iStockphoto/Thinkstock(BOSTON)  -- Binge drinking has become a bigger problem for college females than for their male classmates, according to new research.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest says 44 percent of students at four-year colleges at some time drink alcohol at binge levels. But a new study from Harvard Medical School finds female students are more likely to exceed weekly alcohol limits than males.

For the study, researchers at Harvard's Center for Addiction looked at nearly a thousand students at three New England universities during their first year at college. They found the women exceeded their recommended limit of no more than three drinks a day and seven per week more frequently than the men outdid their limit. For males, the recommendation is no more than four drinks a day and seven per week. In fact, women were 1.57 times as likely as men to exceed weekly limits, and exceeded those limits for 15 percent of the weeks.  For men, it was 12 percent of the weeks.

And while the men's drinking declined over time, the women's drinking did not.

The study authors warn that women who do not grow out of this drinking behavior after they leave college increase their risk for liver disease and breast cancer as they age.

This study's findings have been published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(PITTSBURGH) -- Sleep. It occupies about one-third of our lives. We need it for our mental and physical health, and for our survival.

Compared with other health behaviors such as smoking or exercise, sleep is unique because for most adults, it is a behavior they “share” with a partner.  But according to studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Psychological Association, sharing a bed doesn’t always produce sweet dreams.

Research by Wendy Troxel, a clinical psychologist and behavioral scientist at the nonprofit RAND Corporation and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues found that for men, poor sleep predicts more negative interactions with his partner the next day.  For women, the converse was true: How she interacts with her partner during the day predicts how soundly she sleeps at night.  In other words, for women, marital strife can lead to a sleepless night; for men, a sleepless night can lead to marital strife. Taken together, these interactions can create a vicious cycle, potentially increasingly poor sleep and distressed relationships.

Despite the fact that most adults share their bed with a partner, and that sleep problems and relationship problems co-occur, only a handful of studies have investigated how sleeping together affects the sleep of both partners.

Evidence from these studies suggests that there may be costs to sharing a bed with a partner. That is, on nights when couples sleep together, they tend to have more fragmented or restless sleep than nights when they sleep alone. Some evidence suggests that these consequences are stronger for women. On the other hand, people generally prefer to sleep with a partner and believe that they sleep better when sharing a bed.

So why do we prefer to share our beds when, at least by objective measures, we tend to sleep better alone? Looking to our evolutionary past may help answer this question.

Sleep is a universal and essential health behavior, but it is also extraordinarily dangerous from an evolutionary perspective. Think about it: Sleep occurs while a person is lying down, in a semi-conscious state, and highly vulnerable to potential threats from the environment. But it is nearly impossible to fall asleep if you are feeling unsafe or insecure.

Humans are inherently social beings, and we derive a sense of safety and security from our social environment. This fundamental need for safety and security at night may explain why we generally prefer to sleep with another human being, even when sharing a bed may not always result in the best quality sleep.

Humans may no longer depend on sharing a bed to protect them from harm in the hostile environment of our evolutionary past. But focusing on the potentially adverse consequences of sleeping with another may obscure the importance of stable, good-quality relationships for healthy sleep.

For example, some research has indicated that women in stable, long-term relationships have better quality sleep than their unpartnered counterparts, and women who are in highly satisfying relationships have lower rates of insomnia than those in distressed relationships.

Should couples sleep together or sleep apart? The answer may be … it depends.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Couples need to decide what works best for them and consider how to optimize their sleep as well as their time together so that they can be the best possible partner for their loved one.

Ultimately, the time couples spend together before falling asleep may be the most important time for connecting, being intimate and just being “alone together” without all of the other distractions of the day.  Whether couples sleep in the same bed or separate beds, they need not give up on that important and satisfying pre-sleep time together. Perhaps the real benefits of “sleeping together” are realized in the precious lull before sleep comes.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Tracy & Kevin Keegan(NEW YORK) -- In the year since the death of 23-year-old activist/writer Marina Keegan in a car crash, her mother said the power of her daughter's words sustain her and continue to inspire others in the art world and beyond.

"My daughter totally inspired me and moved me," Tracy Keegan, 55, of Wayland, Mass., told ABC News. "Her words are how she will live on, and it's really important to me."

Marina had just graduated from Yale University, where her prophetic and inspirational essay, "The Opposite of Loneliness," appeared in a special graduation issue of the campus newspaper.

After her death on May 26, 2012, the celebrated writer's haunting words: "We're so young. We're so young. We're 22 years old. We have so much time" went viral.

