Washington, Mar 13 : Forget forcing yourself into gruelling exercise regime to shed those extra pounds, for a diet rich in calcium is more than enough to spur weight loss, say researchers.

A research team led by Angelo Tremblay from Universite Laval''s Faculty of Medicine boosting calcium intake can aid in losing weight, but only in people whose diets are calcium deficient.

During the study, the team conducted a 15-week weight loss program on obese women.

Washington, March 13 : Wellcome Trust scientists in Britain say that it may be possible to "read" a person's memories just by looking at his/her brain activity, as a study conducted by them has shown that memories are recorded in the regular patterns.

Demis Hassabis and Professor Eleanor Maguire at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London (UCL) say that their study has shown that how the hippocampus-a small brain area which is crucial for navigation, memory recall and imagining future events-records memory.

Rome  - A retired Serie B footballer has said he contracted amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a nervous-system disease with an unusually high incidence among former Italian players.

Italian media reported Thursday that Stefano Turchi, 40, a forward with Ancona between 1990 and 1992 has suffered from ALS since 2005.

Turchi, in an interview with the Ancona-based newspaper Corriere Adriatico, said he considers himself lucky to have been hit by a less aggressive form of the illness that still allows him to talk and walk.

Washington, March 12 : A reduction in salt consumption by people may help decrease the incidences of death, say researchers.

Making a presentation at the American Heart Association's 49th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention, University of California-San Francisco researchers said that for every gram of salt that people reduce in their diets daily, a quarter of a million fewer new heart disease cases and over 200,000 fewer deaths would occur over a decade.

Washington, Mar 12: A well-known enzyme linked with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and stroke has now been found to help create and maintain the brain, according to scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

After selectively disabling the enzyme AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) in mouse embryos, it was found that the overall brain size was reduced by 50 percent, the cerebrum and cerebellum were shrunken, and the mice died within three weeks of birth.

London, Mar 12: Their dishes may taste divine, but a new report has claimed that celebrity chefs such as Nigella Lawson and Gordon Ramsay are cooking up a recipe for heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

A panel of dietary experts who assessed some of the most popular celebrity cookbooks criticized the chefs for serving up dishes high in saturated fat.

From analyses, judges found that many contained recipes with more than 100 per cent of the recommended daily amount of saturated fat in a single serving.

The study, carried out by The Fat Panel, an independent group of experts in areas such as nutrition, public health and pharmacy, found that the sticky toffee pudding by Gordon Ramsay accounted for 115 per cent.