Newborn babies who gain weight rapidly in the first week of life are more likely to become obese later on, US researchers believe. Babies often struggle to put on weight in the first week as they adjust to their new surroundings. But researchers found for every 100g (3.5oz) gained, the risk of being overweight as an adult rose by 10%. Breastfeeding may minimise the risk, the journal Circulation reported. All 653 people who took part in the study were formula fed when they were born in the 1970s and 1980s, and as such were more likely to put on weight than breastfed babies. Researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Iowa found weight gain in the first week was crucial in determining future levels of obesity. They said the findings could be used to combat the increasing levels of obesity across the world. In the UK adult obesity rates have almost quadrupled in the last 25 years with nearly one in four adults classed as obese. And it is estimated that one in 10 six-year-olds are obese - three times higher than 20 years ago. Report author Dr Nicholas Stettler said: "Normal weight gain is desirable for infants. "Babies double their birth weight during the first four to six months. (C)BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 7217 - Posted: 04.19.2005

By BARRON H. LERNER, M.D. When my patient Jackie, who had incurable lung cancer, came to my office, she would regale me with her latest physical accomplishments. "I'm doing great, doctor, right?" she would ask. As I answered this and other questions from her, I struggled to balance the reality of Jackie's prognosis with a hopeful outlook. Now a new book describes another doctor who did the same for his patient, who had a fatal neurological disease. That patient was Lou Gehrig. The Hippocratic Oath and other ethical codes that guided the medical profession for centuries generally omitted the notion of truth-telling. In fact, one of Hippocrates's injunctions, to keep the sick from harm and injustice, encouraged the opposite behavior, deception. Serious illnesses, after all, were bad news. While doctors could give pain medications and other palliatives to patients with widespread cancer or tuberculosis, no cures existed. Faced with such situations, physicians often actively misled their patients, using euphemisms like "tumor" or "growth" when describing cancer. These doctors believed that the unvarnished truth would not only be emotionally hurtful, but it would lead patients to give up and thus die sooner. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 7216 - Posted: 04.19.2005

By David Brown Marc Maurer was born on June 3, 1951, in Des Moines, the second child of a traveling salesman and a housewife. He was two months premature. As is often the case with babies born very early, his lungs were underdeveloped. He spent two months in the hospital. During the first, supplemental oxygen was pumped into his incubator continuously. In the same city three months earlier, Patricia Schaaf was born. Her father was a plumber, her mother was a school cook. Their first child, Patricia was 3 pounds, 10 ounces at birth and two months premature. She, too, got oxygen for at least a month. Today, both Maurer and Schaaf are blind. Maurer is president of the National Federation of the Blind, and his wife -- the former Patricia Schaaf -- is its director of community relations. They work in South Baltimore in a refurbished factory that is the headquarters of the 50,000-member advocacy organization. Marc Maurer, a lawyer by training, has a spacious corner office overlooking the Patapsco River, which he cannot see. The Maurers were part of an epidemic that began in the early 1940s and peaked in 1951, the year of their birth. They were blinded by high concentrations of oxygen, which was routinely given to premature infants in the United States during and after World War II. It took 15 years to discover the link between oxygen and blindness -- 15 years in which a mysterious disease haunted America's best hospitals. This tragic outbreak was not the first time a medical treatment thought to be beneficial was shown to cause harm. Nor would it be the last. © 2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7215 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By MARY DUENWALD The way the San people of the Kalahari Desert describe it, Hoodia gordonii is nature's hunger buster. Break off a spiny, cucumber-shaped stalk from this succulent plant, feed on its milky center and you will have the energy to set off on a long hunt unencumbered by hunger pangs. Or, if you live far from the arid regions in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia where hoodia grows, simply buy one of many new brands of hoodia supplements. In the past few years, after reports that Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, had begun looking into hoodia's potential as an appetite-control drug, the market for hoodia that has been dried, powdered and fashioned into capsules has been growing fast. "The demand is very high, and the supply is ridiculously low," said Hugh Lamond, who runs Herbal Teas of Africa, one of a handful of hoodia exporters. "It's like shark-feeding time." One supplement, called Hoodoba, advertises online that it "kills your appetite, ups your mood and gives you waves upon waves of energy." The makers of Pure Hoodia, another brand, boast that the product contains an active ingredient that "fools your brain into believing you are full, making it easier to lose that excess weight." Yet no human studies gauging the effectiveness or safety of the hoodia plant or of supplements made from it have been published. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 7214 - Posted: 04.19.2005

By DENNIS OVERBYE - The boys were halfway across a snowfield when the German airplane appeared. Their rifles, clumsily camouflaged, were sticking out of their backpacks. They stood frozen as the plane buzzed in tighter and tighter circles around them, wondering if they should run for the only possible shelter, a large boulder in the middle of the field. It might finally have been curtains for the Kavli boys, Fred and Aslak. "If we'd run, we would have been done for," Fred Kavli, 77, recalled recently, his head thrown back as he communed with memories of an adventurous youth in wartime Norway. "That was very dangerous, yah," he said, recalling expeditions to steal fuel oil from the Germans. Mr. Kavli survived his boyhood, much to the retroactive relief of scientists worldwide. A year ago, Mr. Kavli stood up in front of a group of the nation's scientific elite at a dinner at the Carlyle Hotel in New York and announced that he was in the process of spending $75 million to endow 10 scientific research institutes, all bearing his name, at colleges around the country and the world. Starting in 2008, and every other year afterward, the Kavli Foundation will be sponsoring three prizes worth $1 million each in the fields of astrophysics, neuroscience and nanoscience. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7213 - Posted: 04.19.2005

