heavenly adventures

Lava Flows from Fogo in the Cape Verde Islands Bury Two Towns

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It is clear now that the ongoing eruption at Fogo in the Cape Verde Islands is not sparing the towns in the Cha de Caldieras area. There had been some indications that the eruption was slowing and that the town of Portello and Bangaeiracould be saved, but as of December 8, it appears that much of the settlement is being overrun by lava flowsand the lava continues to flow at close to 300 meters per day.

The eruption regained vigor over the weekend, and the security teams near the volcano had to withdraw to safe distances. Close to 90 percent of the town is now covered by the lava from the new eruption (compare this to the lava during the recent Pahoa crisis in Hawaii, which received many, many times more coverage in the mainstream media). Right now,close to 1,200people who had to evacuate likely do not have a home to which to return. Even if their home survived, much of the infrastructure for these communities has been decimated as well. Not surprisingly, online charities have sprung up to help the people permanently displaced by the Fogo eruption.

INVOLCAN filmed some stunning moments of lava flows moving through the towns (see above) and new images from Google Earth show the extent of lava flow inundation on the area (alacance on the linked image). Volcanologists following the eruption have said thatthe current activity could last as long as the 1995 eruption that lasted 56 days, so we could seemany more weeks of lava flows within the Fogo caldera, creating a massive humanitarian crisis for such a small, isolated island.

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Lava Flows from Fogo in the Cape Verde Islands Bury Two Towns

Genetics show Viking women colonized new lands, too

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Image: Wikimedia Commons Oscar Wergeland

Vikings may have been family men who traveled with their wives to new lands, according to a new study of ancient Viking DNA.

Maternal DNA from ancient Norsemen closely matches that of modern-day people in the North Atlantic isles, particularly from the Orkney and Shetland Islands.

The findings suggest that both Viking men and women sailed on the ships to colonize new lands. The new study also challenges the popular conception of Vikings as glorified hoodlums with impressive seafaring skills.

"It overthrows this 19th century idea that the Vikings were just raiders and pillagers," said study co-author Erika Hagelberg, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oslo in Norway. "They established settlements and grew crops, and trade was very, very important."

Vikings hold a special place in folklore as manly warriors who terrorized the coasts of France, England and Germany for three centuries. But the Vikings were much more than pirates and pillagers. They established far-flung trade routes, reached the shores of present-day America, settled in new lands and even founded the modern city of Dublin, which was called Dyfflin by the Vikings.

Some earlier genetic studies have suggested that Viking males traveled alone and then brought local women along when they settled in a new location. For instance, a 2001 study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics suggested that Norse men brought Gaelic women over when they colonized Iceland.

To learn more about Norse colonization patterns, Hagelberg and her colleagues extracted teeth and shaved off small wedges of long bones from 45 Norse skeletons that were dated to between A.D. 796 and A.D. 1066. The skeletons were first unearthed in various locations around Norway and are now housed in the Schreiner Collection at the University of Oslo.

The team looked at DNA carried in the mitochondria, the energy powerhouses of the cell. Because mitochondria are housed in the cytoplasm of a woman's egg, they are passed on from a woman to her children and can therefore reveal maternal lineage. The team compared that material with mitochondrial DNA from 5,191 people from across Europe, as well as with previously analyzed samples from 68 ancient Icelanders.

The ancient Norse and Icelandic genetic material closely matched the maternal DNA in modern North Atlantic people, such as Swedes, Scots and the English. But the ancient Norse seemed most closely related to people from Orkney and Shetland Islands, Scottish isles that are quite close to Scandinavia.

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Genetics show Viking women colonized new lands, too

Huntington Willard named president and director of Marine Biological Laboratory

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Huntington Willard, an innovative leader in the fields of genetics and genome biology who has built comprehensive research centers at leading institutions, has been appointed the next president and director of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.

