Playing with blocks helps children with language, says a study

Playing with blocks helps young children gain language skills, a small study concluded onMonday. After six months, language scores among half of 175 children aged 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 who were sent plastic blocks were 15 percent higher than a matched group that did not receive the free blocks, according to the study by researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Biologists aim to wipe out “Rat Island”

Two centuries after rats first landed on a remote Aleutian island from a shipwreck, wildlife managers in Alaska are plotting how to evict the non-native rodent from the island that bears their name. Rat Island, like many other treeless, volcanic islands in the 1,609-km long Aleutian chain, is infested with rats that have proved devastating to wild birds that build nests in the earth or in rocky cliffs.

Not all types of fat are harmful

While it has long been held that too much fat in the liver may result in diabetes, researchers appear to have discovered that not all types of fat are harmful. Writing in the latest issue of Nature Medicine, a group of Japanese scientists described how they changed the fat composition in the livers of mutant mice and fed them exactly the same rich, fatty diet as other mice.

Sushi craze threatens giant tuna

Fishermen like Diego

Crespo have trapped the giant tuna swarming into the warm Mediterranean for over 3,000 years, but he says this year may be one of his last. Japanese demand for its fatty flesh to make sushi has sparked a fishing frenzy for the Atlantic bluefin tuna—a torpedo-shaped brute weighing up to half a tonne that can accelerate faster than a Porsche 911.