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A memory center in the brain called the hippocampus shrinks a little bit each year with age, but older adults who walked routinely for a year actually gained hippocampus volume, researchers report in a study to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, 60 adults aged 55 to 80 scaled up gradually until they walked for 40 minutes three times a week, enough to get their heart rates up. Sixty other participants did toning workouts that included weight training, yoga sessions and stretching for the same amount of time. After a year of toning, a part of these subjects’ brains called the anterior hippocampus lost a little over 1 percent of its volume. In contrast, a year of aerobic exercise led to about a 2 percent increase in anterior hippocampus volume. Study participants who got their heart rates up performed slightly better on a memory test and had higher levels of a brain-aiding molecule called BDNF, the researchers found.

Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.

The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

The payoff for investing in public parks and recreation sites may be healthier, more physically fit residents and a less strained health care system, according to Penn State researchers. Investments in parks and recreational services have a dramatic effect on health and fitness

spending an extra $10 per person on park and recreational facilities provided more vigorous exercise for girls and better strength-building for both sexes

there was an increase of 17 more minutes of physical activity for each park within a half mile of a home

Canada’s guidelines on sedentary activity (an oxymoron to be sure) released last week say children should spend no more than two hours a day in front of a TV, videogame or computer screen.

Only 7 per cent of children meet Canada’s physical activity guidelines. (Adults don’t fare much better at 15 per cent.)

That's the idea behind this year's "Be Healthy Delaware: Get Up & Move!" fitness challenge, presented by the Delaware Center for Health Promotion and The News Journal. The goal is for participants to log 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week for 10 weeks. Collectively, the goal is 5 million minutes in motion.All types of activities will be considered -- and encouraged -- including walking, running, biking, swimming, dancing, basketball, tennis, hiking, indoor rock climbing, even mowing the lawn. The key is to find activities that will get you moving."We're trying to get away from that word 'exercise' because it connotes some negative thoughts -- that you have to be athletic, super fit, young," said Marianne Carter, a registered dietitian and director of the Delaware Center for Health Promotion at Delaware State University in Dover. "People do have set ways of thinking when they hear the word 'exercise,' so using the term 'movement' tends to be friendlier."

Public bicycle sharing schemes such as Barcelona's "Bicing" program or London's "Boris Bikes" save lives and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study on Friday.

Researchers at the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona found in a study, however, that around 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide pollution are averted and some 12 lives saved each year by Barcelona's scheme, which was introduced in March 2007.

From this they estimated the number of deaths associated with traveling by bike compared with driving for three main factors -- physical activity, road traffic incidents and exposure to air pollution. They also estimated the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.Looking at the Barcelona "Bicing" scheme, they calculated an annual increase of 0.13 deaths from air pollution and 0.03 deaths from traffic accidents among cyclists compared with car users.But as a result of high levels of physical activity, 12.46 deaths were avoided, making a total of 12.28 deaths avoided among cyclists every year, the researchers said. They also estimated a reduction in carbon emissions of over 9 million kg or 9,000 tons per year, the equivalent to flying 1,800 people to Sydney and back from london.The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends adults should do at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week and says this could be done by walking for 30 minutes five times per week or by cycling to work every day.

A big new article in the Journal Of The American Heart Association seems to have a little good news for everyone, and maybe the most for women who are heavy exercisers. Distance running reduces heart-attack risks. The article, a meta-analysis of past studies, is the first paper to quantify the dose-response relationship between leisure time physical activity (i.e., exercise as opposed to walking around on the job) and heart disease.

men and women who perform 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week have, on average, a 14 percent lower risk of heart disease than similar groups who perform virtually no exercise. If you exercise 300 minutes a week, your risk reduction increases to 20 percent. At 750 minutes, the risk reduction is about 25 percent.

Exercise helped women prevent heart disease more than it did men, particularly at high exercise levels. The researchers admitted they could not explain this differential. They also, thank goodness, converted their findings from minutes of exercise per week to calories burned during exercise per week. Since many runners burn about 100 calories per mile covered, it's easy to turn your weekly mileage into weekly calories burned. For example, if you run about 20 miles a week, that's about 2000 calories burned.