Childhood obesity can lead to type 2 diabetes, asthma, hypertension, sleep apnea and emotional distress. Obese children and youth are likely to be obese as adults, experience more cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and stroke and incur higher healthcare costs. In an article published in the December 2008 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, researchers report that children living in inner city neighborhoods with higher "greenness" experienced lower weight gains compared to those in areas with less green space.

While general wisdom says that you look at the eyes first in order to recognize a face, UC San Diego computer scientists now report that you look at the nose first.

The nose may be the where the information about the face is balanced in all directions, or the optimal viewing position for face recognition, the researchers from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering propose in a paper recently published in the journal Psychological Science.

A study by two University of Rochester psychologists in  the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology adds color, literally and figuratively, to the age-old question of what attracts men to women.

Through five psychological experiments, Andrew Elliot, professor of psychology, and Daniela Niesta, post-doctoral researcher, demonstrate that the color red makes men feel more amorous toward women. And men are unaware of the role the color plays in their attraction.

A novel cell division mechanism has been discovered in a microorganism that thrives in hot acid. The finding may also result in insights into key processes in human cells, and in a better understanding of the main evolutionary lineages of life on Earth.

The research group at the Department of Molecular Evolution at Uppsala University has identified a completely new cell division machinery. The discovery was made in Sulfolobus acidocaldarius, a microorganism belonging to the third domain of life, the Archaea, which originally was isolated from a hot spring in Yellowstone national park in Wyoming, USA. Because of the extreme conditions, in which the cells grow optimally in acid at 80ºC, the organism is of interest for a wide range of issues.

There's a presidential election happening, in case you didn't know. If you talk to the fringes who are most actively mobilized, they certainly feel the differences are key; if John McCain gets elected, Democrat zealots contend, abortions will be banned and Creationism will be taught in science classes. If Barack Obama is elected, Republican zealots contend, the tax rate will be raised to 100% and gay porn will be taught in science classes.

What's surprising is how the average voter believes one rich politician is more likely than another to enact substantial policy changes, on issues like health care and others, that rely more on Congress than they do the Executive branch of government.

Dublin City University (DCU) researchers, Neill Costigan, PhD student at DCU and funded by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) and Prof Michael Scott member of the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI)-funded Shannon Institute of Cryptography, have successfully cracked a crypto system published thirty years ago by coding theorist Robert J McEliece.

The crack which was accomplished using resources at the SFI-Funded Irish Centre for High End Computing was announced at the Post-Quantum Cryptography conference in Cincinnati, USA on Saturday 18 October.