Role of beer as a possible protective factor in preventing Alzheimer's disease.

This new research suggests that the silicon in beer acts to reduce the uptake of aluminium in our body. Aluminium levels have been suspected to be associated with Alzheimer's disease for around ten years already although its not the sole cause (see link)
link

Vitamin C essential for plant growth

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070923205844.htm

Gosh this is so intuitive yet escapes most people's mind.
Would be fantastic if someone does another study to correlate oxidative stress with levels of vit C in the fruits..

Chernobyl to be encased in steel

Chernobyl to be encased in steel

Caring grandmas explain evolutionary role of menopause

Caring grandmas explain evolutionary role of menopause

Altering a mouse's sense of smell can seriously mess with its gender identity

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/sep/girls-gone-boys-gone-wild
Altering a mouse's sense of smell can seriously mess with its gender identity

...life may not be quite that simple—at least for mice. A new study in Nature suggests that the brain pathways for male sexual behavior are also present in female mice, and with those pathways comes the potential for male behavior. Even more intriguing is that the activation of these pathways appears to be regulated by the animal's sense of smell.

Schizophrenia is selected for in evolution?

It's No Delusion: Evolution May Favor Schizophrenia Genes

New research reveals that genes related to the debilitating disorder may also provide developmental advantages

By Nikhil Swaminathan

link

kev: the title suggests more than what it should. of cos its more boring to say that genes that are partly responisble for schizo have a hidden benefit. ;p

Distant space collision meant doom for dinosaurs

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A collision 160 million years ago of two asteroids orbiting between Mars and Jupiter sent many big rock chunks hurtling toward Earth, including the one that zapped the dinosaurs, scientists said on Wednesday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0538851520070905?pageNumber=2&sp=true

Higher Social Skills Are Distinctly Human, Toddler And Ape Study Reveals

Science Daily — Apes bite and try to break a tube to retrieve the food inside while children follow the experimenter's example to get inside the tube to retrieve the prize, showing that even before preschool, toddlers are more sophisticated in their social learning skills than their closest primate relatives, according to a report published in the 7 September issue of the journal Science.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070906144113.htm

Diabetes fears over corn syrup in soda

see original article @ link
                                          

It's not cast-iron proof that high-fructose corn syrup causes diabetes, but new evidence suggests we should think twice about using it to sweeten soft drinks.

Chi-Tang Ho at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and his colleagues found that adding the syrup to fizzy drinks makes them up to 10 times richer in harmful carbonyl compounds - elevated in people with diabetes and blamed for causing diabetic complications such as foot ulcers and eye and nerve damage - than fizzy drinks containing cane sugar.

The most harmful compound, called methylglyoxal, is known to damage cells directly. "The link between methylglyoxal and diabetic complications is well documented," says Ho, whose team found carbonyl compounds in 11 popular brands of soft drink sweetened with the syrup.

High-fructose corn syrup is popular in the US, where import tariffs make cane sugar relatively expensive. It is made by treating corn starch with ...                                                            

The complete article is 336 words long.

Childhood TV viewing linked to teen attention problems

see original article @ link

Watching television more than two hours a day early in life can lead to attention problems later in adolescence, according to a large long-term study.

The roughly 40% increase in attention problems among "heavy" TV viewers was observed in both boys and girls, and was independent of whether a diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder was made prior to adolescence.

"Those who watched more than two hours, and particularly those who watched more than three hours, of television per day during childhood had above-average symptoms of attention problems in adolescence," Erik Landhuis of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, wrote in his report, published in Pediatrics on Tuesday.