http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Popcorns-buttery-fumes-dangerous/2007/10/28/1193506340292.html

The smell of buttery microwave popcorn can be intoxicating. But can it also be dangerous?

The question took on new significance recently when a doctor alerted federal regulatory agencies that a Colorado man who ate at least two bags every night for several years had "significant lung disease" similar to that seen in some microwave popcorn workers.

The illness - the first suspected case in a consumer - was linked to the man's habit of inhaling fumes from extra-buttery microwave popcorn, which contains the chemical diacetyl. The additive gives foods a buttery taste and has been linked to severe lung disease in some microwave popcorn and flavour plant workers.

Dr Phil Harber, a lung specialist at the University of California-Los Angeles, also says there is not enough information to determine whether there is a "medically significant risk" but said people who eat lots of this kind of microwave popcorn should try to limit exposure when cooking it.

Some major microwave popcorn makers have already made the issue moot: They have eliminated or plan to drop the chemical from their recipes.

Meanwhile, a long-awaited government study that looks at chemical fumes emitted from microwaving popcorn at home - including those from diacetyl - will be published in a scientific journal in December.

The study, conducted by the US Environmental Protection Agency, took nearly three years and was completed in 2006, according to Suzanne Ackerman, an agency spokeswoman.

Some critics have questioned the time lag in making the results public as well as the EPA's decision to share the findings first with popcorn makers. Ackerman says the companies were permitted to read the report last year to make sure no competitive secrets were released.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Broccoli-protects-skin-from-UV-rays/2007/10/23/1192941058382.html

Broccoli can help skin cells fend off damage from harmful ultraviolet radiation, US researchers say.

The extract derived from newly sprouted broccoli seeds reduced skin redness and damage by more than one-third compared with untreated skin, they said.

The extract already has been shown to help skin cells fight UV damage in mice.

"This is a first demonstration that a human tissue can be protected directly against a known human carcinogen," said Dr Paul Talalay of Johns Hopkins University, whose study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This is not a sunscreen," Talalay said in a telephone interview. Instead, the extract helped fortify skin cells to fight the effects of UV radiation.

Unlike sunscreens, which provide a physical barrier against UV rays by absorbing, blocking or scattering the light, the extract helped boost the production of protective enzymes that defend against UV-related damage, Talalay said.

The effect varied widely among the volunteers, ranging from eight per cent to 78 per cent protection, due to genetic differences.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22741835-30417,00.html

IT was already known that men find curvy women more attractive and that they live longer. Now research suggests that women with an hourglass figure are brighter and have cleverer children, too.

The study found that women with large hips and small waists were more intelligent than those with either "apple-shaped" or linear bodies.

The paper, to be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour this week, suggests such women give birth to more intelligent children - possibly a result of higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids on the hips.

In the research, scientists at the Universities of Pittsburgh and California, Santa Barbara, used data from a study of 16,000 women and girls, which collected details of their body measurements and their scores in cognitive tests. They found that those women with a greater difference between the waist and hips scored significantly higher on the tests, as did their children.

Such women are not necessarily skinny. What is important is that their waist should be smaller than their hips.

The researchers suggest that the fat around fuller hips and thighs holds higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for the growth of the brain during pregnancy. Fat around the waist may have higher levels of omega-6 fatty acids, which are less suited to brain growth. Waist fat can also be a contributory factor in diabetes and heart disease. Thinner or linear-shaped women would simply lack enough of either type of fat.

The research may also explain why children born to teenage mothers do worse in cognitive tests: their mothers may have had insufficient stores of the best fatty acids.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Chimp-beats-college-kids-in-memory-game/2007/12/04/1196530631146.html

Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees - young chimpanzees at the age of five - have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said in a statement.

Chimps 'as good as' uni kids at maths

http://news.smh.com.au/chimps-as-good-as-uni-kids-at-maths/20071218-1hs2.html

Chimps performed about as well as college students at mental addition, US researchers said in a finding that suggests non-verbal maths skills are

not unique to humans.

The research from Duke University follows the finding by Japanese researchers earlier this month that young chimpanzees performed better than human adults at a memory game.

Prior studies have found non-human primates can match numbers of objects, compare numbers and choose the larger number of two sets of objects.

"This is the first study that looked at whether or not they could make explicit decisions that were based on mathematical types of calculations," said Jessica Cantlon, a cognitive

neuroscience researcher at Duke, whose work appeared in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Biology (www.plosbiology.org).

"It shows when you take language away from a human, they end up looking just like monkeys in terms of their performance," Cantlon said in a telephone interview.