Coffee can help stay one alert for long hours. A team of Swimburne University of Techology (SUT) carried out the study by a new optical instrument.

Patterson said, “In our project we used the Australian-designed Optalert, which measures drowsiness by observing total duration of eye blinks and the ratio of amplitude and velocity of eye closure during blinking.”

London, Nov 2 : Want to get rid of those extra pounds? Well, then all you need to do is simply write down your daily food intake, for it can double your weight loss, according to a new study.

The study, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed 1,700 overweight people over six months, and revealed that those who wrote down everything they ate lost an average of 13lb.

London, Nov 2 : An hour''''s lie-in on Monday mornings can help cut the risk of having a heart attack, suggests a new study.

According to boffins, Mondays are a peak time for heart attacks due to the stress of the morning commute, the first workday of the week and fatigue from the weekend.

To reach the conclusion, the research team examined the number of heart attacks suffered in the week after the Spring and Autumn clock changes, compared to the same days of the week at other times.

After analysing, the research team found that the number of heart attacks increased in the days after the clocks went back in the Spring and decreased slightly on the Monday following the Autumn change when the clocks go forward by an hour.

London, Nov 2 : A ‘significant discovery’ by researchers at Cambridge University could help cure deadly brain tumours in kids, according to a new study.

The researchers have pinpointed a rearrangement of DNA present in around two-thirds of all cases of the most common brain tumours in five to 19-year-olds.

The most common type of brain tumour is pilocytic astrocytomas.

According to the researchers, the discovery could pave the way for creating better treatments and make diagnosis more accurate.

London, Nov 2 : Expecting mums will be warned not to drink more than two cups of coffee a day or risk giving birth to underweight babies, according to a health watchdog.

The British Government''s food standards watchdog will this week issue the guidance advising women to limit caffeine consumption to 200mg a day, a third less than the previous recommended limit of 300mg.

The warning follows a US study earlier this year that linked caffeine consumption to a higher rate of miscarriages.

The advice from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) comes a week after scientists found that a weekly glass of wine during pregnancy could help improve a baby''s behaviour and vocabulary.

Washington, November 1 : A team of American scientists claims to have uncovered an important step in hormone-triggered bone growth, paving the way for new osteoporosis drugs and better bone-building therapies.

The research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) showed that parathyroid hormone (PTH) given intermittently enhances the body''s own bone-building action through a specific "co-receptor" on the surface of bone cells.

While scientists have known for long that PTH stimulates bone formation, the exact mechanism underlying this effect has been unknown to date.