Research suggests that up to 97% of women and 68% of men experience food cravings. Chocolate is the most common one of the craved foods, typically high calorie. A number of situations have been shown to experimentally increase cravings of chocolate consumption. For example,chocolate abstinence, stress and exposure to chocolate cues increase urges to eat chocolate. Studies on the effects of exercise on appetite and eating behaviour have considered satiety and hunger but not cravings for specific food types such as chocolate. No studies have examined the effects of exercise on appetite and food cravings during explicitly manipulated stress, or on .....read more »

The applet provides three forms of control for navigating within the Visible Human. By clicking on the buttons (1), you can select a standard slice orientation (axial, sagittal, coronal). By clicking and dragging either on the small 3D model (2) or on the currently displayed slice (3), you can move as illustrated on the figure below. When using the left mouse button on the miniature 3D model, the slice follows the mouse cursor position. When interacting on the displayed slice, translations and rotations are carried out relatively to the current slice position and orientation. Cool tool for human anatomy, at Visible Human .....read more »

Gaming among college-aged men may provide a healthy source of socialization, relaxation, and coping. In college aged men there was no significant correlation between BMI, academic performance, social functioning and frequency of online game play. Women and men differ hardly in performance with online gaming. Women probably use gender neutral characters and names, they probably game as much online as men. Online game players score higher in openness, conscientiousness and extraversion compared to non players. They are eager to learn and master new challenges, they are motivated by competition and they enjoy social activities which can all be provided by online .....read more »

Watch the World(s). A Second Life Machinima by Robbie Dingo. Ever looked at your favorite painting and wished you could wander inside, to look at it from different perspectives? Spend a single day in one of mine, from early sunrise on a new day, to dusk when lights come on in cosy homes; through a peaceful night, till morning. Shot on location in Second Life then post-produced, this was an idea I had a while ago. The Sim in this work was on temporary loan so it's all been swept away now, leaving only the film behind. It was .....read more »

Very cool collection of slow motion clips from the UK show, Brainiac: Science Abuse. My favorite is the face slap. What is your favorite?Related posts: Slow Drops and Levitating Water Twitter Lists of Health and Science The Eye of Science ..read more »

This is what I get when creating a wordle with my blog feed. Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. Related posts: Why Blog 2 Why Blog? 2 Why Blog ..read more »

We already discussed the reduction of the risk of mortality from cardiovascular diseases by dark chocolate. In a recent publication the results of a study with cacao liquor polyphenol fed Kurosawa and Kusanagi- hypercholesterolaemic rabbits were published. After 6 months of dietary administration of cacao liquor polyphenols, heart rate and blood pressure were lowered but plasma lipid concentrations were unchanged. The area of atherosclerotic lesions in the aorta in the cacao liquor polyphenol group was significantly smaller than that in the standard diet group. The high-frequency power of heart rate variability in the rabbits in the standard diet group .....read more »

PowerPoint is best used when students are expected to retain complex graphics, animation, and figures. For alphanumeric information (e.g. text and numbers) Powerpoint as well as traditional presentations can be used. If students are expected to retain information and/or concepts that are best conveyed through dialog or verbal explanation, traditional presentations appear to be best. This type of information should not be shared verbally in the presence of PowerPoint, because people tend to focus on that what is presented on the slides as opposed to what is verbalized. If students are expected to retain simple graphs and alphanumeric information that .....read more »

People with low self-esteem are less inclined to take measures to improve their mood as in contrast to people with high self-esteem. People with high self-esteem are more motivated to improve a sad mood. Take this recognizable striking example: Holly and Lucy, who share an apartment in Toronto, are each feeling down in the dumps after a bad day at work. To lift her spirits, Holly calls a friend to arrange a night out. She encourages Lucy to join them, pointing out that eating at their favorite restaurant and watching a new comedy movie should make Lucy feel better. Lucy knows .....read more »

This is blogging tech talk again but a lot of people ask me how I do it. How can I write a post almost everyday, were do I find the time. That's when I start blabbering about RSS feeds, del.icio.us, PubMed searches etc. Than I start seeing glazing staring eyes from the questioner. But it is really very simple. Using a RSS reader is the most important part. I use Google reader. It enables me to read new information when I want to. With RSS feeds you don't have to go to blogs websites on a daily basis to check for .....read more »