Right until he was wheeled into an operating room for a heart procedure, Bill Clinton was on the phone, talking about Haiti earthquake relief. An aide finally took the phone away from him.

On Friday, the 63-year-old former president seemed to have returned to multitasking, just a day after having a clogged artery reopened and two stents inserted into his chest.

"I feel great. ... I even did a couple miles on the treadmill today," Clinton said, speaking to reporters in a leather jacket from the driveway outside his home. He said doctors advised him "not to jog but walk. Not to walk fast up steep hills for a week."

Aides said Clinton's second heart procedure in five years seemed unlikely to slow down his brutal work schedule, which included two trips to Haiti, stumping for Senate candidate Martha Coakley and attending an economic summit in Switzerland - all in just over a month.

"He's working as hard as he's ever worked. He's done it for 63 years and will do it for the next 63 years. He's never going to stop," said Paul Begala, a Democratic strategist who helped guide Clinton's first presidential bid in 1992.

But some other advisers said Clinton's brief hospitalization was a reminder that his health has become more fragile. They worried that he's running too hard.

"He's got to slow down," Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell said on MSNBC Friday. "He's got to slow down to a good, human schedule. He's had a superhuman schedule for a long while, and he's got to cut back. There's no question about it."

Advisers said the Haiti earthquake-relief effort have been Clinton's main focus, and he appeared to return to that cause on Friday.

Through his foundation, Clinton put out a statement marking the one-month anniversary of the quake and urging people to donate. He said nothing about his health.

The Clinton Foundation's Haiti fund has given $7 million to relief organizations in the aftermath of the quake that killed more than 200,000 people.

Clinton said Friday that he had been working long hours on the Haiti relief effort, including taking three overnight flights in a week. He said his first symptoms were about four days ago, when he felt "just a little bit of tingling, not pain."

Clinton has been doing more than most people do in a day or a month: On Jan. 7, he met with President Obama at the White House. Five days later, he attended the funeral of Vice President Joe Biden's mother in Delaware.

On Jan. 15, he campaigned for Coakley in the race for the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts. Three days later, he toured a destroyed hospital in Haiti.

On Jan. 28, he made an appeal for Haiti aid at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and was back in Haiti on Feb. 5.

"He's just constitutionally unable to say no to a good cause, to say no to a good candidate," Rendell said.

Terry McAuliffe, former Democratic National Committee chairman and a close friend of the Clintons, told CBS' "The Early Show" that it was probably time for Clinton to slow down. But "you can't change him."

"If I know President Clinton, he'll be on the phone ... calling people asking for more help for Haiti and where he can get pickup trucks so they can deliver food or generators. If I know Bill Clinton, he'll be raring to go in about 35 minutes," McAuliffe said.

Clinton consulted with his cardiologist Thursday after suffering discomfort in his chest for several days. He had the procedure at New York Presbyterian Hospital, the same place where he underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 2004.

Shortly before 8 a.m. Friday, three black SUVs with tinted windows arrived in Chappaqua, a wealthy suburb about 35 miles north of Manhattan.

Clinton returned home with his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, advisers said.

A couple of hours later, C.J. Williams, a second-grader from New Fairfield, Conn., arrived at the cul-de-sac carrying a get-well card and a red heart-shaped box filled with Skittles.

The sandy-haired boy said he wrote on the card, "Happy Valentine's Day. I hope you feel better, and here's a little heart to make your big heart feel better."

An officer told C.J. and his father that they would have to mail the items.

Aides said Mrs. Clinton plans to leave Saturday for the Persian Gulf. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the secretary of state is "confident enough that she can go on this trip as originally planned," especially after the former president's speedy return home.

Clinton's cardiologist said he expected Clinton to go back to work Monday.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a New York Democrat who visited Clinton in the hospital, said returning to a full schedule may help his health more than it hurts him.

"Bill Clinton operating at quarter-speed is twice what most people do at full-speed," Weiner said. "His work on behalf of Haiti and the Clinton Global Initiative, I think, keeps him young, much more than it wears him out."

Clinton said taking care of his health has forced him to sleep more. But he said it has not slowed his work schedule.

"It's what I should do. That's what my life is for," he said. "I've been given a good mind, a strong body ... It would be wrong for me not to work."

Rhubarb could hold the key to battling cancer, believe scientists at Sheffield Hallam University.


In the study, scientists found that when baked for 20 minutes, the plant released high levels of cancer-killing chemicals called polyphenols, reports The Daily Express.