President Robert J. Zimmer, who is also chairman of the MBLs Board of Trustees, announced the appointment to the MBL and University communities. MBL is an affiliate of the University of Chicago, a relationship designed to yield novel avenues for scientific discovery and education at both institutions.

At the MBL, Willard will lead one of the worlds foremost centers for biological research, international collaboration and education. Willard, currently the Arts & Sciences Professor of Biology and Genome Sciences at Duke University, will begin his appointment at the MBL on Jan. 1, 2015.

Willard has earned a reputation as a groundbreaking scientist, a strong leader and builder of complex academic initiatives, as well as a talented educator who has received multiple teaching awards. From 2003 to 2014 he was the founding director of the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, a highly interdisciplinary unit that spanned the life sciences, engineering, medicine, social sciences and the humanities. For that program, Willard recruited 35 faculty members to Duke across 21 departments and established broad institutional strength in the genome sciences. He had previously chaired the Department of Genetics at Case Western Reserve University, where he also built a widely respected program of research and education.

As a researcher, Willard has explored many facets of genetics and genome biology, with a particular interest in the structure and function of chromosomes, the epigenetic regulation of gene silencing, and the evolution and organization of complex genomes. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has won many awards for genetics scholarship, including the William Allan Award from the American Society of Human Genetics.

Hunt Willard is an outstanding scholar and a proven scientific leader who has created programs that have earned international respect, said Zimmer. He exemplifies the values that guide the Marine Biological Laboratory and the University of Chicagowide-ranging collaboration, eagerness to explore and define new fields of study, and a dedication to discovery through engaged education. We are delighted to welcome him to this community, and confident that he will lead the MBL in a way that preserves its strengths, creates new opportunities for growth, and takes advantage of the relationship with the University of Chicago.

Willard said he was attracted by the MBLs historic role as a beacon for scientists from around the world, including its renowned summer courses and creative year-round programs of research and education.

Im honored to be named the next president and director of MBL, Willard said. The MBL has enjoyed such a strong tradition of integrating research and education since its founding, and offers wonderful opportunities to develop and implement novel strategies for tackling some of the most pressing questions in life sciences and biomedical research today. The highly interdisciplinary nature of its year-round and visiting scientists and students offers unique combinations of scholarship, teamwork and adaptability that cant be easily matched elsewhere.

I cant imagine a place that better illustrates the values of integrated research and education that are important to meas a scientist, an educator and as a leader. I look forward with great enthusiasm to joining this community, at both MBL and the University of Chicago.

Jennifer Morgan, an MBL scientist and associate director of the Eugene Bell Center for Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering, said Willard is a perfect fit for the MBLs intellectual culture.

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Huntington Willard named president and director of Marine Biological Laboratory

Dr Hans Hammers discusses how kidney cancer patients can take an active role in disease management – Video

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Dr Hans Hammers discusses how kidney cancer patients can take an active role in disease management
At the Thirteenth International Kidney Cancer Symposium, Dr Hans Hammers (Johns Hopkins, MD) encourages kidney cancer patients to take an active role in health care. Currently, a strategic...

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Dr Hans Hammers discusses how kidney cancer patients can take an active role in disease management - Video

Why Universal Health Care Is No Cure-All

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Theres good news to report on health care in America. Obamacare has increased coverage by 10 million people, spending growth has dramatically declined, and preventable hospital errors such as drug mistakes fell 17 percent from 2010 to 2013, saving 50,000 lives.In the U.S., at least, it appears possible to increase efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and access all at the same time.

The picture is less positive across much of the developing world. While the call for universal health care in every country is now the official stance of the World Health Organization, attempts to meet that goal have often seen limited returns.The overwhelming focus on quantity of care is ignoring a massive problem with quality and efficiency. Unless thats addressed, a lot of money will be spent on expanding accesswith little impact.

A World Bank review of extending universal health coverage in developing countries found that providing subsidized or free care did increase access to those services, especially by the poorest people. Such schemes also reduced recipients out-of-pocket expenses associated with health care. There were also some successes related to health outcomes. Argentinas Plan Nacer, for example, provided services to pregnant women and young children, which was associated with a 2 percentage point reduction in early newborn mortality.