Marina and her boyfriend, Michael Gocksch, were driving to the Keegan's summer house in Wellfleet, Mass., when the car hit a guard rail and spun across the road, rolling over twice. He survived, but she died instantly.

"It's been an unbelievably hard journey for all of us and of course, Michael," she said. "I am plodding along -- she would not want us to stop living. But it's unbelievably hard and Mother's Day was tough."

In the months since, Tracy and her husband Kevin Keegan, a cyber threat specialist, and their two sons, 18 and 26, have received hundreds of messages from around the world.

"Her words actually pushed people to make positive changes in their world view -- not only in their head, but their actions," said Keegan. "That to me is her legacy. As her mother, I really feel that my daughter continues her work as long as her words reach people."

And now Marina's sense of optimism and social justice will be memorialized in the national premier of her play, Utility Monster, at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater -- opening on the anniversary weekend of her death.

The play, written while she was a sophomore at Yale, is about two idealistic 15-year-olds who realize that 35,000 children die of hunger each day, and for only the price of a lunch at Taco Bell, two could be saved.

"This is a play that can change lives," said Dan Lombardo, artistic director for the theater, who met Kevin Keegan by accident and learned his daughter was a playwright. He asked to see the script.

"I knew immediately I was reading someone who was extra-gifted," said Lombardo. "I get hundreds of scripts a year from well-known playwrights ...It's rare that a play comes in this brilliant."

The car accident hit the small Cape Cod community "so hard," he said. "It just leaves us utterly bereft, and I cannot imagine what it is like for a parent to lose a child -- and then turn it around in a way that we have something tangible we can do to celebrate her genius."

Utility Monster was written while Marina was at Yale and produced in 2011 by the Yale Dramatic Association (DRAMAT), the first student show in four years.

Throughout her college years, she had been mentored by playwrights Donald Margulies and Deborah Margolin. Writer and critic Harold Bloom considered her an "unofficial granddaughter," according to the family.

Just before her death, Marina had been offered a full-time job on the editorial staff at The New Yorker.

Marina's musical, Independents, also written at Yale, won best overall production at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2012 as well as a New York Times Critics Award.

Additionally, a collection of Marina's writings will be published by Scribner and proceeds will go to creating a foundation for causes aligned with her passion for art and activism, according to Keegan.

Marina's former high school, Buckingham Browne and Nicols, has established a summer fellowship in her name that will inspire students to explore "artistic pursuits or activist causes." And Yale established its first playwright award, the Marina Keegan Award for Excellence in Playwriting.

At both schools, awardees have already been named.

"We did not want an entire school year to go by without having our daughter's spirit continue to breathe through the acts and deeds of others," said Keegan. "This is what helps heal me."

Marina cared about whales (and wrote about it), the legalization of same-sex marriage, the decriminalization of marijuana and helping college-bound undocumented immigrants realize their dreams, according to her parents.

She was active in the Yale Democrats and the Occupy Morgan Stanley campaign.

Her mother said she, too, had been inspired by her daughter, who, like her younger brother Pierce, 18, was born with Celiac disease.

She volunteers with her son's charity, Pierce's Pantry, a gluten-free food bank. Their goal is to partner with national organizations to provide allergy-free foods for disaster relief.

Marina's father, Kevin Keegan, said the year since his daughter's death had been like an "emotional roller coaster."

"Regardless of what your son or daughter has accomplished, it's the same for any parent who loses a child," said Kevin Keegan, 56. "It's just horrible and what I've realized is that it happens every day to somebody."

Keegan said Marina would likely have not liked all the attention on her post mortem successes.

"She is looking down and laughing, 'Have you had enough now, Dad?'" said Keegan. "She never allowed anyone to brag about her accomplishments."

One of the last times he saw his daughter, Keegan told her how proud he was of her. "She said, 'I am going to live for love -- the rest will take care of itself.' That was her philosophy." "More than anything, she was a great daughter and a lot of fun to be with," he said. "She was a comet who shone very brightly, then she was gone."

Utility Monster will open at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre on May 25.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Jennifer Bathgate, a mother of three boys, is called “Cake-zilla” by her husband.

Bathgate’s elaborate, over-the-top cakes for her sons’ birthdays and celebrations have featured everything from Elmo to Cookie Monster to a soccer ball to a subway train to a Star Wars cake featuring Darth Vader.

While not every mom can create cakes like Bathgate’s, every mom can see photos of them online, along with other moms’ hand-sewn Halloween costumes for their kids or homemade Valentine’s Day treats for all their children’s classmates.

