British scientists have found you can lose weight without dieting – by replacing high-fat foods with their low-fat counterparts.

Writing in the British Medical Journal,  researchers from the University of East Anglia found that people who switched out high-fat foods with low-fat substitutes lost about 1.6 kg over six months without any additional dieting.

They also found lowering fat in your diet provides additional health advantages, such as lowering blood pressure and bad cholesterol levels.

The researchers believe their findings could play a role in dietary recommendations to help in the worldwide battle against obesity. The WHO and other public health organizations say obesity is a major risk factor for high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, some cancers and musculoskeletal disorders, such as the highly disabling degenerative disease of the joints, osteoarthritis.

A display of high fat foods such as cheeses, chocolates, lunch meat, french fries, pastries, doughnuts, etc. (Photo: US National Cancer Institute)

Looking to update its guidelines on total fat intake, the WHO recently commissioned a study to evaluate the relationship between the amount of fat and fatty products  consumed in daily diets and various indicators of body fatness such as total weight, waist size and/or body mass index (BMI).

For their study, the researchers evaluated 33 trials in North America, Europe and New Zealand, involving 73,589 participants of various ages and states of health.

Researchers compared the waistline measurements and weight of participants who ate a reduced-fat diet with those whose diet included the usual amounts of fat for at least six months.

Along with the loss of 1.6 kg of bodyweight, they also found that the participants reduced their total BMI by 0.56kg/m² – kg per square meter -and cut their waist circumference by 0.5cm.

Nutritionists recommend foods with protein (eggs/lean meat), whole grains, and fruits (or vegetables) for a healthy breakfast (Photo: Kenji Ross via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Wondering if the weight reduction by those in the group that consumed few fats was due in part to the additional time, attention and support they received, compared to those in the normal fat intake group, researchers looked to studies where both groups were given equal time and attention and found that the weight reduction did not disappear suggesting that the weight loss was really due to lower fat intake.

“The effect isn’t dramatic, like going on a diet. The research specifically looked at people who were cutting down on fat, but didn’t aim to lose weight, so they were continuing to consume a normal amount of food,” said Dr. Lee Hooper, who led the research. “What surprised us was that they did lose weight, their BMI decreased and their waists became slimmer. On top of this, they kept their weight down over at least seven years. There isn’t a specific goal, the more fat you cut down, the more your weight falls.”

Games and applications designed for computers and platforms such as smartphones and tablets have become important tools in providing an effective, yet fun learning experience. (Photo: Jesse Knish Photography for GDC Online via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Educators, businesses, public service organizations and media outlets have all discovered that developing and offering a variety of computer and smartphone games and applications is a successful way to engage and communicate with their audiences as well as providing challenging, but entertaining learning opportunities.

The U.N. Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) also sees the growing value and importance that these digital games offer, so they recently launched “Create UNAOC 2012.” It’s a global competition that will award cash prizes to creators and developers of computer games and apps that promote intercultural dialogue and understanding.  The Voice of America is also a partner with the UNAOC for this contest.

With “Create UNAOC 2012″ in mind, more than 20 VOA Journalists, web editors, computer program developers and experts in developing educational games — like Alex Chisholm from the Learning Games Network and Scot Osterweil of the MIT Education Arcade — gathered last Thursday (10/11/12), at VOA headquarters in Washington for something called a “Game Jam.”

A Game Jam is a gathering of people with a variety of backgrounds and skills, along with experts like Chisholm and Osterweil who discuss goals and brainstorms game ideas that would offer an entertaining and fun playing experience, but also provide a unique learning opportunity as well.

The participants in the VOA Game Jam were divided into teams that worked on coming up with new and fresh ideas for games that will be able help VOA effectively communicate and better connect with its ever-changing worldwide audience.

With the Game Jam in full swing, and the participants fully engaged in brainstorming ideas for new games, organizers said that there were at least five or six good ideas for possible game development.

VOA Game Jam participants listen to a presentation by Scot Osterweil, Creative Director of the MIT Education Arcade on how to create games that not only teach but are also entertaining and fun. (Photo: VOA)

The room, where the Game Jam was being held, buzzed with exciting and animated discussion as the participants worked out their ideas, talked about how their games should look, and function as well as what would be needed to make them fun.

Among the some of the game ideas that were discussed was an immigration game, where the player does a little role playing and virtually experiences what an immigrant could face in moving to a new country.  Another, from VOA’s “Learning English,” proposes a fun way to learn the English language.

After last Thursday’s brainstorming session, the proposed games will be evaluated, with the most promising game ideas selected to continue development into a finished product that will be made available to the VOA audience.

