The present research used a preferential-reaching task to examine whether 9- and 11-month-olds (n=144) could infer the relative weights of two objects resting on a soft, compressible platform. Experiment 1 established that infants reached preferentially for the lighter of 2 boxes. In Experiments 2-4, infants saw 2 boxes identical except in weight resting on a cotton wool platform. Infants reach...

Attention is drawn to a particularly dangerous party activity. Balloons filled with lighter gas so as to float are used for party decorations. A case of hand burn caused by accidentally lighting such a balloon with a cigarette is reported. The method is strongly advised against, it is a much better idea to use helium for such purposes.

Accurate weight perception is important particularly in tasks where the user has to apply vertical forces to ensure safe landing of a fragile object or precise penetration of a surface with a probe. Moreover, depending on physical properties of objects such as weight and size we may switch between unimanual and bimanual manipulation during a task. Research has shown that bimanual manipulation o...

OBJECTIVES Weight at birth is usually considered as an indicator of the health status of a given society. As a result this study was designed to investigate the association between birth weight and maternal factors such as gestational weight gain, pre-pregnancy BMI and socio-economic status in Northern Ghana. METHODS The study was a facility-based cross-sectional survey conducted in two distr...

This review explains the physiological involvement of calcium in overweight/obesity (as it is understood now) and presents some of the studies where this role has been documented, as well as those reporting no effect of Ca on body weight/composition. Based on much of the presently reported data, Ca and even more so dairy foods, might help in weight reduction/maintenance when combined with energ...

This study examined whether piglet distress vocalizations vary with age, body weight and health status, according to the predictions of the honest signalling of need evolutionary model. Vocalizations were recorded during manual squeezing (a simulation of being crushed by mother sow) and during isolation on Days 1 and 7 after birth in piglets from 15 litters. We predicted that during squeezing, ...

Postweaning growth and puberty traits were studied in 965 heifers produced by mating Hereford and Angus cows to Hereford, Angus, Jersey, South Devon, Limousin, Charolais and Simmental sires. Estrus was checked twice daily from 250 to either 480 or 510 days of age and age and weight at puberty were evaluated. Puberty was defined as date of first standing estrus. Charolais, Simmental and South De...

Pre-adult development time, dry weight at eclosion, and daily fecundity over the first 10 days of adult life were measured in five species of Drosophila from the melanogaster and immigrans species groups. Overall, the three species of the melanogaster group (D. melanogaster, D. ananassae, D. malerkotliana) developed faster, were lighter at eclosion, and produced more eggs per unit weight at ecl...