People watching the Super Bowl who saw how much they had already eaten -- in this case, leftover chicken-wing bones -- ate 27 percent less than people who had no such environmental cues, finds a new Cornell study.

Biomedical engineers are constantly coming up with ways to repair the human body, replacing defective and worn out parts with plastic, titanium, and ceramic substitutes – but the body does not always accept such substitutes seamlessly. Engineers from Brown and Purdue universities have found that simply changing the surface texture of implants can dramatically change the way cells colonize a wide variety of materials.

Planting and protecting trees—which trap and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow—can help to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But a new study suggests that, as a way to fight global warming, the effectiveness of this strategy depends heavily on where these trees are planted. In particular, tropical forests are very efficient at keeping the Earth at a happy, healthy temperature.

The study was published in an advance online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of April 9, 2007.

A study published in this week’s online edition of Environmental Health Perspectives reports that during the past thirty years, the number of male births has decreased each year in the U.S. and Japan. In a review of all births in both countries, the University of Pittsburgh-led study found significantly fewer boys being born relative to girls in the U.S. and Japan, and that an increasing proportion of fetuses that die are male. They note that the decline in births is equivalent to 135,000 fewer white males in the U.S. and 127,000 fewer males in Japan over the past three decades and suggest that environmental factors are one explanation for these trends.

Female stem cells derived from muscle have a greater ability to regenerate skeletal muscle tissue than male cells, according to a study at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC.

Pets may not be the only organisms endangered by some food additives. An arsenic-based additive used in chicken feed may pose health risks to humans who eat meat from chickens that are raised on the feed, according to an article in the April 9 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society.