Did You Know?

Learn While You Sleep

Students really should get a good night's sleep after cramming for an exam. Sleep consolidates memories, say researchers who measured the brain activity of sleepers who had just learned a new skill. What you learn while you're awake, the researchers hypothesize, is altered, restructured, and strengthened during sleep.

Not All Juices are Created Equal

Taking grapefruit juice with popular cholesterol-lowering drugs such as Zocor and Lipitor can increase the risk of potentially life-threatening muscle toxicity, according to British regulators. Grapefruit juice contains a chemical that inhibits metabolism of certain drugs, leading to excessively high levels of medicine in the blood.

Staying the Course

Perhaps from the effects of long-term drinking, alcoholics are susceptible to making poor decisions; they choose short-term rewards without heeding long-term consequences. But encouragingly, new research shows they can compensate for this weakness and resist falling back into drinking.

3.5

The number of years by which life expectancy worldwide has been reduced because of obesity, according to demographer Jay Olshansky, of the University of Illinois in Chicago.