Laura Middleton says other studies of exercise and cognitive skills have found a stronger link in women than in men. Still, she says, there is no reason to suggest that the finding about teenage physical activity should not apply to men as well.

Now speaking of teenagers, they were the subject of another new study. It looked at the effects of a later start to the school day.

For the study, an independent high school in Rhode Island delayed morning classes from eight o'clock to eighty-thirty. The change affected about two hundred students in grades nine through twelve.

In online surveys, students reported feeling less sleepy during the day. They rated themselves as less depressed and more active in school. They also reported sleeping longer on school nights and making fewer tiredness-related visits to the school health center.

Judith Owens of the Hasbro Children's Hospital led the study. It appears in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

The study says class attendance improved. It also says teachers and sports coaches had resisted the change. And administrators had planned to return to the eight o'clock start time after the study. But students and teachers voted to keep the half-hour delay for another term.

And that's the VOA Special English Health Report. I'm Shirley Griffith.

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Includes reporting by Art Chimes