Parents’ ultra-sharing in today’s social media world on sites like Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter, just to name a few, is creating another opportunity and, some say, a new struggle for parents, especially moms.

“Definitely, there’s that mom competition,” Leslie Venokur, co-founder of Big City Moms, a support group for new mothers, told ABC News of the handiwork being displayed on mommy blogs and Pinterest boards.

“There’s that, ‘I saw this cake on Pinterest.  I’m going to make it,’” Venokur said.  “And then at the next birthday party, ‘I saw this one.  I’m going to one-up you.’”

The online deluge of photographs and descriptions of such “perfect” moments can be inspiring for some moms, but intimidating for others.

“It can make some women feel like they’re not enough,” one New York City mom said.

“A lot of people do put a lot of pressure on themselves to be this new mom who is kind of a superhero,” another said.

Jenna Andersen, a mother of two in California, grew so frustrated by not being able to recreate the perfect-looking posts she saw on Pinterest that she launched Pinterest Fail, a website where people can post photos of how their do-it-yourself attempts actually turned out.

The website has the tagline, “Where good intentions come to die.”

“We need these areas where we can gather together and say, ‘My life isn’t perfect and neither is yours and I’m perfectly happy with that,’” said Andersen, who also writes the blog That Wife.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Photodisc/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Misty Shaffer has struggled with weight all her life.  When her husband was deployed to Afghanistan for a year, the Leland, N.C., woman decided to use his absence to re-commit herself to losing weight so she could surprise him when he came home.

In the year that Army Spc. Larry Shaffer was gone on his second deployment abroad, his wife changed the way she ate.  She switched to whole grains, ate mainly fruits, vegetables and lean meats, drank lots of water and controlled her portion sizes.

She also limited her food intake, going from eating about 2,000 calories a day to now eating about 1,200 calories.

Misty, who wore a size 20 then, watched the pounds melt away.  At her heaviest, she weighed 315 pounds, but she tipped the scales at 250 pounds when she started counting her calories in June.  When her husband came home last Wednesday, she weighed 154 pounds.

She now wears sizes 7 through 9, she said.

“In the beginning, the first couple of months (were) hard because I guess, people telling me the cleansing of the body because you’re still wanting that sugar, you’re still craving that stuff, and now it’s a lot easier,” the 24-year-old mother told ABC News.  “Whenever I go grocery shopping it’s like, I crave the healthy stuff over the non-healthy stuff.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I do have a piece of cake here and there or whatever, but it’s just the size of it and how often I do it.”

Misty, who works as a personal grocery shopper, said she didn’t do any exercise beyond going to work and taking care of her 3-year-old daughter, Nevaeh.

When Larry got off the plane on Wednesday, he was stunned by his wife’s weight loss.  She had been standing behind a crowd of friends and family who had gathered to welcome him home, and when the crowd parted, Larry got his first look at his newly slender wife.

“All he did was ‘wow,’” Misty recalled, adding: “All he can tell me is he so proud of me and he loved me before, no matter what...he’s always seen me as beautiful.  But he said whatever makes me happy makes him happy.”

In the year that the Shaffers were apart, they would Skype and Misty would send her husband pictures of their daughter and of herself -- but she made sure that her images only showed her from the neck up.  Her friends and family helped keep the secret, too.

“When they took pictures they would either edit them to where it was just shoulder up or didn’t post them or either they blocked him to where he couldn’t see it,” she said.

Misty said she’s happy with her success. “I’m still like really conscious about my body but with clothes on and stuff I feel like I look good,” she said.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

iStockphoto(OXFORD, England) -- Bad at math? A new study by researchers at Oxford University suggests that applying high-frequency electrical noise to the brain can make you better at math for up to six months following treatment.

According to BBC News, 51 Oxford students participated in the small study appearing in Current Biology. Over a five-day period the students had to complete two arithmetic problems each day. Half were given transcranial random noise stimulation, or TRNS.

Six months later, the group that had received the TRNS preformed much better when asked to solve math problems than the control group.

Dr Roi Cohen Kadosh, study author from the department of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, explained that the results “suggested that TRNS increases the efficiency with which stimulated brain areas use their supplies of oxygen and nutrients."

Dr Michael Proulx, senior lecturer in psychology at Bath University, told BBC News that using TRNS this was could have "real, applied impact," and could help those with learning disabilities or who are suffering from a stroke or other neurodegenerative illness.

