It's no secret that stress isn't good for you. But what's less clear is how social stressors like a high-pressure job or a failing marriage affect your physical well-being. Researchers at Wake Forest University who study stress in monkeys think they may have discovered a clue: fat. More specifically, the particular form of fat called visceral fat that tends to build up in the abdomen . Researchers believe this abdominal fat lodges deep within visceral organs, such as ...

Losing weight isn't easy, and it's harder still when your genes are working against you. But a new study by University of Maryland researchers shows that even people with a genetic predisposition to gain weight can exert some control over how big they get. Led by Dr. Soren Snitker at the University of Maryland and his postdoctoral fellow, Evadnie Rampersaud, who is now at the University of Miami, the team studied 704 Amish men and women. Although the Amish ...

Opposition candidates are charging fraud in Indonesia's election, which President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono won by a more than two-to-one edge over his nearest challenger. Yudhoyono won 60.8 percent of the vote, compared with 26.8 percent for former President Megawati Sukarnoputri and 12.4 percent for Vice President Yusuf Kalla, according to numbers released Friday by Indonesia's National Election Commission. The votes were counted under heavy security after the terrorist attacks on two Jakarta hotels July 17. Police blocked off the road ...

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey. More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & ...

The Pulitzer Prize winners for 2009 were announced Monday, with The New York Times capturing five of the awards. The Times garnered wins in the categories of breaking news reporting, investigative reporting, international reporting, criticism and feature photography. In the arts, "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout won for fiction, "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" by Douglas A. Blackmon won in the general nonfiction category, and "American Lion: Andrew ...