Culture

Workplace health promotion programs that encourage employees to take responsibility for their own weight may have detrimental effects for employees with obesity, reveals a new study. These range from feeling increasingly responsible for their weight but perceiving they have less control over it, to increased workplace weight stigma and discrimination. Ironically, these effects could even lead to increased obesity and decreased wellbeing.

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 18, 2018 -- An unexpected twist from a four-seam or a two-seam fastball can make the difference in a baseball team winning or losing the World Series. However, "some explanations regarding the different pitches are flat-out wrong," said Barton Smith, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Utah State University who considers himself a big fan of the game.

These days, mammals can use their forelimbs to swim, jump, fly, climb, dig and just about everything in between, but the question of how all that diversity evolved has remained a vexing one for scientists.

To help answer it, Harvard researchers are turning to one of the most unusual mammals around - echidnas. These sprawling, egg-laying mammals have many anatomical features in common with earlier mammal ancestors, and so can help bridge the gap between extinct and other modern-day mammals.

Today, most of the water on Mars is locked away in frozen ice caps. But billions of years ago it flowed freely across the surface, forming rushing rivers that emptied into craters, forming lakes and seas. New research led by The University of Texas at Austin has found evidence that sometimes the lakes would take on so much water that they overflowed and burst from the sides of their basins, creating catastrophic floods that carved canyons very rapidly, perhaps in a matter of weeks.

Color can impact the taste of food, and our experiences and expectations can affect how we taste food, according to Penn State researchers, who suggest this may have implications for how food and beverage industries should market their products.

With many disease-causing bacteria ratcheting up their shields against current drugs, new tactics are vital to protect people from treatment-resistant infections.

Lowering mutation rates in harmful bacteria might be an as yet untried way to hinder the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens. This proposed strategy comes from recent findings in infectious disease research at UW Medicine in Seattle.

ANN ARBOR--For half a century, researchers have seen loops of displaced atoms appearing inside nuclear reactor steel after exposure to radiation, but no one could work out how.

Now, a simulation done by researchers at the University of Michigan, Hunan University (China) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has shown that a shockwave produces these loops in iron. The result could help engineers design better radiation-resistant steel for reactors--or stronger steel in general.