Experts stress, however, that more testing is required before the practice becomes widespread, so don’t expect to hear math teachers telling students to put away their TRNS machines before tests anytime soon.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Jupiterimages/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Over the past ten years, the rate of mental health disorders in American children has been rising, according to a new study.

Between 13 and 20 percent of children have experienced a mental disorder, says the study, published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Those figures were based on surveillance data from a number of federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control, gathered between 1994 and 2011.

The data from 2010 showed that the second leading cause of death among children between the ages of 12 and 17 was suicide. Additionally, mood disorders were the most frequent diagnosis for hospitalized children in the United States.

Among the most prevalent mental disorders in American children were ADHD, behavioral or conduct problems, anxiety and depression.

The CDC concluded that comprehensive surveillance is needed to prevent mental disorders and promote mental health for children.

Statistics from 2010 showed that children were hospitalized for mental disorders at a rate of 17 hospital stays per 10,000 population, up 80 percent from 1997.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Mini-movies of growing embryos could help boost the success of in vitro fertilization, a new study found. But the number of women who could benefit from the time-lapse technology is unclear.

For the study, British researchers used time-lapse photography to track the earliest stage of embryonic development – a process that unfolds in womb-mimicking incubators for couples using IVF. The researchers then used an algorithm to spot the embryos most likely to grow into babies.

"Embryo selection based predominantly on specific time-lapse derived algorithms could rapidly become routine in IVF treatment," the study authors wrote in the journal Reproductive BioMedicine Online, describing how the healthiest-looking embryos had a 72.7 percent chance of leading to a pregnancy and a 61.1 percent chance of resulting in a live birth.

Embryos deemed to look less healthy by the time-lapse technique had a 25.5 percent chance of leading to a pregnancy and 19.2 percent of resulting in a live birth, according to the study.

But the study was small, with only 69 couples, and some experts say many women lack the luxury of choice when it comes to embryo implantation.

"A lot of the time, we don't have that many embryos to choose from," said Dr. James Goldfarb, director of the University Hospitals Fertility Center in Cleveland and past president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies, who was not involved in the study.

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An IVF cycle starts with a woman taking drugs to stimulate the production of multiple eggs. After about two weeks, the eggs are collected and fertilized. Then, the resulting embryos are grown in a lab for up to five days, depending on how many there are and how healthy they look.

The more healthy embryos there are, the more likely an embryologist will watch them for five days to let the weakest die off, leaving the strongest behind. The pregnancy rate for women under 35 with day 5 embryo transfers is 69 percent, compared to 57 percent for women with day 3 transfers, according to data from the Cleveland Clinic's IVF Laboratory.

"For some patients, you might get 15 eggs, and maybe 13 will fertilize and you have enough embryos that look good on day 3 to go out to day 5 without a problem," said Goldfarb. "But at the other end of spectrum, you might have a patient with only six or seven eggs, only three or four get fertilized, and by day 3, you only have two that look reasonable."

In that case, Goldfarb added, "it's better to transfer them on day 3."

The number of embryos transferred depends on the woman's age. But for women 35 and under, it's typically one or two, according to Goldfarb. So if only one or two embryos are thriving on implantation day, there's not much of a choice.

But the new study raises an interesting possibility for women with multiple embryos to choose from. Based on time-lapse imaging, the researchers were able to weed out embryos with an abnormal number of chromosomes – embryos that would likely fail to implant in the womb or result in a miscarriage. None of the embryos deemed the least healthy by the time-lapse technique resulted in a pregnancy or a live birth, according to the study.

"In some ways, it's more of a negative to get pregnant and miscarry," said Goldfarb. "That rollercoaster can be much more traumatic than not getting pregnant at all."

But the study does not break down the couples' ages and explain how that might have impacted their IVF success rate, noting only that they ranged in age from 25 to 47 with an average age of 36. Nor does it detail how long the embryos were observed in culture before being transferred into the womb, instead indicating that they were "cultured until 5 or 6 days" after fertilization. And while the study does suggest that technology can help in the embryo selection process, experts say the decision to undergo IVF and the odds of being successful vary from couple to couple.

"Obviously, the goal is to pick out the best embryos, and this study is certainly not the first to look at this technique," said Goldfarb, explaining how similar studies have found mixed results. "It's something still in play, and we'll how this sorts out in long run."

"But I think the one thing patients want to hear is your best assessment of their individual chance of getting pregnant," he added. "And you can get a pretty good estimate of that based on their age and some other characteristics."

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio