The faster a child takes bites during a meal or snack, the greater risk they have for developing obesity, according to researchers in the Penn State Department of Nutritional Sciences. But research into this association is often limited to small studies in laboratory environments, largely because counting a child’s bite rate is difficult; it requires someone to watch videos of a child eating and manually record each bite.

A new study from The University of Texas at Arlington has revealed how cells control their mitochondria—the “energy producers” of cells—during the process of cell death. The discovery sheds light on how the body manages this essential function and what can go wrong when the process fails.