With the Voice of America broadcasting in more than 40 languages, the games selected to be developed could be produced in a number of different languages.  But since it represents VOA’s largest web audience, it’s probable that several of the games will be in English.

While developing and producing a finished game product is an involved process, it’s hoped that it will take about two to three months to develop and produce a finished game. The first games could be released sometime in early 2013.

If you’re 13 or older, you too can take part in the “Create UNAOC 2012″ and be eligible for a nice cash prize.  Just visit the Create UNAOC 2012 website for more information.  Keep in mind, though, that you’ve got only to the end of November to get your entry in for this contest.

This photo of the base of Mount Sharp shows the layered geology of Mars. (NASA)

NASA’s Curiosity rover has beamed back spectacular HD photos of the Martian surface.

Captured by a 100-millimeter telephoto lens and 34-milllimeter wide angle lens, the images show the dark dunes,  layered rock and canyons of Mount Sharp, a mountain inside Gale Crater, where the rover landed.

NASA also released photos of Curiosity at work as it prepares to explore the Red Planet.

In another feat, Curiosity received and beamed back the first human voice transmission to travel from Earth to another planet and back.

The voice was that of NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden. The message was radioed to Mars, where it was received and then retransmitted back to Earth by Curiosity. Here on Earth, the return signal from Mars was picked up by NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN).

Up close is the gravelly area around the rover’s landing site while in the distance is Mt. Sharp, Curiosity’s eventual destination. (NASA)

This image highlights the varied geology of Mount Sharp, a mountain inside Gale Crater, where the rover landed. (NASA)

The two donut-shaped tracks make an infinity symbol and mark Curiosity’s first two drives. The landing site is at the far right. (NASA)

In his message, Bolden noted the difficulties of putting a rover on Mars and congratulated NASA employees and all  involved with the project on the successful landing.  He also commented on how curiosity is what drives humans to explore.

“The knowledge we hope to gain from our observation and analysis of Gale Crater will tell us much about the possibility of life on Mars as well as the past and future possibilities for our own planet. Curiosity will bring benefits to Earth and inspire a new generation of scientists and explorers, as it prepares the way for a human mission in the not too distant future,” Bolden said in his recorded message.

The rover is also busy stretching its legs, recently taking a couple of test drives near its landing spot.

Curiosity is already sending more data from the Martian surface than all of NASA’s earlier rovers combined, the space agency said.

Members of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission listen to a voice message from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in the mission support area at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The Mobile Music Touch is a wireless, musical glove which may improve sensation and motor skills for people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries. (Photo: Georgia Institute of Technology)

Researchers in Georgia have developed a glove which seems to improve touch sensation and motor skills for people with severe spinal cord injuries.

The Mobile Music Touch (MMT) looks like a regular workout glove, except for the small box mounted on the back.

Along with a piano keyboard, the glove is used to help people with spinal cord injuries learn to play the piano by vibrating the player’s fingers to show which keys they should play.

Some people who used the musical glove for these specialized piano lessons experienced improved sensation in their fingers after their  sessions.

Researchers at Georgia Tech – the Georgia Institute of Technology – along with Atlanta’s Shepard Center, worked with volunteers with spinal cord injuries over eight weeks.

The volunteers suffered their injury at least a year before this study and had very little feeling or movement in their hands.

The  participants were required to practice playing the piano for a half hour, three times a week for eight weeks.  Half of them used the MMT glove to practice and the other half did not.

Researchers also had the participants wear the glove at home after or before practice, for two hours a day, five days a week, feeling only the vibration from the device.

The researchers hoped the volunteers would receive some rehabilitative effects from passively wearing the device while doing regular, everyday activities.

“After our preliminary work in 2011, we suspected that the glove would have positive results for people with SCI,” said Tanya Markow, the project leader. “But we were surprised by how much improvement they made in our study. For example, after using the glove, some participants were able to feel the texture of their bed sheets and clothes for the first time since their injury.”

(Video: Georgia Institute of Technology)

Along with the specially-equipped glove, the Mobile Music Touch system works with a computer, MP3 player or smart phone.

The system is then programmed with a song which is wirelessly linked to the glove.  As the song plays, its musical notes are illuminated on the piano keys and the device then sends vibrations to “tap” the corresponding fingers.

After the eight weeks, the researchers had their volunteers perform a number of grasping and sensation tests so they could measure for any improvement.

The researchers found that those who used the MMT system performed significantly better than the others who just learned the piano normally.

