Short fasts do not impair thinking ability in healthy adults
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 15-Nov-2025 12:11 ET (15-Nov-2025 17:11 GMT/UTC)
Skipping breakfast or practicing intermittent fasting is unlikely to cloud most adults’ thinking in the short term, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
According to data from the National Statistics Institute, 24 million school transport journeys take place in Spain every year. A team of professors from the Universitat Jaume I of Castelló has conducted a study showing that the time students spend traveling to their schools, especially on long bus rides, can negatively affect their academic engagement. This lower engagement can also have emotional and social consequences.
The data revealed that students who spend more time commuting report lower engagement than those who arrive sooner. Engagement is understood as the student’s involvement or connection with their academic goals, and it comprises three different but interrelated dimensions: affective-emotional, cognitive and behavioral. In the case of secondary and upper secondary students, it is important to consider that they face numerous challenges, which require developing skills and competencies that enhance their learning, an aspect closely linked to academic engagement.
“We believe they experience a more negative relationship with their place of study, which may affect their interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers (affective-emotional engagement), their psychological involvement in the teaching and learning process—such as motivation to learn, expectations, or the effort to understand complex ideas and skills (cognitive engagement)—and their overall participation and effort (behavioral engagement)”, the researchers explain.
HIV can throw the body clock off balance, leaving many people living with the virus in a constant state of “jet lag,” according to a new study in The Lancet HIV involving Wits University researchers.
The study—co-authored by Professors Xavier Gómez-Olivé and Karine Scheuermaier—found that people living with HIV (PLWHIV) experience higher rates of fragmented, non-restorative sleep even when their virus is well controlled. These disruptions are linked to increased risks of heart disease, depression, and cognitive decline. The study identifies biological and social contributors—from immune activation and treatment side effects to stress, stigma, and unsafe environments—and proposes a four-step clinical pathway that any healthcare provider can apply.
Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) linguists have analysed murals in Lithuania’s second-largest city as elements of a “linguistic landscape” – a concept that views language as both visual and spatial. Their study reveals that street art in Kaunas acts as a form of cultural activism and collective memory, blending languages, images, and historical narratives.
New findings underscore the importance of regular social interactions in life, shedding light on the strong link between loneliness and sustained social isolation to memory decline and conditions such as dementia, and why social and memory impairments often co-occur in psychiatric disorders.