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.
Dogs who suffer with separation anxiety become more optimistic when taking the animal equivalent of Prozac during behavioral treatment, according to a paper in which the authors say they revealed how the animals feel during the clinical treatment of behaviors associated with negative emotions.
The prospect of death, and the impact of mortality, is a lot less daunting when there is belief in the afterlife, say psychologists.Dr. Arnaud Wisman and Dr. Nathan Heflick, of the University of Kent School of Psychology set out to establish in four separate studies whether people lose hope when thinking about death - known as Terror Management Theory - under a range of different conditions. The research was based on the premise that self-awareness among humans has been shown to create the potential for hope - or the general expectation and feeling that future desired outcomes will occur.
When certified, digital signatures - mechanisms for authenticating the validity or authorship of a certain digital message - have the same legal power as traditional signatures. Introduced by Diffie and Hellman in 1976, they are in all ways digital counterparts to real (analog) signatures.
Between the ages of 40 and 80, an estimated 30 to 50 percent of muscle mass is lost, resulting in lower strength and less ability to carry out everyday tasks. This process is known as sarcopenia and it is common and clearly linked to frailty and poorer health in older people.
Cellular structures called microtubules are tagged with a variety of chemical markers that can influence cell functions and the pattern of these markers makes up the "tubulin code". One of the main writers of this code is tubulin tyrosine ligase-7 (TTLL7), according to a new paper.
Southern Indiana is an oasis free from Lyme disease, the condition most associated with the arachnids that are the second most common parasitic disease vector on Earth.
But there are signs that this low-risk environment is changing, both in Indiana and in other regions of the U.S, says Indiana University biology professor Keith Clay. Lyme disease has been detected just a few hours north of the region around Tippecanoe River State Park and Lake Michigan's Indiana Dunes, and Clay said the signs are there that new tick species, and possibly the pathogens they carry, are entering the area.
In an experiment, rats who saw another rat drowning extended a helping paw to rescue it, and the behavior was even more pronounced in rats that previously had a watery near-death experience. This prosocial behavior, even if it does not gain any advantage from it, was also noted when rats helped members of their own species to escape from a tubelike cage. For a new study, the team conducted three sets of experiments involving a pool of water. One rat was made to swim for its life in the pool, with another being in a cage adjacent to it. The soaked rat could only gain access to a dry and safe area in the cage if its cagemate opened a door for it.
Does anyone actually buy the clothes that show up on runways a few times per year? People do, and the thinking goes that in order to sell them, models need to look thin. Some cultural advocates have insisted that overweight women who look more 'real' - 65 percent of Americans are overweight - will sell more clothes, but that is in defiance of marketing principles which have shown that people buy on what they want to look like, not what they do look like.
The use of novel psychoactive substances, synthetic compounds with stimulant or hallucinogenic effects, is on the rise and the diversity and breadth of these substances - a change in one atom means an illegal drug is no longer illegal - has led policymakers, law enforcement officers, and healthcare providers to feel overwhelmed. A recent review has led to proposing a "forecasting method" for policymakers and researchers to focus on what is likely to happen with new recreational drugs. Dr. John Stogner of UNC Charlotte says a five step forecasting method will rely on the availability of a potential user base, the costs of the drug (legal and otherwise), the subjective experience, the substance’s dependence potential, and the overall ease of acquisition.
The plant-based Mediterranean diet is an ongoing diet fad, and proponents now have some new ammunition - it is associated with improved cognitive function in a study of older adults in Spain, according to a paper in JAMA Internal Medicine.
A numerical model estimates the potential impact of environmental processes on contaminant fate of growth-promoting hormones used in beef production and leads the authors to believe they may persist in the environment at higher concentrations and for longer durations than previously thought - and they also believe their model illustrates potential weaknesses in the U.S. system of regulating hazardous substances, which focuses on individual compounds and but cannot always account for complex and sometimes surprising chemical reactions that occur in the environment
Researchers have discovered a gene, which they have named ICARUS1, that enables plants to regulate their growth in different temperatures, and it could lead to new ways of optimizing plant growth in different climates.
