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.
A large, multi-center study led by the UC Davis School of Medicine for the first time has shown that people as young as their 40s have stiffening of the arteries that is associated with subtle structural damage to the brain that is implicated in cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease later in life.
A collaboration of UC Davis, the Framingham Heart Study and Boston University, among others, the study found that, among young healthy adults, higher aortic "stiffness" was associated with reduced white matter volume and decreased integrity of the gray matter, and in ages much younger than previously described.
Like most annuals, lettuce plants live out their lives in quiet, three-act dramas that follow the seasons. Seed dormancy gives way to germination; the young plant emerges and grows; and finally in the climax of flowering, a new generation of seeds is produced. It's remarkably predictable, but the genetics that coordinates these changes with environmental cues has not been well understood.
EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Sexual harassment remains a pervasive problem in India despite tougher laws enacted more than three years ago after a woman was gang raped on a bus and later died of her injuries, indicates new research by a Michigan State University criminologist.
About 40 percent of women surveyed in Delhi said they have been sexually harassed in a public place such as a bus or park in the past year, with most of the crimes occurring in the daytime. Further, 33 percent of women have stopped going out in public and 17 percent have quit their jobs rather than face harassment, or worse, in public places.
Most non-Africans possess at least a little bit Neanderthal DNA. But a new map of archaic ancestry--published March 28 in Current Biology--suggests that many bloodlines around the world, particularly of South Asian descent, may actually be a bit more Denisovan, a mysterious population of hominids that lived around the same time as the Neanderthals. The analysis also proposes that modern humans interbred with Denisovans about 100 generations after their trysts with Neanderthals.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - A new analysis of the prehistoric origin of malaria suggests that it evolved in insects at least 100 million years ago, and the first vertebrate hosts of this disease were probably reptiles, which at that time would have included the dinosaurs.
Malaria, a scourge on human society that still kills more than 400,000 people a year, is often thought to be of more modern origin - ranging from 15,000 to 8 million years old, caused primarily by one genus of protozoa, Plasmodium, and spread by anopheline mosquitoes.
Vanishing Arctic sea ice, dogged weather systems over Greenland, far-flung surface ice melting on the massive island - these trends and global sea-level rise are linked by climate change, according to a new paper.
During Greenland summers, melting Arctic sea ice favors stronger and more frequent "blocking-high" pressure systems, which spin clockwise, stay largely in place and can block cold, dry Canadian air from reaching the island. The highs tend to enhance the flow of warm, moist air over Greenland, contributing to increased extreme heat events and surface ice melting, according to the computer models and field measurements
in the Journal of Climate.
Scholars have identified a single, universal facial expression that is interpreted across many cultures as the embodiment of negative emotion. That includes native speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and American Sign Language (ASL).
We've all seen it. It consists of a furrowed brow, pressed lips and raised chin, and because we make it when we convey negative sentiments, such as "I do not agree." It is called the "not" face.
In the United States, 70 percent of the price of a cigarette goes to government - not so in other countries. Though smoking has plummeted in America, in various other regions of the world the smoking rates remain over 40 percent.
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Are employees more likely to help co-workers above them or beneath them in the corporate pecking order?
A new study suggests that may be the wrong question to ask. Researchers found that workers are most likely to help colleagues who are moderately distant from themselves in status -- both above and below them.
The results offer a new way to think about how status affects workplace relationships, said Robert Lount, co-author of the study and an associate professor of management and human resources at The Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.
Research led by Johns Hopkins University scientists has found new persuasive evidence that could help solve a longstanding mystery in astrophysics: Why did the pace of star formation in the universe slow down some 11 billion years ago?
The conflict between science and religion may have its origins in the structure of our brains, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Babson College have found.
Clashes between the use of faith vs. scientific evidence to explain the world around us dates back centuries and is perhaps most visible today in the arguments between evolution and creationism.
To believe in a supernatural god or universal spirit, people appear to suppress the brain network used for analytical thinking and engage the empathetic network, the scientists say. When thinking analytically about the physical world, people appear to do the opposite.
Premature birth is a harsh change of environment for a baby. Until birth, the baby is confined to the mother's womb, surrounded by soft lighting and filtered noise. When infants are born, they are attacked by several visual, sound, and tactile stimulations. These stimulations thus constitute unpleasant factors for them. Their impact has not been studied in depth yet. Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in collaboration with the neonatal team of the Grenoble university hospital (CHU), and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) examined the consequences of noise on the sensory abilities of premature babies. For the first time, this enabled the researchers to reveal the effect of a negative stimulus on the sensory functions of newborns.
