While heavy alcohol consumption has been linked to increased risk of several cancers, the association between light to moderate drinking and overall cancer risk has been less clear. Photo / Getty Images
While heavy alcohol consumption has been linked to increased risk of several cancers, the association between light to moderate drinking and overall cancer risk has been less clear. Photo / Getty Images
Your daily tipple might just be cancer risk
A new study out of the US has shown women who have just one drink a day are at a heightened risk of alcohol-related cancer. While heavy alcohol consumption has been linked to increased risk of several cancers, the association between light to moderate drinking and overall cancer risk has been less clear.
A Harvard University study published in medical journal The BMJ has also shown the risk of alcohol-related cancers is higher among light- and moderate-drinking men - up to two drinks per day - but only in those who have smoked.
Ultimately, the study suggested the risk of developing any cancer among light to moderate drinkers was only minimally higher and an accompanying editorial suggested limiting alcohol to one standard drink a day for women.
It seems nearly everything under the sun has been suggested to combat obesity, but, ay caramba, who would have figured hot chilli peppers had anything to do with it. Photo / Getty Images
It seems nearly everything under the sun has been suggested to combat obesity, but, ay caramba, who would have figured hot chilli peppers had anything to do with it.
Aussie researchers have examined the link between the feeling of fullness and the "hot chilli pepper" receptor TRPV1 - the protein that senses heat and certain chemicals, and gives us that savage sting when tongue meets habanero.
While it was known capsaicin, found in hot chillies, reduced food intake in humans, the team discovered that taking away the TRPV1 receptors dampened the response of gastric nerves to stretch - resulting in a delayed feeling of fullness and the consumption of more food.
Thanks for dropping in...
According to social media, there's an evil cousin of the koala called the drop bear that likes to launch itself from trees.
A great gag that might be, but there's nothing fictional about sky-diving aerobatic arachnids that do just the same thing.
US researchers dropped 59 spiders known as "flatties" from tree tops in Panama and Peru and watched as they expertly glided through the air toward tree trunks and landed safely on their front legs.
The spiders twirled through the air head-first and changed direction via motions of the front legs while airborne - behaviour suggesting they evolved to avoid the potentially fatal consequences of landing in the forest understory.
The researchers reported the behaviour was "remarkably consistent" - more than 90 per cent of those dropped directed their glides to tree trunks.
The others landed on the ground or bushes.
What Jupiter is really made of
A new study in the journal Nature suggests pebbles are the most important building blocks in the formation of giant planets. Photo / Getty Images
As kids, our parents joked with us that the moon was a giant ball of cheese - but scientists are now very serious when they tell us big gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn might be the much larger sums of billions and billions of "pebbles".
They're not talking about the boxes of multi-coloured chocolates we used to munch on, but small 1cm to 1m-sized bits of rock that slowly came together to form Earth's distant and much bigger neighbours.
It was previously believed the cores of these giant planets - or the seeds needed to form them - were made up of celestial bodies hundreds to thousands of kilometres in size, known as planetesimals, colliding with one another and slowly building up mass.
Instead, a new study in the journal Nature suggests pebbles are the most important building blocks in the formation of giant planets, with computer models showing how the process resulted in one to four gas giants - as seen in the observed structure of the solar system.