Yet only five out of 18 studies of coverage roll-out found a positive impact on health indicators such as death rates or reduced sickness. In India, for example, the government has started paying mothers who deliver children in hospitals. As a result, from 2005 to 2011, the number born in a health facility more than doubled in nine Indian states. But the massive increase in institutional births had no impact on infant mortality. If anything, according to World Bank researcher Jishnu Das, the rise of hospital births is remarkably consistent with the halting of a slow decline in infant mortality. Rwanda has seen a similar phenomenon: a big rise in births with a skilled attendant with no impact on health.

Across countries, there is no relationship between overall levels of health expenditures and health outcomes at a given income per head, nor a link between health inputs such as doctors and nurses per capita and health outcomes. The number of hospital beds per person worldwide actually fell by a quarter from 1960 to 2005, even as global health massively improvedwith average planetary life expectancy climbing from 52 years to 69 years.

One reason for the gap between health inputs and health outcomes is the low quality of care. Though many health-care practitioners are hard working and honest, a lot arent. In 2003, if you turned up unannounced to a health-care facility in India and asked to see a staff member, 40 percent of staffers who were meant to be there were absent. Among doctors in rural Bangladesh in 2004, that figure was above 70 percent.

And hospital staffers are often ignorant of the right approaches or face incentives to provide the wrong treatments. A 2013 survey in Kenya found that only a little over half of doctors and nurses could diagnose at least four out of five common conditions when their major symptoms were describedmalaria with anemia, diarrhea with dehydration, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and diabetes. When it came to treatment, health providers adhered to less than 43 percent of the clinical guidelines governing management of these conditions. Public providers only followed 44 percent of the guidelines for managing maternal and newborn complications.

The lack of a relationship between the availability of health care andlife expectancy in developing countries goes beyond weaknesses in hospitals and clinics. Its also related to the fact that what kills most people in poor countries are conditions that dont require hospitals to fix. In sub-Saharan Africa, the five leading killers are malaria, HIV, lower respiratory infections, diarrhea, and malnutrition. Further and growing causes of mortality across the developing world include traffic accidents, tobacco usage, and health conditions related to being overweight. Clean water, access to and use of toilets, condoms, soap, vaccinations, and and bed nets, alongside better nutrition, tobacco controls, and road safety measures can prevent the majority of these deaths. Doctors and nurses save thousands of lives a day, but infrastructure and public health interventionsneither requiring highly trained medical staffsave many millions each year. Often, the medical system can do little more than provide palliative care when these other approaches arent used or dont work.

Doctors, nurses, and hospitals remain vital to a countrys well-being. The Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has demonstrated that there are times when only skilled care in medical facilities can adequately protect the public. It has also shown that even in health systems that are as weakly governed, understaffed, and woefully underfunded as Liberias or Sierra Leones, many people are willing to risk their lives, day after day, to help.

But when most people are dying from conditions that can be prevented at the cost a few cents, in countries where total health expenditures can be as low as a few dollars per year per person, its folly todivert scarce resources to expanding broken health-care systems. Doing so will only mean that more people are going to die. While governments and donors should spend more money on the health needs of the worlds poorest peoplethey should also insist that money is spent efficiently, rather than on simply chasing an illusory goal of universal coverage.

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3 Health Care Stock Picks That Will Profit in 2015 Thanks to Obamacare

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NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- The health business in the U.S. undergoing transition thanks to the changes created by the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.How can savvy investors capitalize? Buy into companies helping the new health care economy function.

The open enrollmentperiod for consumer buying health care coverage for next year ends on Feb. 15, meaning that companies poised for success in this market will still be attractively priced. So now is the perfect time to invest.

Must Read: 10 Stocks Carl Icahn Loves in 2014

Here'swhere the opportunities lie.