“Some people were able to pick up objects more easily,” said Markow. “Another said he could immediately feel the heat from a cup of coffee, rather than after a delay.”

Markow believes the increased motor abilities are due to renewed brain activity that sometimes can become dormant in people with spinal cord injuries.

She thinks that the vibrations produced by the MMT system might trigger activity in the hand’s sensory cortex, which leads to firing in the brain’s motor cortex.

Markow would like to take her research with the MMT further to include functional MRI results.

(Photo: spaceamoeba via Flickr/Creative Commons)

The brain isn’t always entirely accurate when it comes to processing language, according to a new study.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) finds we may not be processing every word see hear or read.

This can mean our brain doesn’t pick up on changes made to key words in a sentence, even if they change its meaning.

Consider this  example: “After a plane crash, where should the survivors be buried?”

Many of us pick up on words like “plane crash” and “buried,” so we may think we’re being asked where those who died in the crash should be buried, rather than realizing the question is about those who actually survived the crash.

The study shows that roughly half the people asked this question answer it as if they are being asked about the victims and not the survivors.

Or try this: “Can a man marry his widow’s sister?”

According to the study, most people answer in the affirmative, not realizing they’re agreeing that a dead man can  marry his bereaved wife’s sister.

This has something to do with what are known as semantic illusions.

(Photo: Moritz Petersen via Flickr/Creative Commons)

These are words that may fit the general context of a sentence, even though they don’t actually make sense. They can challenge  traditional methods of language processing, which assumes we develop our understanding of a sentence by thoroughly weighing the meaning of each  word.

Instead, the researchers  found  these semantic illusions show that, rather than listening and analyzing each word, our language processing is based only on  shallow and incomplete interpretations of what we hear or read.

To find out what’s happening in our brains when we process sentences containing semantic illusions, Professor Hartmut Leuthold, from the Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging at the University of Glasgow, led his colleagues in research that used Electroencephalography (EEG) devices to read, measure and record ‘brain waves’.

Looking at the EEG patterns of volunteers who read or listened to sentences containing semantic anomalies, researchers found that when  volunteers were tricked by the semantic illusion,  their brains had not even noticed the unusual words.

Man wired up with electrodes for EEG monitoring (Photo: Douglas Myers via Wikimedia Commons)

The researchers’ analysis also showed that the volunteers used these shallow processing methods even more when they were stressed or faced more difficult or multiple tasks.

If you want to make sure that the correct message gets across to your listener or reader, the study suggests a few  tricks.

“We know that we process a word more deeply if it is emphasized in some way.  So, for example in a news story, a newsreader can stress important words that may otherwise be missed and these words can be italicized to make sure we notice them when reading,” says Leuthold.

The way we construct sentences can also help reduce misunderstandings.

“It’s a good idea to put important information first because we are more likely to miss unusual words when they are near the end of a sentence,” he says. “Also, we often use an active sentence construction such as ‘Bob ate the apple’ because we make far more mistakes answering questions about a sentence with a passive construction – for example ‘The apple was eaten by Bob’.”

Researchers believe the findings not only offer better insight into the various processes  used in our comprehension of language but also, according to  Leuthold, knowing what is happening in the brain when mistakes occur can help us to avoid the pitfalls – such as missing critical information in textbooks or legal documents – and to communicate more effectively.

Dr. Pierre Savard (Photo: University of Toronto)

Tired, and rushing to meet a looming deadline,  Dr. Pierre Savard and his colleagues didn’t realize what they’d found when they first came across a particle that looked a lot like the long-sought-after Higgs boson.  But it didn’t take long for them to realize their hard work had paid off.

“When we looked at it, we kind of saw it,” Savard says. “It was unbelievable.”

The University of Toronto  professor belongs to ATLAS, one of two teams tasked with finding whether the mystery subatomic particle – which is believed to give all objects mass ­- actually exists.

The team’s excitement about finding the new particle grew when it discovered the second team, CMS, had found virtually the same thing.

“It’s a big thing.  Essentially, it’s as if we discovered a new fundamental force of nature,” Savard says. “So we know about, for instance, electromagnetism, electricity and magnetism. We know about gravity… but now we’ve found something new and it also plays a key role in our current theory for how we understand how matter interacts with particles and forces. It’s a big deal.”

The ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (Photo: CERN)

Despite helping to find the most sought-after particle in modern science, Savard actually hopes the new discovery is not the Higgs boson.

“Many of us are hoping that it’s not exactly the particle that’s predicted by our theory, that it may be something close,” he says.

Since problems have been found with their current theory, if the mystery particle doesn’t turn out to be Higgs boson, Savard hopes the new particle  offers  hints as to “what’s out there.”

