Contrary to what many people believe, preschool children do not adjust how much they eat in response to how much they ate at their last meal or in the past 24 hours or how calorie-rich their meal is. By far, the most powerful predictor for how much children eat is how much food is put on their plate, concludes a new study by Cornell University researchers.
“We examined all the predictors we could of how much a child eats at a meal,” said David Levitsky, professor of nutrition
Leisurely walking for distance combined with low-impact cardiovascular activity appears to be the best formula for obese people seeking to get into shape and stay healthy, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder study.
Ray Browning, a doctoral student in CU-Boulder’s integrative physiology department and lead author on the new study, said the results show that people who walk a mile at a leisurely pace burn more calories than if they walk a mile at their normal pace.
Turning on a single male-specific gene produces a female fruit fly that displays male courtship behaviors: chasing other females, tapping their abdomens and performing wing-beating love serenades. The results, published in the June 15 online edition of the journal Nature, show that a single gene can determine how females and males detect and respond differently to sexual cues.
’’In these experiments we see all the steps of the male courtship ritual you could physically expect a fe
Brains are marvels of diversity: no two look the same — not even those of otherwise identical twins. Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies may have found one explanation for the puzzling variety in brain organization and function: mobile elements, pieces of DNA that can jump from one place in the genome to another, randomly changing the genetic information in single brain cells. If enough of these jumps occur, they could allow individual brains to develop in distinctly dif
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine working with scientists at Elan Pharmaceuticals, have reported promising results in mice of a vaccine approach to treating Parkinson’s and similar diseases. These results appear in the June edition of the journal Neuron.
Eliezer Masliah, M.D., Professor of Neurosciences and Pathology at UCSD, and colleagues at UCSD and Elan Pharmaceuticals in San Francisco, vaccinated mice using a a combination of the prot
Dutch Researcher Katja Heister investigated how electrical potential differences in clay layers influence the transport of salt and water through these. The outcomes of her research have important implications for new models of water transport, for example, those which predict the distribution of substances from waste deposits.
The transport of water and its solutes through clay plays an important role, for example, in the intrusion of seawater into the groundwater of coastal areas, t
Absenteeism for sickness is exceptionally high in Sweden, in both historical and international comparisons. Several studies have already been carried out in the field, but many pieces of the puzzle are still missing. In a new dissertation from Växjö University, the economist Maria Nilsson examines some fundamental mechanisms behind this absenteeism.
“Our attendance at work is influenced both by the possibility of being there and the motivation to be there or, more simply put: every
Wet work and its health effects attracted much attention at the conference ’Occupational and Environmental Exposures of Skin to Chemicals – 2005’, which was held in Stockholm, Sweden 12-15 June 2005. The experts agreed that the harmful effects from wet work affecting large parts of the population have been neglected far too long and that action is needed.
Household cleaning, dish washing, food preparation, work in the heath care sector, hair dressing and metal work are impo
The Molucca Islands are still suffering from the after-effects of the violence of 1999. That violence between Muslims and Christians started on Ambon in January 1999 and spread to the North Molucca Islands in December 1999. Farsijana Adeney-Risakotta analysed this Moluccan conflict within the broader framework of the changes that the Indonesian district Galela has recently undergone.
She focused on the role of rituals as powerful mechanisms for both creating solidarity and for increas
Dutch energy policy is directed at 17 percent of electricity demand being covered by renewable energy sources by 2020. Martin Junginger has demonstrated that this can be achieved at considerably lower costs than is the case now. He also found that it might be more financially advantageous to realise part of the objective outside of the Netherlands because, for example, more space is available there for wind turbines or because more biomass is available there.
Renewable electricity can
Dutch researcher Joke van Vugt investigated extremely selfish chromosomes which ensure only male offspring in two species of parasitoid wasps. She discovered that the discriminating chromosomes in the two species are not genetically similar, even though they have exactly the same effect.
Parasitoid wasps are haplodiploid. This means that the male wasps develop from unfertilised eggs and only have one set of chromosomes, namely those of their mother. Female wasps develop from fertili
Dutch researcher Michel Varkevisser has discovered that chronic sleep complaints are associated with a reduced performance. This conclusion contradicts earlier findings. The researcher postulates that under normal daily circumstances, the lower performance level was probably not visible because the sleep sufferers invest extra energy in carrying out a task.
Research psychologist Michel Varkevisser investigated how sleeping problems affected the performances of employees under both labor
A technique derived from industry could help stroke patients to move again.
Researchers at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) and the School of Health Professions & Rehabilitation Sciences have begun working on a project to establish whether iterative learning control techniques can help a stroke patient to re-learn movement.
Dr Jane Burridge from the School of Health Professions & Rehabilitation Sciences who is leading the
A missing receptor molecule contributes to the growth of tumors in human ovaries. This surprisingly evident connection has now been proven by a team at the Medical University of Vienna, who published their data in the science journal Molecular Cancer Research. The team, who is supported by funding from the Austrian Science Fund FWF, also discovered the possible genetic reason why the receptor molecule, which is an important factor in regulating cell growth, is missing.
In healthy
Too many sheep in Britain’s uplands could be responsible for the decline of some native birds according to research published today in the journal Biology Letters.
The research, led by Dr Darren Evans from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Banchory, provides the first hard evidence of a link between increased sheep grazing and the breeding patterns of the meadow pipit, Britain’s most common upland bird.
The researchers examined the effects of sheep grazing on egg s
This release from the University of Oxford has been forwarded for your information by Peter Bond, RAS communications officer. Forwarding does not imply endorsement by the RAS.
University of Oxford Press Release
Astrophysicists from the Universities of Oxford and Rome have for the first time found evidence of ripples in the Universe’s primordial sea of neutrinos, confirming the predictions of both Big Bang theory and the Standard Model of particle physics.
Neutrinos are el
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