These private market places are being offered by different providers includinginsurance companies Aetna (AET) and Cigna (CI) as well as broker/consultant networks Towers Watson (TW) and AonHewitt (AON) . These players provide a marketplace for their respective network of individuals and small groups to customize their benefit packages. Many of these companies outsource the private exchange infrastructure and stock it with their own customized products, including medical plans. Technology Platforms Providing Exchange Infrastructure Technology platform companies develop the health care exchange infrastructure by providing cloud software and data analytics solutions to clients such as theinsurers listed above, brokers and consultants and also large employers looking for a custom exchange. Up to 40 million consumers will be using private health care exchanges by 2018, according to Accenture, representing tremendous growth for a market that did not exist a few years ago. To compare, three million Americans are enrolled in private health insurance exchanges for their 2014 employer benefits. That's a lot of infrastructure to develop in the next four years. Must Read: The 7 Most Important Drug-Stock Lessons From This Weekend's Blood Cancer Meeting

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3 Health Care Stock Picks That Will Profit in 2015 Thanks to Obamacare

Health Care: A Modern Day Blade Runner?

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Throughout the health ecosystem new technologies and medical advancements enter the market every day. Yet, as Jonathan Bush, President and CEO of athenahealth commented during the 2014 Forbes Healthcare Summit, Only in health care can you increase the staff needed and slow productivity, costing more, by adding new technologies.

His point is well taken. Negative labor productivity is ultimately the underlying complaint of hospital leadership, providers and patients surrounding technology such as electronic health records (EHRs). Although more EHRs enter the market and mergers continue between health systems everyday, the need to actually connect care has sadly been lost in the debate about what software to use and how to use it.

As the President and CEO of Texas Medical Center Robert Robbins pointed out, Just like we are not going back to using pay phones and rotary phones over smart phones, the EHR will never be overtaken by file folders of the past. He contends that there are plenty of opportunities for improvement, but the progress of technology will not be undone because people do not like them, as they exist.

Jonathan Bush used that transition to equate the state of health care technology to the movie Blade Runner, in which a dystopian future involves hover cars and artificial intelligence, but the characters still use pay phones.

While no one can predict with certainty what the future of health analytics and scientific advancement look like, its clear that regression in one area as others surge forward is not an option. Just as we cannot go back to health care in the US before the ACA, the future of health will certainly not look like it does under the ACA.

FOLLOW@nic_fisheron Twitter,Google+or onForbes.com.

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Health Care: A Modern Day Blade Runner?

Health Care Sector Update for 12/08/2014: BLRX,CBST,MRK,ALR

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Top Health Care Stocks

JNJ +0.23%

PFE +0.13%

ABT +1.08%

MRK +0.05%

AMGN +1.81%

Health care stocks were mostly higher, with the NYSE Health Care Sector Index climbing about 0.1% and shares of health care companies in the S&P 500 posting a 0.5% gain as a group.

In company news, BioLineRx Ltd. ( BLRX ) rallied Monday after the early-stage biotech company reported positive data from ongoing Phase IIa testing of its BL-8040 drug candidate in patientxs with acute myeloid leukemia.

The prospective chemotherapy triggered substantial mobilization of leukemia cancer cells from the bone marrow to peripheral blood in patients, including a median 70% drop in the number of leukemia in a patient's bone marrow while the number of normal progenitor cells was stable after only two days of BL-8040 monotherapy.

BL-8040 also showed a 350% increase in cell death of leukemia cells in both the bone marrow and in peripheral blood samples during additional testing. There also were no dose-limiting toxicity or serious adverse events during the dose-escalation stage of the trial, the company said.

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Health Care Sector Update for 12/08/2014: BLRX,CBST,MRK,ALR

Genetic Errors Linked to Aging Underlie Leukemia That Develops After Cancer Treatment

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Newswise For a small percentage of cancer patients, treatment aimed at curing the disease leads to a form of leukemia with a poor prognosis. Conventional thinking goes that chemotherapy and radiation therapy induce a barrage of damaging genetic mutations that kill cancer cells yet inadvertently spur the development of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a blood cancer.

