A major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and other health- and life-threatening conditions, obesity is epidemic in the United States and other developed nations where it's fueled in large part by excessive consumption of a fat-rich "Western diet."
Body
Baseball legend Connie Mack famously said pitching is 75 percent of the game. He was wrong -- a new analysis by a University of Delaware professor finds it's just 25 percent.
This October, the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports will feature the article: An Estimate of How Hitting, Pitching, Fielding, and Base-stealing Impact Team Winning Percentages in Baseball. In it, University of Delaware Professor Charles (Charlie) Pavitt defines the perfect "formula" for MLB teams to use to build the ultimate winning team.
Bethesda, MD—Imagine a single drug that would treat most, if not all, autoimmune disorders, such as asthma, inflammatory bowel disease, and Lupus. That might not be so hard to do thanks to a team of researchers who have discovered a molecule normally used by the body to prevent unnecessary immune reactions. This molecule, pronounced "alpha v beta 6," normally keeps our immune systems from overreacting when food passes through our bodies, and it may be the key that unlocks entirely new set of treatments for autoimmune disorders.
Bethesda, MD—Cheers! A new research report appearing in the October 2011 issue of The FASEB Journal (https://www.fasebj.org) shows that resveratrol, the "healthy" ingredient in red wine, stops breast cancer cells from growing by blocking the growth effects of estrogen. This discovery, made by a team of American and Italian scientists, suggests for the first time that resveratrol is able to counteract the malignant progression since it inhibits the proliferation of hormone resistant breast cancer cells.
In Zebra Finches, as in most other bird species, both parents contribute to offspring rearing. The social partner of a female, however, is not always the biological father of the young. If the opportunity arises, females will choose to pair with partners other than their primary mate – with the interesting result that the offspring of different fathers have different qualities.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29, 2011 — A physician on a medical relief mission to Africa sees pregnant women sip a medicinal tea prepared by local witch doctors when the time for birth arrives. Made from the leaves of a plant called "kalata-kalata," the tea speeds labor and delivery. Scientists analyze the plant and discover a remarkable new substance. The research puts them on course for discovery of potential new drugs for diseases that affect millions of people worldwide.
A new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine* highlights the injury risks for schoolboys playing rugby.
The research shows that the chance of a school player suffering an injury during a single season is at least 12 per cent and, according to some research, could be as high as 90 per cent.
The researchers from Queen Mary, University of London and Cass Business School, City University say there is an urgent need to inform children, parents and coaches alike about the level of risk involved and that more should be done to reduce the risk.
People with dementia can still make decisions in their everyday lives and with support from partners can continue to do so as their condition advances. This is one of the preliminary findings of a two-year research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) into how married couples living with dementia make decisions on a daily basis.
Sharks are in big trouble on the Great Barrier Reef and worldwide, according to an Australian-based team who have developed a world-first way to measure rates of decline in shark populations.
"There is mounting evidence of widespread, substantial, and ongoing declines in the abundance of shark populations worldwide, coincident with marked rises in global shark catches in thelast half-century," say Mizue Hisano, Professor Sean Connolly and Dr William Robbins from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.
New research in The FASEB Journal suggests that rats fed homobrassinolide, found in the mustard plant, produced an anabolic effect, and increased appetite and muscle mass, as well as the number and size of muscle fibers.
Koalas have a well-earned reputation for being dopey. Sleeping 19 hours out of every 24, and feeding for 3 of the remaining 5 hours, there doesn't seem to be much time for anything else in their lethargic lifestyle: that is until the mating season. Then the males begin bellowing. Benjamin Charlton from the University of Vienna, Austria, explains that they probably bellow to attract females and to intimidate other males. But what messages could these rumbling bellows communicate about their senders?
A single high dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called "magic mushrooms," was enough to bring about a measureable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants in a new study, according to the Johns Hopkins researchers who conducted it.
Autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger syndrome, have generally been associated with uneven intellectual profiles and impairment, but according to a new study of Asperger individuals published in the online journal PLoS ONE, this may not be the case – as long as intelligence is evaluated by the right test. Both autistic and Asperger individuals display uneven profiles of performance in commonly used intelligence test batteries such as Wechsler scales, and their strongest performances are often considered evidence for deficits.
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- A recent, large-scale study on cat intestinal cancer has provided new insight into a common pet disease and its causes; the findings could ultimately benefit humans.
The first video of tool use by a fish has been published in the journal Coral Reefs by Giacomo Bernardi, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
In the video, an orange-dotted tuskfish digs a clam out of the sand, carries it over to a rock, and repeatedly throws the clam against the rock to crush it. Bernardi shot the video in Palau in 2009.