Intermittent fasting, and fasting in general, has been a popular fad health gimmick, but the science isn't on its side. Instead, proponents believe mice are little people so if mice weaned on starvation diets lived longer, people would also.
The transition from hunter-gatherer to sedentary farming 10,000 years ago occurred in multiple neighbouring but genetically distinct populations according to research by an international team including UCL.
"It had been widely assumed that these first farmers were from a single, genetically homogeneous population. However, we've found that there were deep genetic differences in these early farming populations, indicating very distinct ancestries," said corresponding author Dr Garrett Hellenthal, UCL Genetics.
Athens, Ga. - An international team of ecologists has identified the bat species with the greatest potential to harbor filoviruses--a family that includes Ebola virus. Writing in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, they suggest that areas where many of these species overlap, notably in Southeast Asia, should be targeted for disease surveillance and virus discovery efforts.
EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Fathers play a surprisingly large role in their children's development, from language and cognitive growth in toddlerhood to social skills in fifth grade, according to new findings from Michigan State University scholars.
The research provides some of the most conclusive evidence to date of fathers' importance to children's outcomes and reinforces the idea that early childhood programs such as Head Start should focus on the whole family, including mother and father alike. The findings are published online in two academic journals, Early Childhood Research Quarterly and Infant and Child Development.
It is common knowledge that salt consists of the cation sodium and the anion chloride. However, the substance used to season food has been a cause of great concern to farmers for some time now: In times of climate change, more and more agricultural areas have to be irrigated. This inevitably leads to the increasing salinisation of soils, that is the accumulation of sodium and chloride ions.
Unlike classical crystals, quasicrystals do not comprise periodic units, even though they do have a superordinate structure. The formation of the fascinating mosaics that they produce is barely understood. In the context of an international collaborative effort, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now presented a methodology that allows the production of two-dimensional quasicrystals from metal-organic networks, opening the door to the development of promising new materials.
Johns Hopkins University researchers are the first to glimpse the human brain making a purely voluntary decision to act.
Unlike most brain studies where scientists watch as people respond to cues or commands, Johns Hopkins researchers found a way to observe people's brain activity as they made choices entirely on their own. The findings, which pinpoint the parts of the brain involved in decision-making and action, are now online, and due to appear in a special October issue of the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.
The very first bony fish on Earth was susceptible to arthritis, according to a USC-led discovery that may fast-track therapeutic research in preventing or easing the nation's most common cause of disability.
The finding contradicts the widely held belief that lubricated joints enabling mobility -- called synovial joints -- evolved as vertebrates ventured onto land. For example, human knees and hips have synovial joints, which are highly susceptible to osteoarthritis.
Pixar's Dory, zebrafish and other ray-finned fish have synovial joints that can get creaky. Thus, these fish are susceptible to arthritis.
Researchers at Hokkaido University have developed a new kind of hydrogel that bonds spontaneously and strongly to defected bones, suggesting potential use in the treatments of joint injuries.
When soft supporting human tissues--including cartilage and ligaments, which are joined firmly to bones--are damaged, they cannot spontaneously repair inside the body. The use of artificial supporting tissues has the potential to significantly ameliorate damage to soft tissues. Progress has hitherto been hampered by the lack of materials that are strong, yet soft and pliant, for adhering to bone.
If we are in a relationship we are more likely to be attracted to faces resembling our own, but for single people, opposites attract.
Relationship status affects who and what we find attractive, found a study published in Frontiers in Psychology.
Dr Jitka Lindová of Charles University in the Czech Republic and her team showed a series of photographs of faces to university students and asked them to rate their attractiveness. The photographs were digitally manipulated so that the resemblance to the student was modified.
Images were of an individual of the opposite sex, whose face had been manipulated to look either more or less similar to the student. They were also presented with images of a same-sex individual manipulated in the same way.
As if it were one of the known Russian dolls, a group of astronomers, led by researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, (IAC) has found the first known case of three supernova remnants one inside the other. Using the programme BUBBLY, a method developed within the group for detecting huge expanding bubbles of gas in interstellar space, they were observing the galaxy M33 in our Local Group of galaxies and found example of a triple-bubble. The results, which were published yesterday in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, help to understand the feedback phenomenon, a fundamental process of star formation and in the dissemination of metals produced in massive stars.
Academic social psychologists, who are over 99 percent liberal, can be reliably counted on to create surveys to affirm that liberals are more intelligent, less fearful of change, likely to have prettier children - especially in an election year.
In a report appearing in the July 12 issue of JAMA, an HIV/AIDS theme issue, Huldrych F. Gunthard, M.D., of University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland, and colleagues with the International Antiviral Society-USA panel, updated recommendations for the use of antiretroviral therapy in adults with established HIV infection, including when to start treatment, initial regimens, and changing regimens, along with recommendations for using antiretroviral drugs for preventing HIV among those at risk, including preexposure and postexposure prevention.
