Archivo: Los Angeles Times
Your DNA won’t determine the best diet to help you lose weight
Trying to lose weight? Researchers have some good news: You can chose either a low-fat or low-carb diet. As long as you stick with it, you can slim down no matter what your genetic make-up or metabolic particulars. And here’s an added bonus: You won’t even have to count your calories.
Does my sense of smell make me look fat? In mice, the answer seems to be yes
When you’re a mouse (or, perhaps, a human) and fattening food is all around, a new study finds that those with little or no ability to detect odors may have a key advantage.
Why infants pay more attention to people who speak their native language
Babies are all about learning new stuff, the new research concludes. And they won’t waste a minute paying attention to someone they deem unlikely to deliver the goods.
The damage wrought by acidic oceans hurts more than marine life and lasts longer than you think
To build up their chalky armor, E. huxleyi eat up the dissolved carbon in the water around them. When the phytoplankton grow new shells, they shed the old ones, which sink to the bottom of the ocean. Though carbon dioxide fuels this undersea industry, it also threatens to destroy it.
The dying breed of craftsmen behind the tools that make scientific research possible
To master scientific glass blowing, proper training and apprenticeships are key. Only one school in the nation, Salem Community College in New Jersey, offers a degree program. In addition to the hands-on training, which requires a knack for precision as well as coordination, students must take courses in organic chemistry, math and computer drawing.
Scientists confirm existence of 1,284 more Milky Way planets, including 9 that could be Earth-like
After sifting through data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, scientists said Tuesday they’ve confirmed the existence of 1,284 planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy.
U.S. suicides have soared since 1999, CDC report says
Driven by stark increases in the numbers of white women and Native Americans who are intentionally killing themselves, suicide rates in the United States jumped 24% in the years between 1999 and 2014, says a new government report.
The «R» in RNA can easily be made in space, and that has implications for life beyond Earth
New research suggests that the sugar ribose — the «R» in RNA — is probably found in comets and asteroids that zip through the solar system and may be more abundant throughout the universe than was previously thought.
Hot nights, scorching days: Extreme super Earth baffles astronomers
Scientists looking to probe the atmosphere of a super Earth have discovered a nearby planet with strange properties – including a day side that’s about 1,300 degrees kelvin more than the night side.
As measures of health, fitness and fatness matter more than weight
Researchers are nurturing a growing suspicion that body mass index, the height-weight calculation that distinguishes those with «normal healthy weight» from the overweight and obese, is not the whole picture when it comes to telling who is healthy and who is not. Two new studies drive that point home and underscore that BMI offers an incomplete picture of an individual’s health.