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This is SCIENCE IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English. I'm Bob Doughty.

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And I'm Barbara Klein. This week -- research into eating fish as a possible way to help save eyesight in older people.

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A study says moderate coffee drinking may reduce the risk of some diseases.

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Muhammad Ali enters the snack food business, but the aim is to help overweight young people.

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And if you are listening to us on a personal computer, get ready to wish the P.C. a happy birthday on Saturday.

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Two studies are suggesting ways to reduce the risk of age-related macular degeneration. A.M.D. is the main cause of blindness among older adults. It affects the macula, the part of the eye that lets you see in detail. The disease makes seeing less and less clear and in time leads to blindness.

One study found that cigarette smokers were almost two times as likely to develop A.M.D. as people who did not smoke. Researchers with the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary organized the study. Their findings appeared in the Archives of Ophthalmology.

The study involved men with twin brothers, almost seven hundred individuals. The average age was about seventy-five.

The men were asked questions about their diet and history of cigarette smoking, alcohol use and physical activity. Some of the men already had age-related macular degeneration.

The study found that the men who ate more fish, even those who smoked cigarettes, were less likely to develop A.M.D. Those who ate more than two meals a week containing fish were the least likely to develop the disease.

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A second study produced similar results. It found that people who ate at least one meal containing fish each week were forty-percent less likely to develop A.M.D.

Researchers with the University of Sydney in Australia studied information on almost three thousand people. Each person was forty-nine years of age or older. They were asked about their diet and medical history, and then tested for the disease after five years.

The results of both studies have not yet been confirmed. But they do show a possible link between eating fish and prevention of age-related macular degeneration.

Researchers say the best fish to eat are those high in omega-three fatty acids, like salmon and mackerel. Some people take fish oil supplements or eat foods, like flax seeds and walnuts, that also have them.

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Many people drink coffee to quickly increase their energy levels. Researchers from Norway and the United States say there may be another reason to drink coffee. They found that drinking moderate amounts of coffee each day may help protect against some health problems, including heart disease.

The findings were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. David Jacobs of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis worked on the study with researchers from the University of Oslo. He says the findings suggest there may be health reasons for drinking coffee.

The researchers studied the link between coffee drinking and risk of death from heart disease, cancer and other diseases that involve inflammation of tissue.

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The researchers used information about nearly forty-two thousand women. The women were between fifty-five and sixty-nine years of age when they entered the study.

The researchers removed some of the women from consideration because of their condition. Those removed already had heart disease, cancer, diabetes, colitis or liver cirrhosis . As a result, the number of women studied dropped to twenty-seven thousand three hundred. During a fifteen-year period, almost four thousand three hundred of them died.

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