But a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis challenges the view that cancer treatment in itself is a direct cause of what is known as therapy-related AML.

Rather, the research suggests, mutations in a well-known cancer gene, P53, can accumulate in blood stem cells as a person ages, years before a cancer diagnosis. If and when cancer develops, these mutated cells are more resistant to treatment and multiply at an accelerated pace after exposure to chemotherapy or radiation therapy, which then can lead to AML, the study indicates.

The teams findings, reported Dec. 8 in the journal Nature, open new avenues for research to predict which patients are at risk of developing therapy-related AML and to find ways to prevent it.

About 18,000 cases of AML are diagnosed in the United States each year, with about 2,000 triggered by previous exposure to chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Therapy-related AML is almost always fatal, even with aggressive treatment.

Until now, weve really understood very little about therapy-related AML and why it is so difficult to treat, said corresponding author Daniel Link, MD, a hematologist/oncologist at Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. This gives us some important clues for further studies aimed at treatment and prevention.

The researchers initially sequenced the genomes of 22 cases of therapy-related AML, finding that those patients had similar numbers and types of genetic mutations in their leukemia cells as other patients who developed AML without exposure to chemotherapy or radiation therapy, an indication that cancer treatment does not cause widespread DNA damage.

This is contrary to what physicians and scientists have long accepted as fact, said senior author Richard K. Wilson, PhD, director of The Genome Institute at Washington University. It led us to consider a novel hypothesis: P53 mutations accumulate randomly as part of the aging process and are present in blood stem cells long before a patient is diagnosed with therapy-related AML.

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Genetic Errors Linked to Aging Underlie Leukemia That Develops After Cancer Treatment

Research in action at Marquette University | Spinal cord injuries – Video

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Research in action at Marquette University | Spinal cord injuries
Dr. Murray Blackmore is an assistant professor of biomedical sciences in the College of Health Sciences at Marquette University. Dr. Blackmore #39;s research focuses on the use of gene therapy...

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Research in action at Marquette University | Spinal cord injuries - Video

Pfizer Bets On Gene Therapy

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LONDON Pfizer Inc. is moving into the gene therapy space in the latest sign that the technology for fixing faulty genes may finally be ready for prime time, following earlier setbacks.

The U.S. drugmaker said on Monday it was establishing a gene therapy platform to study potential treatments, led by a top UK expert, and had struck a deal with privately owned U.S. biotech firm Spark Therapeutics to develop a treatment for hemophilia.

The Spark program is expected to enter early-stage clinical trials for hemophilia B in the first half of 2015. Spark will be responsible for the early Phase I/II tests, with Pfizer taking over late-stage studies, any regulatory approvals and potential commercialization.

Spark will get $20 million upfront and be eligible for additional payments based on product success worth up to $260 million.

Pfizer's research effort in gene therapy will be led by Michael Linden, a professor from King's College London and director of the University College London Gene Therapy Consortium. Linden is joining Pfizer on a two-year secondment.

Gene therapy has seen more than 20 years of experiments but research has been dogged by a series of disappointments and safety concerns.

Now, however, scientists have solved some of the earlier problems and treatments are starting to reach the clinic, with a the Western world's first gene therapy set to go on sale in Germany to treat and ultra-rare blood disease.

"The fundamental understanding of the biology of hereditary rare diseases, coupled with advances in the technology to harness disarmed viruses as gene delivery vehicles, provide a ripe opportunity to investigate the next wave of potential life-changing therapies for patients," said Pfizer research head Mikael Dolsten.

Among other major pharmaceutical companies, Bayer AG struck a gene therapy deal with Dimension Therapeutics in June, while Novartis AG recently established a new cell and gene therapies unit, and Sanofi SA has a long-standing tie-up with Oxford BioMedica.

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Pfizer Bets On Gene Therapy