Washington, Mar 26 : President Barack Obama’s decision to deploy an additional 17,000 troops in Afghanistan is part of a strategy to shift the centre of gravity in favour of the Americans.

The United States is taking unabashed ownership of the Afghan war after years cooperation with NATO and resentment over unequal burden sharing, the Washington Post reports.

Obama’s decision to deploy an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan this year will bring the number of foreign troops there to nearly 90,000, more than two-thirds of them Americans.

Washington, Mar 26 : Insomnia has previously been linked to poor health, including weight gain. Now, a new study has revealed why.

Sarosh Motivala, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and colleagues looked at two hormones that are primarily responsible for regulating the body''s energy balance, telling the body when it is hungry and when it is full.

They found that chronic insomnia disrupts one of these two hormones.

Washington, Mar 26 : Morbidly obese people are likely to remain sedentary for more than 99 percent of the day, leading to poor fitness and increased cardiovascular risk, according to a new study.

Morbidly obese individuals are those, whose body mass indexes are between 40.0 and 49.9.

On average, they walked less than 2,500 steps per day – far below healthy living guidelines of 10,000 steps per day.

London, Mar 26 : A US Defence Department report has said that China is developing “disruptive” technologies for nuclear, space and cyber warfare, resulting in the shifting of military balance in Asia which would have implications beyond the region.

The Pentagon report criticises Beijing again for showing no transparency in reporting on its military spending and security policy, but welcomed the rise of a peaceful, stable and prosperous China.

The report comes after a confrontation between US and Chinese ships in South China Sea, during which China accused the US of spying.

Washington, March 26 : In a new research, scientists have suggested that the lizards’ tail-shedding ability has been shaped mainly because of pressure from venomous vipers, which are the number one enemy of the wall-crawling reptiles.

Tail-shedding, known to scientists as caudal autotomy, is a common anti-predator defense among lizards.

When attacked, many lizards jettison the wriggling appendage and flee. The predator often feasts on the tail while the lucky lizard scurries to safety. Later, the lizard simply grows a new tail.

Washington, Mar 26 : Researchers at Medical College of Georgia have found that circadian clocks that set the rhythmic motion of our bodies for wakeful days and sleepy nights can also set us up for vascular disease when broken.

During the study, they found that mice with mutated or missing ‘clock’ genes were prone to thick, inflexible blood vessels with narrow passageways, unhealthy changes typically associated with risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol.