1.

In the 1930s, Cornell University nutritionist Clive McCay discovered that rats deprived of food lived longer and looked younger than rats on a normal diet. Since then, additional studies have shown that in animals from fruit flies to roundworms to mice, decreasing food intake by about 30 percent results in a 30 percent increase in life span. George Roth, an expert on calorie restriction at the National Institute on Aging, says that eating significantly less food keeps blood sugar levels lower and allow body cells' protective mechanisms to work better. In one study, for example, calorie restriction was shown to benefit cells by slowing metabolism, an essential but damaging process that harms the structures of living cells. Despite the positive effects suggested by these studies, though, a study on calorie restriction involving twenty healthy young men who cut their food intake in half for six months found that the subjects became depressed, irritable, had very low energy, and lost interest in doing things. They hoarded food, and when they were allowed to eat again, they binged on too much food. (Source of information: Jerry Adler and Anne Underwood, "Starve Your Way to Health," Newsweek, January 19, 2004, pp. 51-54.)

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2.

The Good Housekeeping Institute decided to test old and new ways of accomplishing everyday tasks to see which methods were faster and more convenient. For example, the institute's testers compared purchasing tickets a movie theater's box office, ordering them online, and ordering them by phone. For phone and Internet testing, the tickets were bought two hours before the movie started and picked up 15 minutes before it started. For tickets bought at the box office, the tester arrived 15 minutes before the show began. The institute found that the average time to use the box office was 2 minutes 40 seconds. The average time it took to obtain tickets online was 5 minutes 24 seconds. The average time for ordering tickets over the phone was 5 minutes 2 seconds. In a second set of experiments, the institute's tests compared finding a phone number by using the phone book, by using the Internet, and by calling information. The average time to use the phone book was 51.3 seconds. The average time to use the Internet was 2 minutes 26 seconds. The average time spent getting the number by dialing information was 56.4 seconds. A third round of tests compared paying for groceries out at self-checkouts and regular checkouts. Tests found that the average time it took to use the self-checkout was 5 minutes 33 seconds, and the average time to use a regular checkout was six minutes 55 seconds. However, if the there are equal numbers of people waiting in line at both the self-checkout and the regular checkout, going to the regular checkout is actually faster. (Source of information: "Shaving Off Minutes," no author credited, ABCNews.com, April 26, 2004, abcnews.go/com/sections/GMA/Living/Time_trials_goodhousekeeping_040426.html)

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3.

In the early 1990s, some evidence seemed to indicate that colon cancer patients who underwent laparoscopic surgery—in which the surgeon uses a tiny video camera and miniature surgical instruments to remove portions of the diseased colon—were 21 percent more likely than conventional surgery patients to have tumors return. As a result, laparoscopic surgery was rarely used on colon cancer patients. At the same time, however, the National Cancer Institute commissioned a study involving 872 patients. Half of them were randomly chosen for the laparoscopic procedure, and the rest underwent conventional surgery. The 10-year study found that complications like wound infections and bleeding occurred in 21 percent of those who got laparoscopic surgery and 20 percent of those who got open surgery. Three years after undergoing surgery, 86 percent of patients who got the laparoscopic surgery were still alive, compared to 85 percent of the patients who got conventional surgery. Cancer returned in 16 percent of the laparoscopic patients and 18 percent of the open surgery patients. Plus, patients who had laparoscopic surgery experienced less pain and less time in the hospital. (Source of information: "Study Finds Equal Success in Treatments for Cancer," no author credited, The New York Times, May 13, 2004, www.nytimes.com/2004/13/science/13colon.html)

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Cigarette companies' advertisements carefully cultivate the image of smokers as beautiful or handsome, fun-loving, sexy, and sometimes bold and unconventional. The media reinforces this image in films, music videos, and television shows, where women are often portrayed using tobacco products to display power or sex appeal and men are often shown smoking to reinforce their masculinity or to depict power and prestige. Do these images influence young people's perceptions of smokers? Fifth graders tend to describe smokers as unhealthy or trying to act "cool." However, they also rate smokers as more daring than nonsmokers. By the time they're in seventh grade, adolescents still describe smokers as unhealthy; however, they also associate them with positive terms, like mature, glamorous, and exciting. One study, for example, asked teenagers to watch a 10-minute video and then describe a female lead character who talks to a friend, walks out of the room, reads a book, and then talks to a male friend. One group of the teenagers watched a version in which the lead character did not smoke, and the other group watched a version in which the lead character does smoke. Although the smoking female's behavior was exactly the same as that of her nonsmoking counterpart, the adolescents described the smoking female as more outgoing, more sophisticated, tougher, less emotional, and more interested in the opposite sex than the nonsmoking female. (Source of information: Paul S. Kaplan, Adolescence, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004, pp. 500-501.)

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5.

In many parts of the developing world, millions of people still live and work in shelters made from mud bricks and clay tile roofs. During even a moderate earthquake, these structures-along with bigger, masonry structures-tend to collapse, causing significant damage, injury, and loss of life. In 2004, for example, an earthquake in Iran left 30,000 dead and 40,000 homeless in just a few seconds. A 2001 Bhuj, India earthquake with a magnitude of 7.6 killed about 20,000 people and injured over 100,000. In 1999 in Izmit, Turkey, an earthquake that registered 7.5 caused 17,000 deaths, 50,000 injuries, and left 600,000 people homeless. In stark contrast, a 1989 California earthquake of similar magnitude (6.9) left only 63 dead and 3,700 injured. In the developed world, where structures are reinforced to withstand earthquakes, buildings almost never collapse. Even if they sustain heavy damage, they usually protect the occupants inside, resulting in far fewer casualties. One case in point is a 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan. Nearly all of the 5,500 people killed in that earthquake were in older buildings that were constructed before modern building codes, which incorporate earthquake engineering, took effect. Although tens of thousands of the newer structures were damaged, they did not crumple. (Source of information: Mark Zoback, "Why Must Earthquakes Be This Devastating?" The Washington Post, January 4, 2004, p. B05.)

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