Rhubarb has been used for centuries in Chinese medicine. Ground roots of the plant are believed to help shrink tumours.

Dr Nikki Jordan-Mahy, of the university's Biomedical Research Centre, said: "Our research has shown that British rhubarb is a potential source of pharmacological agents that may be used to develop new anti-cancer drugs."

The research team used rhubarb grown indoors in candlelight to produce a darker red stem, as it is higher in polyphenols than paler varieties. The team plans to carry out lab tests to see if rhubarb polyphenols can kill a variety of cancer cells taken from patients with leukaemia.

A study published in the journal Food Chemistry shows rhubarb is at its anti-cancer best after 20 minutes in the oven. (ANI)

Childhood obesity is on the rise but routine activities like eating dinner together, limiting hours of watching television and getting adequate sleep can lower down the risk of childhood obesity, according to a new study published in the journal Pediatrics.

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi conducted a survey on children aged between 14 and 18 and reported that of the 2000 children studied, 17 percent were obese or overweight. Obesity in children is usually a result of the sedentary lifestyle, improper food habits and lack of physical activity. This may result in the child growing up to become an obese adult.

Obesity is one of the leading causes of many disorders like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and sleep disorders.

The researchers from Ohio State University and Temple University examined the link between childhood obesity among preschool children with three household activities-- limited hours of television, adequate sleep hours and having dinner together with family members.

It was found that four year old children who are involved in all these activities were almost 40 percent lower risk of having obesity compared to children who were not involved in any of these.

Ensuring regular routines of having meals together, going to sleep at a definite time and limiting the TV time can reduce risks of obesity in children. Also involvement in physical activity and to eat healthy food should also be initiated by the family members.

Even a slight loss of kidney function is associated with increased loss of bone mineral density and greater risk of disabling fractures that can lead to premature death.

The relationship between kidney function and bone loss is unclear. To look into this association, researchers followed Canadians adults - 191 men and 444 women, aged 50 years and older, for five years. They assessed participants' kidney function and bone mineral density at the start and end of the study.

It was found that people with impaired kidney function lost bone mineral density faster than those with healthy kidneys. For example, study participants with the worst kidney function had a 9.3 percent greater decrease in lower spine bone mineral density over the five years than those with healthy kidneys.

The new findings highlight the potential impact of early identification of kidney disease in preventing complications that can cause disability and premature death.

Nanoparticles, scientists at Rice University have discovered a new technique for singling out individual diseased cells and destroying them with tiny explosions. The scientists used lasers to make "nanobubbles" by zapping gold nanoparticles inside cells. In tests on cancer cells, they found they could tune the lasers to create either small, bright bubbles that were visible but harmless or large bubbles that burst the cells.

"Single-cell targeting is one of the most touted advantages of nanomedicine, and our approach delivers on that promise with a localized effect inside an individual cell," said Rice physicist Dmitri Lapotko, the lead researcher on the project. "The idea is to spot and treat unhealthy cells early, before a disease progresses to the point of making people extremely ill."

The research is available online in the journal Nanotechnology.

Nanobubbles are created when gold nanoparticles are struck by short laser pulses. The short-lived bubbles are very bright and can be made smaller or larger by varying the power of the laser. Because they are visible under a microscope, nanobubbles can be used to either diagnose sick cells or to track the explosions that are destroying them.

In laboratory studies published last year, Lapotko and colleagues at the Laboratory for Laser Cytotechnologies at the A.V. Lykov Heat and Mass Transfer Institute in Minsk, Belarus, applied nanobubbles to arterial plaque. They found that they could blast right through the deposits that block arteries.

"The bubbles work like a jackhammer," Lapotko said.

In the current study, Lapotko and Rice colleague Jason Hafner, associate professor of physics and astronomy and of chemistry, tested the approach on leukemia cells and cells from head and neck cancers. They attached antibodies to the nanoparticles so they would target only the cancer cells, and they found the technique was effective at locating and killing the cancer cells.

Lapotko said the nanobubble technology could be used for "theranostics," a single process that combines diagnosis and therapy. In addition, because the cell-bursting nanobubbles also show up on microscopes in real time, Lapotko said the technique can be use for post-therapeutic assessment, or what physicians often refer to as "guidance."

Hafner said, "The mechanical and optical properties of the bubbles offer unique advantages in localizing the biomedical applications to the individual cell level, or perhaps even to work within cells."