Twenty-First Century Medical Library

By some estimates, 25 percent of young people in the United States are either overweight or obese, a figure that has doubled in the last 30 years. In that time, the physical activities in our lives have gone down while our caloric intake has gone up. The U.S. Surgeon General has called the incidence of excessive weight-which unfortunately extends to all age groups including the elderly-a public health crisis. By presenting both real-life case studies and the most current scientific research, this book provides the information young people need to understand the indivisible connection between weight and health.

One of the deadliest diseases healthcare workers fight today, tuberculosis (often called TB) infects the lungs of one-third of the world's population and kills about 2 million people a year. While scientific breakthroughs brought this bacterial disease under control during the 1960's to the 1980s, it was never completely eliminated. In the early 1990's, TB came back as a serious global threat. Not only has TB now spread to virtually every country on Earth, new strains of TB-which are resistant to the standard antibiotics used to cure it-have appeared. Learn what causes TB, how it spreads, why it is so difficult to treat, and more in this informative volume.