Contagious weight gain?

Certain cases of obesity may be contagious-in chickens at least-says a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which identified a strain of adenovirus that makes chickens plump. Researchers inoculated male chickens with three strains of the virus, Ad-2, Ad-31 and Ad-37, and then monitored the chickens’ food intake for three and a half weeks. At the end of that period, results showed that despite consuming the same amount of food as the non-infected controls, chickens infected with Ad-37 had nearly three times as much fat in their guts and more than two times as much fat over their entire body. The results bolster the controversial hypothesis that certain strains of human and avian adenoviruses cause contagious weight gain by making the body produce more individual fat cells.

-Kelly Robertson

Source: American Journal of Physiology

Fill ‘er up-with wood chips?

A report in Science last month proposes that biofuels could meet 30 per cent of America’s transportation fuel needs. It suggests that a wide spectrum of “energy crops” be used to produce them: agricultural wastes, fast-growing poplar and willow trees, and switchgrass. The catch is it would take between five and ten years of “significant policy and technical effort,” in the words of one author, to get there.

-Mike Ghenu

Source: Science

‘I totally bombed that test!’

Looking on the bright side-not expecting the worst-may lessen the blow when hit with disappointment, say psychology researchers from Seattle Pacific University and the University of Washington. They used 80 college students to test how one’s outlook on life affected emotional reaction to disappointment. Students were given a set of moderately difficult word-association puzzles and, based on this, asked to gauge how well they expected to do on a second set of problems. Researchers then gave half the students questions that were easier than the first set, and half problems that were more difficult. When they were done, students filled out questionnaires measuring their emotional reaction. Researchers found that students who expected to do badly actually felt worse when they messed up than students who expected to do well, but messed up similarly.

-K.R.

Source: Nature