Minor manipulations of a mother's diet can hugely affect the lifespan of her children, suggests a new study of mice. "At the two extremes we looked at, the dietary changes increased the difference in lifespan by more than 50 per cent," says Susan Ozanne, who performed the research with Nicholas Hales at Cambridge University, UK. "In humans, this could equate to the difference between reaching 50 and living to be 75 years old," she says. The research joins existing evidence that maternal diets in humans can have a life-long impact. NewScientist