ScienceDaily: Living Well News

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• Guide to household water conservation provided by experts
• Communication about female condom vital to young adults, researchers say
• Try, try again? Study says no: Trying harder makes it more difficult to learn some aspects of language, neuroscientists find
• Parents rank their obese children as 'very healthy'
• New research links bad diet to loss of smell
• Missing sleep may hurt your memory
• Brain waves show learning to read does not end in 4th grade, contrary to popular theory
• Children as young as three recognize 'cuteness' in faces of people, animals
• Large twin study suggests that language delay due more to nature than nurture
• Negative HPV test may predict lower cervical cancer risk than a negative Pap
• Dog food goes gourmet: Nine emerging trends in pet food
• Eight ways zinc affects the human body
• Sometimes passion at work can be dangerous
• Fair cake cutting gets its own algorithm
• Sun exposure, vitamin D levels and mortality

Guide to household water conservation provided by experts Posted: 21 Jul 2014 12:19 PM PDT Households can reduce water use substantially by simple actions such as installing more efficient appliances and changing day-to-day habits involving water consumption, experts explain in a new article. "As water availability is expected to become an increasingly urgent issue in the coming decades," they write, "it is heartening to find that substantial reductions in household water use are readily available to U.S. households."

Communication about female condom vital to young adults, researchers say Posted: 21 Jul 2014 11:22 AM PDT Communication researchers examine sexual health messages aimed at young college adults about the female condom. The first female condom was introduced in the U.S. in 1993, but drew little interest due to several reasons including mixed or negative portrayals in the media. The Food and Drug Administration approved the second version of the female condom in 2009.

Try, try again? Study says no: Trying harder makes it more difficult to learn some aspects of language, neuroscientists find Posted: 21 Jul 2014 11:22 AM PDT Neuroscientists find that trying harder makes it more difficult to learn some aspects of language. When it comes to learning languages, adults and children have different strengths. Adults excel at absorbing the vocabulary needed to navigate a grocery store or order food in a restaurant, but children have an uncanny ability to pick up on subtle nuances of language, sometimes speaking a second language like a native speaker within months. Brain structure plays an important role in this "sensitive period" for learning language, which is believed to end around adolescence.

Parents rank their obese children as 'very healthy' Posted: 21 Jul 2014 11:21 AM PDT Parents of obese children often do not recognize the potentially serious health consequences of childhood weight gain or the importance of daily physical activity in helping their child reach a healthy weight, a study shows. "Parents have a hard time changing their child's dietary and physical activity behaviors," said the study's lead author. "Our study tells us what factors may be associated with a parent's motivation to help their child become more healthy."

New research links bad diet to loss of smell Posted: 21 Jul 2014 09:39 AM PDT Could stuffing yourself full of high-fat foods cause you to lose your sense of smell? A new study by neuroscientists says so, and it has researchers taking a closer look at how our diets could impact a whole range of human functions that were not traditionally considered when examining the impact of obesity.

Missing sleep may hurt your memory Posted: 21 Jul 2014 07:04 AM PDT Lack of sleep, already considered a public health epidemic, can also lead to errors in memory, finds a new study that found participants deprived of a night's sleep were more likely to flub the details of a simulated burglary they were shown in a series of images. "People who repeatedly get low amounts of sleep every night could be more prone in the long run to develop these forms of memory distortion," one researcher said. "It's not just a full night of sleep deprivation that puts them at risk."

Brain waves show learning to read does not end in 4th grade, contrary to popular theory Posted: 21 Jul 2014 07:03 AM PDT Teachers-in-training have long been taught that fourth grade is when students stop learning to read and start reading to learn. But a new study tested the theory by analyzing brain waves and found that fourth-graders do not experience a change in automatic word processing, a crucial component of the reading shift theory. Instead, some types of word processing become automatic before fourth grade, while others don't switch until after fifth.

Children as young as three recognize 'cuteness' in faces of people, animals Posted: 21 Jul 2014 07:01 AM PDT Children as young as three are able to recognize the same 'cute' infantile facial features in humans and animals which encourage caregiving behavior in adults, new research has shown. A study investigating whether youngsters can identify baby-like characteristics – a set of traits known as the 'baby schema' – across different species has revealed for the first time that even pre-school children rate puppies, kittens and babies as cuter than their adult counterparts.

Large twin study suggests that language delay due more to nature than nurture Posted: 21 Jul 2014 06:59 AM PDT A study of 473 sets of twins followed since birth found twins have twice the rate of language delay as do single-born children. Moreover, identical twins have greater rates of language delay than do non-identical twins, strengthening the case for the heritability of language.

Negative HPV test may predict lower cervical cancer risk than a negative Pap Posted: 18 Jul 2014 02:20 PM PDT In the US, cotesting for human papilloma virus and Pap testing for cervical cancer every 5 years for women aged 30-65 years is now recommended. However, human papilloma virus testing alone may provide better reassurance against cervical cancer than Pap testing alone and similar reassurance to cotesting, according to a study.

Dog food goes gourmet: Nine emerging trends in pet food Posted: 18 Jul 2014 08:45 AM PDT Four out of five pet owners now consider their pet a member of the family, and consumers are shifting their priorities when it comes to purchasing food for their pets accordingly. One expert writes about recent trends in gourmet pet food in a newly published article.

Eight ways zinc affects the human body Posted: 18 Jul 2014 08:45 AM PDT Zinc has been identified as one of the most important essential trace metals in human nutrition and lifestyle. Zinc is not only a vital element in various physiological processes; it is also a drug in the prevention of many diseases. The adult body contains about two to three grams of zinc. It is found in organs, tissues, bones, fluids, and cells.

Sometimes passion at work can be dangerous Posted: 16 Jul 2014 06:49 PM PDT Feeling passionate about one's job is usually a good thing – but not always. For some it could lead to an unhealthy obsession. One expert identifies two main types of passion for your work: harmonious passion and obsessive passion.

Fair cake cutting gets its own algorithm Posted: 16 Jul 2014 01:58 PM PDT A mathematician and a political scientist have announced an algorithm by which they show how to optimally share cake between two people efficiently, in equal pieces and in such a way that no one feels robbed.

Sun exposure, vitamin D levels and mortality Posted: 16 Jul 2014 10:15 AM PDT Women who avoid sun exposure are twice as likely to die as compared to those who receive sun exposure, a new study suggests. The study attempts to link low vitamin D levels with this increased death rate. However, even the study authors admit that this is speculation on their part.

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