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.
Manufacturers of feminine hygiene products, including tampons and sanitary products, could dedicate a part of their revenues to support public health programmes that prevent violence against women, argues an expert in The BMJ this week.
Physical and sexual violence is a public health problem that affects more than one third of all women, equivalent to at least a billion women globally, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) study.
Effective programmes and strategies to prevent domestic and sexual violence, the two most common types, have been identified by the WHO and collaborators, but these are "hugely underfunded", argues Dr S D Shanti, associate professor of public health from the A T Still University of Health Sciences, USA.
At the 2012 Democratic convention, when President Obama mentioned that his administration had killed the terrorist Osama Bin Laden, the building erupted in cheers.
This was positively un-Democratic, to both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats were supposed to be more tolerant of other cultures, with safe spaces for all, and anything that looked like being critical of Muslims was usually frowned upon.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - While events like the Arab Spring brought hope that the internet could inspire the growth of democracy in authoritarian countries, a new study offers a reality check.
Researchers studying Russian and Ukrainian internet users found that their demand for democratic reforms in their countries depended on what they were doing when they connected to the web.
Those who were on the internet primarily to get news and share political opinions with others were most likely to demand more democracy in their countries.
Those who visited the web mostly for entertainment purposes - such as watching cat videos - were less likely to say they wanted more democracy in their countries and believed they had more democracy than they actually did.
Our visual system is constantly bombarded with complex optical information. The input information is often insufficient or ambiguous, leading to potentially conflicting interpretations about the structure of the physical world. The human brain has amazing computational powers to resolve these ambiguities and generate a coherent perception almost instantly. As a way to understand how our brain works, scientists have been fascinated about how the human brain achieves this goal.
DNA tests have confirmed that one of the three southern rockhopper penguin chicks born at Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan between June 4 and 6 was conceived through artificial insemination. This is the result of a project led by Kaiyukan with the collaboration of Associate Professor KUSUNOKI Hiroshi (Kobe University Graduate School of Agricultural Science). It is the world's first successful case of a southern rockhopper penguin being conceived through artificial insemination.
Southern rockhopper penguins are a species of birds approximately 50cm in height which inhabit southern islands near Antarctica such as the Falkland Islands. They are on the red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature as a threatened species.
The media often imply that the goal of the hunt for extrasolar planets is to find a rocky planet about the size of Earth orbiting a star like the sun at a distance that would allow liquid water to persist on its surface. In other words, the goal is to find Earth 2.0.
But there are reasons to be interested in the other worlds even if they couldn't possibly harbor life. The hot, rocky planets, for example, offer rare and precious clues to the character and evolution of the early Earth.
The Kepler satellite has detected more than 100 hot, rocky planets orbiting close to their stars. If these planets formed from interstellar clouds with Earth-like abundances of volatile elements, like hydrogen, water and carbon dioxide, these planets might have steam atmospheres.
Plasmodium vivax (P. vivax) parasites, which cause a debilitating form of malaria, are yielding their secrets to an international team of researchers funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. In the largest such effort to date, the team determined complete genomes of nearly 200 P. vivax strains that recently infected people in eight countries. Comparative analysis showed the parasites clustered into four genetically distinct populations that provide insights into the movement of P. vivax over time and suggest how it is still adapting to regional variations in both the mosquitoes that transmit it and the humans it infects.
A first-of-its-kind survey has confirmed what some water polo players - especially goalies - have long suspected: Concussions seem to be prevalent in the sport. At least in surveys.
More than a third of water polo participants reported sustaining a concussion either during games or in practice, according to a poll conducted by University of California, Irvine.
Common statistical methods used to analyse brain activity through images taken with MRI scanners cannot be trusted, as shown by Anders Eklund and Hans Knutsson of Linköping University, and Thomas Nichols of the University of Warwick, in the highly-ranked journal PNAS.
LiU Reader Eklund who works at the Department of Computer and Information Science and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, respectively, tested the analysis methods by using them on known, reliable data. The methods showed false activity in the brain in 60 percent of the cases. A reasonable figure is five percent.
As soon as social considerations also play a part in economic decisions, our brain seems to switch to a different processing mode. At least this is indicated by the results of a current study that was conducted at the University of Bonn. In it the participants were able to purchase pieces of music but could themselves set the price to be paid. During the process, the researchers recorded the brain activity of the participants. The work will soon appear in the prestigious journal Frontiers in Psychology but can already be called up online.
89% of school children consuming sports drinks with 68% drinking them regularly (1-7 times per week)
Sports drinks purchased by children in local shops at value prices
A high proportion of 12-14 year olds are regularly consuming sports drinks socially, increasing their risk of obesity and tooth erosion, concludes a Cardiff University School of Dentistry survey.
Published today in the British Dental Journal, the survey looked at 160 children in four schools across South Wales and concluded that children are attracted to sports drinks because of their sweet taste, low price, and availability, with most parents and children not aware that sports drinks are not intended for consumption by children.
It is quite surprising that, while food is so central to our lives, neuroscience has devoted limited energy to understanding how it is represented in our brain. Aware of this shortcoming, Raffaella Rumiati, professor at SISSA where she leads the INSuLa laboratory, and Francesco Foroni, SISSA research scientist, reviewed the research published to date on the topic. One of the novelties of their review is that it also considered papers dealing with brain-damaged patients. Very few studies have in fact investigated this aspect, so Rumiati and Foroni looked for those using food items as stimuli and then filtered the results through the lens of the most widely accepted theories of semantic categorization.