“The ‘Standard Model’ of particle physics explains a lot, but there’s a lot that it does not explain,”  Savard says.

Some  suggest there might be more than one Higgs boson and that the same theories contained within the Standard Model, could also  explain dark matter or dark matter particles.

Dark matter particles are a type of matter which cannot be seen directly but are believed to make up a great part of the total mass in the universe.

Physicist Peter Higgs arrives at a seminar, July 4, at CERN where it was announced that a new subatomic particle, said be consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson, had been discovered. (Photo: AP Photo/Denis Balibouse, Pool)

Even if the find is the Higgs boson, “there are still some big questions out there,” says Dr. Savard.

One problem Savard sees with the Standard Model is that it doesn’t explain the asymmetry between matter and antimatter.

“In our colliders, we produce essentially equal amounts of matter and antimatter but the universe is made up matter and the Standard Model really doesn’t explain why there’s such an asymmetry,” he says.

He’d  also like to see more research devoted to exploring dark matter, which he says is “probably carried by a particle that we don’t’ know about.”

With the mysteries of matter, antimatter and dark matter lurking, Savard says  the Standard Model explains only about a fraction of the universe. That’s why he hopes  new phenomena will be found with the LHC – the world’s largest atom smasher – which would help unlock these many mysteries of the universe.

New boson discovered at CERN 07/04/12 – (Video © 2012 CERN)

Listen to Science World’s interview with Dr. Pierre Savard here…

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Turns out obesity isn’t just a health issue;  all of that overeating could seriously cut into the future world food supply.

According to a new study from Great Britain, if the current worldwide obesity epidemic continues unabated, maintaining enough food to feed the world could actually become a much more serious challenge.

Right now, the world’s population is over seven billion, and growing.  The more people there are, the more food and resources are needed.

According to the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine,  the weight of the human population should be taken into consideration – in addition to the number of people in the world -  when determining future food security and environmental sustainability.

Using data from various studies, researchers determined the world’s adult population weighs 287 million metric tons, or 287 billion kilograms.

Separately, we each weigh an average of 62 kilograms, but that average varies from country to country.

Researchers estimate 15 million of that 287 metric tons is due to those who are overweight, while 3.5 million metric tons are due to obesity.

North Americans have the highest body mass of any continent, according to the study, with an average body mass of 80.7kg.

While North America has only about six percent of the world’s population, it contributes 34 percent of the world’s biomass.

Asians, on the other hand, whose average weight is 58 kilograms, make up around 61 percent of the world’s population, but they’re only responsible for roughly 13 percent of the world’s biomass.

Among nations,  the United States came in as the “heaviest” country, while Eritrea was the “lightest”.

The researchers also looked at how those who are overweight and obese impact the total weight and averages.

Keep in mind that there is a difference between being overweight and obese.

You’re considered to be overweight when you weigh more than the weight that is appropriate for your height and bone structure or have a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 or greater.

If you have BMI of 30 or more, medical experts consider you to be obese.

Experts say that up to half of all food that is eaten is burned up by various physical activities.  But as your weight rises, your energy requirements increase as well, because it takes more energy to move a heavy body.

Even when at rest, those who have a bigger body mass burn more energy.

So, the bigger you are, the more energy you’ll need; the more energy you need means you must eat more; the more food eaten by a growing world population could  then, in turn, impact affect food supplies and future food security.

Soybeans being harvested (Photo: Jake was here via Wikimedia Commons)

The domino effect of a heavier populace can also affect environmental sustainability.  Because in order to feed, cool or warm and transport a heavier population, more natural resources, such as fossil-fuels, will be needed and consumed.

Sarah Walpole, a practicing medical doctor who co-authored the study,  worries people from developing nations, who tend to be thinner than those in developed countries, will be most at risk of food insecurity.

“If our global consumption for food or our demand for food are increasing, it going to be those poor populations that feel the impact most,” she says.

One of the areas researchers want to study next is the impact the global child population has on the world’s total human biomass.

Dr. Walpole joins us on this week’s radio edition of “Science World.”  Check out the right column for scheduled air-times or listen to the interview with Dr. Walpole below.

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Other stories we cover on the “Science World” radio program this week include:

• Kenyan conservationists preserve endangered sea turtles
• Ocean levels rising faster on US coasts than elsewhere in the world
• 2009 swine flu deaths were much higher than first reported
• Crisis mapping helps first-responders do their jobs in times of disaster
• Gastric Bypass Surgery, Alcohol Not a Good Mix for Some