Reports

US First Lady Michelle Obama will be taking a leading role in a new health campaign by Walt Disney Company aimed at getting children to adopt healthier lifestyles, the entertainment conglomerate has announced. The multimedia initiative, to be called Disney Magic of Healthy Living, will include stars from the Disney Channel like Nick Jonas and Brenda Song showcasing what the company statement described as "fun, easy ways that healthy living practices can be woven into the fabric of everyday life...

People in the US are drinking more than they did 20 years ago. Researchers are attributing a variety of factors, including social, economic and ethnic influences and pressures, to this increase. Researchers from the UT Southwestern School of Health Professions compared data of 1992 (with 42,862 respondents) and 2002 (43,093 respondents) across both sexes and three major ethnic groups, and noticed an increase in consumption of alcohol. There was also a rise in drinking five or more drinks in a...

About one fifth of the Oldest Old in India experience any type of abuse from those they live with. Daughters-in-law and sons emerge as the major abusers with 75 per cent and 60 per cent. In one tenth of cases, daughters and grandsons are abusers. Patna is the worst for these people with 60 per cent reporting abuses, followed by Kolkata (36 per cent) and Mumbai (23 per cent). None of the Oldest Old in Ahmedabad reported to have faced any kind of abuse. India has a population of 80,38,718...

Plants are as threatened as mammals, with one in five of the world’s plant species threatened with extinction. It is for the first time that the true extent of the threat to the world’s estimated 380,000 plant species has been quantified. The shocking numbers come from the Sampled Red List Index assessments carried out by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, the Natural History Museum and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Specialist Groups. The findings have been released ahead of...

Good news: Mainstream media reporting is more likely to deter young people from using illicit drugs than encourage their use. Bad News: Types of reports most likely to have the strongest impact on young people are underrepresented in the media. The revelation comes from a study conducted by the Drug Policy Modelling Programme (DPMW) at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) at the University of New South Wales, Australia, which measured the impact of media reports on illicit drugs...

Some 400 years ago in North Peru, a Spaniard had jotted down numbers on the back of a letter. The small piece of paper has now been excavated by archaeologists and it has revealed traces of a lost language. A combined research team of US–Peruvian archaeologists at Santa Mar´ıa Magdalena de Cao in the Chicama Valley of North Peru found this document that lists a few but important words that serve as keys to unlocking the intricacies of a native language that was spoken in prehistory and into the...

Some people have all the luck. Six such individuals from the world over now have the opportunity to work as panda caretakers for one month, after an intense three-hour live showdown on China’s largest television network, CCTV. Starting October 1, the six finalists will spend three weeks at the Chengdu Panda Base where they will learn about all aspects of giant panda care, breeding and conservation. One important stop will be a visit to a WWF conservation project at the Longxi-Hongkou Nature...

Energy giant Shell's new Brazilian joint-venture partner is producing biofuels from land taken from an impoverished Indian tribe. Last month, Shell signed a $12 billion deal to produce biofuels from sugar cane with Brazilian biofuels giant Cosan. But some of Cosan’s sugar cane is grown on land officially recognised as belonging to Guarani Indians. A Brazilian prosecutor with constitutional powers to defend indigenous rights in court, has written to Shell warning that its involvement in the joint...

African-American seniors are twice as likely to be mistreated than elders of other races. They are five times more susceptible to being swindled, the first population-based survey on the psychological abuse of senior citizens in the US has found. Reporting the survey results in The Gerontologist journal, University of Pittsburgh researchers have called for health care and social service workers to be especially vigilant for the possible mistreatment of African American seniors. The survey is...

Directly challenging extremist ideology through exposing the fallacies, contradictions and harmful effects of jihadist concepts and actions is a better way of tackling them than closing down extremist websites, a think-tank has concurred. Quilliam, a London-based think-tank whose founders are former ideologues of UK-based extremist Islamist organisations, has based its conclusions on an 18-month study of Arabic-language websites that eventually focused on 20 discussion forums. Unlike earlier...