Research A new scientific study shows that long-term recreational football training produces a number of marked improvements in health profile for 63-75 year old untrained men -- including a reduced risk of developing cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
The research project was carried out at the Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health at Copenhagen University, and the findings have just been published in the international journal PLOS ONE.

The study shows that regular participation in recreational football improved the health, physical fitness and muscle function of the 63-75 year old men in the study, and significantly reduced body weight.

Both short-term and long-term effects

When a hail storm moved through Fort Worth, Texas on May 5, 1995, it battered the highly populated area with hail up to 4 inches in diameter and struck a local outdoor festival known as the Fort Worth Mayfest.

The Mayfest storm was one of the costliest hailstorms in U.S history, causing more than $2 billion in damage and injuring at least 100 people.

Scientists know that storms with a rotating updraft on their southwestern sides -- which are particularly common in the spring on the U.S. southern plains -- are associated with the biggest, most severe tornadoes and also produce a lot of large hail. However, clear ideas on how they form and how to predict these events in advance have proven elusive.

Whether taking photos recreationally or professionally, photographers understandably want their snapshots to appear sharp and clear. Image clarity is dependent on exposure time, or the amount of time that a camera's sensor is exposed to light while a photograph is being taken. During this period, the shutter opens and the camera counts the number of photons emitted by the subject.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- With record-breaking speeds for fiber-optic data transmission, University of Illinois engineers have paved a fast lane on the information superhighway -- creating on-ramps for big data in the process.

Graduate researcher Michael Liu will present the research team's developments in oxide-VCSEL technology, which underpins fiber-optic communications systems, at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition today in Anaheim, California. The research team was led by electrical and computer engineering professor Milton Feng -- who will be in attendance at the conference -- and also included professor emeritus Nick Holonyak Jr. and graduate researcher Curtis Wang.

A study finds that the brains of young adult marijuana users react differently to social exclusion than do those of non-users.  Activation of the insula, a region of the brain that is usually active during social rejection, was reduced in young marijuana users when they were being excluded from participation in virtual game of catch. 

You may have heard of crows, magpies, and mockingbirds recognizing individual people. These birds live among people, so it may be natural that they learn to differentiate people. But what about the animals that live in remote areas?

Scientists in South Korea studied brown skuas living in Antarctica and reported that these birds too recognize people who had previously accessed the nests to measure their eggs and nestlings. "I had to defend myself against the skuas' attack," says Yeong-Deok Han, a PhD student at Inha University. "When I was with other researchers, the birds flew over me and tried to hit me. Even when I changed my field clothes, they followed me. The birds seemed to know me no matter what I wear."