scientific study

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Multitasking Causes Serious Brain Drain

Constant switching of focus is inefficient, can lead to trouble

(Newser) - Multitasking isn’t helping you do anything faster, and constant exposure to multiple electronic media makes people really bad at—multitasking. “When you’re pushing yourself to perform two or more tasks, especially complicated tasks, it’s not beneficial,” a researcher tells the Boston Globe . “It’s...

Women Getting Shorter, Heavier

They'll lose 1 inch and gain 2 pounds by 2409

(Newser) - Humans are still changing, and the female winners of the evolutionary crapshoot will be shorter and heavier down the line. A new study that tracked the motherly productivity of the slim-and-tall set alongside their squatter peers concludes that a lower center of gravity will win out in the end, and...

Men More Likely to Abandon Sick Partners

Seven times as many women stay when serious illness strikes

(Newser) - Relationships fail seven times more often when illness strikes the female partner than when it strikes the man. Researchers don't know why, but theories abound: “There is an immediate shift in a relationship when an illness is diagnosed,” a counselor tells the Times of London. Gender roles change...

Swine Flu Turns Critical With Deadly Speed, Taxing ICUs
Swine Flu Turns Critical With Deadly Speed, Taxing ICUs
h1n1 outbreak
Oct 12, 2009 4:20 PM CDT

Swine Flu Turns Critical With Deadly Speed, Taxing ICUs

Sickest H1N1 patients deteriorate rapidly, studies say

(Newser) - Swine flu can turn from mild to critical extremely rapidly, with the sickest patients needing to be moved to intensive care only a day or so after being admitted to the hospital, new studies show. The worst cases have the potential to overwhelm health care facilities in the event of...

Half of US Babies Will See 100
 Half of US Babies Will See 100 
Oct 2, 2009 10:06 AM CDT

Half of US Babies Will See 100

Upward life expectancy trend shows no signs of slowing

(Newser) - More than half of the children born today in wealthy developed countries will live to see their 100th birthday. New research coming out of Denmark also suggests life expectancy in general has increased dramatically as medicine and diagnosis of diseases afflicting the elderly have improved. Since the 1950s, the BBC...

Fossil Find Shakes Up Evolution Timeline

Ardipithecus ramidus lived in trees and walked upright

(Newser) - A primate fossil found in Africa in 1994 predates the famous “Lucy” skeleton by 1 million years and offers clues to human evolution, researchers say. “This is huge,” a paleoanthropologist tells the Washington Post. “This is the biggest discovery really since” Lucy. The researchers believe “...

Women More Selective Daters? Maybe Not

(Newser) - Women may be more “selective” daters, but that distinction could well be based not on innate personality but on social norms and the simple prospect of which gender is doing the pursuing. A new study had subjects participate in a few rounds of speed dating. When the males approached...

How Thin People Make Other People Fat

New study shows we mimic habits of those whose bodies we aspire to

(Newser) - Existing research suggests those trying to control their food intake should avoid dining with hefty companions with heaping plates. Not quite, says a new study. While the "I'll have what she's having" effect was confirmed in this experiment with college-age women, it was much more pronounced if the person...

Spanked Kids Have Lower IQs
 Spanked Kids 
 Have Lower IQs 
Sep 25, 2009 12:52 PM CDT

Spanked Kids Have Lower IQs

Offspring of hands-off parents test better: scientists

(Newser) - American children whose parents use spanking for discipline have lower IQs than those who aren't spanked, a new study finds. Researchers assessed about 800 2- to 4-year-olds and 700 5- to 9-year-olds and revisited them 4 years later, reporting a dropoff of up to 5 IQ points in kids whose...

Obesity Growing as Cancer Risk for Women

(Newser) - Being fat could become the leading cause of cancer in women in Western countries in the coming years, say European researchers. Being overweight or obese accounts for up to 8% of cancers in Europe. That figure is poised to increase substantially as the obesity epidemic continues, and as major causes...

Lather, Rinse, Disinfect the Showerhead

But even bleach may not kill stealth bacteria invading your bathtub

(Newser) - The showerheads of America are crawling with bacteria that can cause pulmonary disease in people with weakened immune systems, LiveScience reports. Around 20% of showerheads tested for a new study held significant levels of Mycobacterium avium, which can be suspended in air when water flows and be inhaled deep into...

Nighttime Snacks Worse Than We Thought

Mouse study shows weight gain more than doubles on opposite schedule

(Newser) - Eating when you should be sleeping—the proverbial midnight snack, say, or the meals of night-shift workers—could put you at higher risk of obesity, Time reports. A new study fed two groups of mice the same high-fat diet on opposite schedules; the group that ate during “normal” waking...

Climate Change Reverses 8 Millennia of Arctic Cooling

Temps, up 2.2 F Since 1900, Would Be 2.5 Degrees Cooler Without Greenhouse Gases

(Newser) - Summer temperatures in the Arctic have climbed 2.2°F since 1900 despite an 8,000-year cooling trend, the Guardian reports. For the past few thousand years, the orbit of the Earth and the changing tilt of its axis has put the Arctic 630,000 miles further from the sun...

Obesity May Shrink Your Brain
 Obesity May Shrink Your Brain 
Aug 24, 2009 9:38 AM CDT

Obesity May Shrink Your Brain

Study finds cognitive regions smaller in obese elderly

(Newser) - Important cognitive brain regions are smaller in older obese people than fit ones, scientists have found. Shrinking brains are tied to dementia, so the discovery fuels the notion that obesity can raise the risk of the cognitive disorder, New Scientist reports. In a review of 94 brain scans, subjects with...

New Heroin Addiction Treatment? Heroin

Scientists caution that controversial treatment has its downsides

(Newser) - Medical heroin may be effectively used to treat heroin addiction, Canadian scientists have discovered, but their dramatic findings may be railroaded over political and financial concerns, ABC News reports. Injectable diacetylmorphine, the active ingredient in heroin, resulted in 67% less illegal activity and illicit drug use after one year when...

Hold Music Improves, But Slowly

(Newser) - We may have Erik Satie to blame for hold music—the composer “developed a very cynical attitude” toward a distracted listening public and decided modern music would be more like a chair than an intellectual pursuit—but the science behind it is state-of-the-art, Newsweek reports. Studies on the intrusion...

Chocolate Cuts Risk of 2nd Heart Attack

(Newser) - Heart attack survivors who eat chocolate after recovering are much less likely to suffer a recurrence than people who abstain, AFP reports. People who eat at least two servings a week are three times less likely to die from heart disease than those who don’t consume chocolate. And the...

Number of US Antidepressant Users Doubles

(Newser) - The number of Americans on antidepressants doubled from 1996 to 2005, a new study finds, but fewer are seeing psychiatrists, and most aren’t using the drugs to affect their mood. As of 2005, the last year for which data were available, 27 million Americans—roughly 10% of the population—...

DNA Screening May Help Beat Ovarian Cancer

55% of women carry variant placing them at a higher risk

(Newser) - An international coalition of geneticists has discovered a DNA variant in women with ovarian cancer that could lead to earlier detection and lower mortality rates, reports the Guardian. More than half of women exhibit the genetic trait, which increases the likelihood of ovarian cancer by up to 40%. The researchers...

'Hedonometer' Gauges US Mood Via Blogs, Tweets

(Newser) - If you think blogs are useless, think again: Scientists have developed a “hedonometer,” or happiness gauge, that analyzes personal online statements to pinpoint the overall contentment of the US population on a given day, the Discovery Channel reports. The program looks at sentences beginning with “I feel”...

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