New York: Kids who live in neighborhoods with heavy traffic pollution have lower IQs and score worse on other tests of intelligence and memory than children who breathe cleaner air, a new study shows. The effect of pollution on intelligence was similar to that seen in children whose mothers smoked 10 cigarettes a day while pregnant, or in kids who have been exposed to lead, Dr Shakira Franco Suglia of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, the study's lead author, said.

Indians just don't quit, especially when it comes to smoking. According to the first nationally representative case control study of smoking and death in India, only 2% of adults were found to have quit smoking in the country. However, almost 90% of them did so after they had developed serious diseases. In comparison, China, which a decade back had similar cessation rate among smokers like India, has greatly improved to almost 10%. India's eastern neighbour Bangladesh too is better off with nearly 8% of smokers giving up smoking annually.

The Influenza Foundation of India (IFI), an advisory body to bring awareness on the disease as also its prevention and control, has issued several recommendations to curb the ill-effects of seasonal influenza, especially during the avian flu outbreak.

To lose weight, bin the diet cola. That's the message from studies showing rats got fatter on diets containing artificial sweeteners than on those with sugar.

Americans are fond of complaining that they are "born free and taxed to death'. A new report from WHO recommends a public policy that would increase one particular form of taxation even further

Campaigners against airport expansion have some new evidence to support their case. A study of 140 people living near four European airports concludes that loud night-time noise raises blood pressure, even when people are asleep.

It is well known that when the dangers of smoking became increasingly obvious in the 1950s, tobacco companies funded scientific research aimed at downplaying the risks. Now, a little-known strand of that campaign, aimed at giving an intellectual gloss to pro-smoking arguments, has been detailed for the first time.

Nano could spell further privatisation of transport, more traffic congestion and pollution, and

At least 435 workers including 61 women were killed and 1,176 injured in different types of occupational accidents and violence in workplaces across the country in 2007, said the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies in Dhaka on Thursday. Of them, 291 workers were killed and 550 injured, mostly in occupational accidents last year, said BILS while revealing an annual survey report at a press conference at its office.

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