TORONTO, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- Researchers in Canada said they identified the role pain nerves in insulin-producing cells may play in preventing and reversing diabetes in mice.

The work "led us to fundamentally new insights into the mechanisms of this disease," Michael Salter, of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children and a co-lead investigator, said in a news release.

Researchers said they learned that pain receptors don't secrete enough chemical elements found in the brain to keep insulin-producing pancreatic islets working normally. By supplying the chemical element to diabetic-prone mice, "the research group learned how to treat the abnormality ... and even reversed established diabetes," Salter said.

Researchers were tracking links between Type 1 diabetes and the nervous system when they found what they said was a control circuit between the islets that produce insulin and associated pain nerves. This circuit keeps the islets operating normally. When they investigated further, researchers found specific sensory neurons didn't secrete enough neuropathies to sustain normal functions, which in essence, created stress.

The researchers extended the studies to Type 2 diabetes. They said they believed treating the islet-sensory nerve circuits could normalize insulin resistance.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- There's no polite way to say this: Americans are the fattest people on the planet.

Americans are heavier than Mexicans, Australians, Greeks, New Zealanders and the British -- and they aren't too far behind, the U.S. Census Bureau's 2007 Statistical Abstract of the United States said.

Americans' love of water -- Americans drank more than 23 gallons of bottled water per person in 2004 -- is balanced by a love of sweets. Americans ate more than twice as much high-fructose corn syrup per person in 2004 as we did in 1980.

Most of the statistical tidbits provided by the abstract come from a variety of sources, including the government. In releasing the abstract Friday, the Census Bureau said the information is presented raw, without explanations, interpretations or cautions.

JERUSALEM, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- A law allowing terminally ill patients the right to refuse life-sustaining treatment went into effect Friday in Israel.

Until now, terminally ill patients not wanting to continue life-prolonging treatment needed a court ruling, Ynet News said.

Under provisions of the law, a terminally ill patient must explicitly say treatment is not wanted. If the patient is not competent, the doctors are to act in accordance with instructions left by the patient or by someone who has the patient's medical power of attorney, the report said.

A "dying patient" is defined as a patient with no more than six months left to live, even with medical treatment, or as a patient suffering from multiple medical crises and has up to two weeks to live.

The law bans assisted suicide or taking action designed to end a patient's life, even at the patient's request.

Dying patients also can request and receive life-prolonging measures, even if the physician thinks treatment is not needed, the report said.

Yitzhak Hoshen, an attorney who represented terminally ill patients in the past and a member of the committee that drafted the bill, said the new law was "a breakthrough."

GENEVA, Switzerland, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- This year was the Earth's sixth warmest on record, the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva said, averaging 0.4 degrees C above the 1961-90 average.

Preliminary figures for the Status of the Global Climate in 2006 reported that global temperatures rose by 0.7 degrees C since 1900, the WMO said.

Extreme weather events touched all parts of the globe in 2006, the WMO report said. The United States had its warmest January-September period on record, while July in Europe was a record-setter. Brazil and Australia reported heat waves between January and March.

Africa wasn't spared. After suffering its worst drought in 10 years, Somalia experienced its worst flooding in recent memory, WMO said. The Sahara desert had heavy rainfall in February, which damaged 70 percent of food production and displaced 600,000 people.

In China, drought damaged millions of acres of crops. The country also suffered its worst tropical cyclone season in a decade in which storms killed more than 1,000 people and cost more than $10 billion in economic losses.

Researchers said Arctic ice continues to melt at a fast rate. The WMO estimated that sea ice is declining by 8.6 percent every decade.