The ones that stay and the ones that stray are biological puzzles among Pacific salmon, of whom the vast majority – but not all – travel thousands of miles to sea and back to the streams where they hatched. There are chinook salmon populations in Idaho in which an occasional male stays put and matures when only 6 inches long – that is, he's able to fertilize eggs at even that diminutive size, says Thomas P. Quinn, University of Washington professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and author of a recently released book, "The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout." Just picture that tiny male under the belly of a 20-pound adult female that's returned to spawn, Quinn says. He's almost as likely to be a "winner" as the full-size males that are releasing their sperm in a competitive frenzy as the female deposits her eggs. And the tiny male has avoided the harrowing journey taken by most salmon to the ocean and back, bypassing hazards such as dams, sharks and fishermen. "In some species, all or a fraction of the individuals in some populations do not migrate to sea at all," he says. "These fish sacrifice the growing opportunities at sea for the relative safety of freshwater, and males are more inclined to remain than females. This difference is related to the fact that reproductive success in females is linked to the ability to produce numerous large eggs, hence the need for the female to be of a certain size herself. "Small males, however, can sometimes fertilize many eggs by sneaking rather than by fighting," Quinn says in the chapter called, "Downstream Migration: To Sea or Not to Sea?" The evidence for this is in the DNA of the resulting offspring.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7212 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News — Genetically engineered fruit flies have been made to jump, beat their wings and fly on human command, according to a new study published in the journal Cell. The flies are the first creatures that humans have remotely controlled. Someday, a related nerve stimulation process may restore nerve circuits in people with neurological diseases or injuries, such as the spinal cord trauma of the late actor and activist Christopher Reeve. Manipulation of behavior in insects and animals, even humans, has been possible for the past 50 years or so. Most of the studies, however, involved invasive electrical stimulation of specific parts of the brain. Surgeon Wilder Penfield, for example, electrically stimulated the cortexes of neurosurgery patients, who later said that the electricity affected their thinking and memory. Monkeys undergoing brain stimulation also have been tricked into thinking that something was vibrating their hands. "Attempts to manipulate behavior in an active and predictive way have been a focus of the laboratory for several years," explained Gero Miesenböck, who co-authored the Cell paper with Susana Lima, and is an associate professor of cell biology at the Yale University School of Medicine. Copyright © 2005 Discovery Communications Inc.

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 7211 - Posted: 06.24.2010

People who are happier in their daily lives have healthier levels of key body chemicals than those who muster few positive feelings, a new study suggests. This means happier people may have healthier hearts and cardiovascular systems, possibly cutting their risk of diseases like diabetes. Previous studies have shown that depression is associated with health problems compared to average emotional states. But few studies have looked at the effects of positive moods on health. Now, researchers at University College London, UK, have linked everyday happiness with healthier levels of important body chemicals, such as the stress hormone cortisol. “This study showed that whether people are happy or less happy in their everyday lives appears to have important effects on the markers of biological function known to be associated with disease,” says clinical psychologist Jane Wardle, one of the research team. “Perhaps laughter is the best medicine,” she adds. “This is the best data to date that associates positive emotional feelings with good effects on your health,” says Carol Shively, at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, US. “We usually concentrate on things that are either bad or wrong, rather than good or right.” © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Emotions; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 7210 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by John Horgan As a science writer, I am sometimes asked what I consider to be the most important unsolved scientific problem. I used to rattle off pure science’s major mysteries: Why did the big bang bang? How did life begin on Earth, and does it exist anywhere else in the cosmos? How does a brain make a mind? Sometime after 9/11, however, I started replying that by far the biggest problem facing scientists—and all of humanity—is the persistence of warfare, or the threat thereof, as a means for resolving disputes between people. Skeptics might object that war is not a scientific issue. Certainly, it is a dauntingly complex phenomenon, with political, economic, and social ramifications. But the same could be said of problems such as global warming, population growth, and AIDS, all of which are being rigorously addressed by scientists. Moreover, I believe that the problem of warfare— unlike mysteries such as the origin of the universe or life or consciousness, which may prove to be intractable—can and will be solved. Research has already revealed enough about warfare to dispel two persistent, contradictory myths. One is the idea of the noble savage, which blames warfare on civilization and holds that humans in their primordial state were peaceful and loving. This is the implicit theme of Margaret Mead’s classic bestseller Coming of Age in Samoa. Mead describes the Polynesian island as a blissful utopia, whose inhabitants make love, not war. Actually, as critics of Mead have pointed out, Samoa has historically been wracked by warfare. © 2002 Science & Spirit Magazine.

Keyword: Aggression; Evolution
Link ID: 7209 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Greg Ross Economist Paul Seabright is fascinated by human cooperation. Mistrust and violence are in our genes, he says, but abstract, symbolic thought permits us to accept one another as "honorary relatives"—a remarkable arrangement that ultimately underlies every aspect of modern civilization. In developing these ideas for his latest book—The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life—Seabright traveled widely, especially in Eastern Europe and Asia. He currently lives in southwest France, where he teaches economics at the University of Toulouse. You point out that human society has led us to interact as strangers only in the last 10,000 years, while we still carry deeper instincts toward violence and suspicion of outsiders. How fragile is the social contract? How full is the glass? It can seem extraordinary that the vast complexity of human cooperation—from road traffic patterns to markets, the Internet and the systems that keep our houses and cities safe—should rest on nothing more solid than social convention, as though civilization were founded purely on table manners. I may think my property is secure and my life reasonably protected, but that is only because the rest of the world has agreed, for the time being, to let them be so. And what people have agreed to respect today they can agree to violate tomorrow. Yet it is just as remarkable how robust many of our conventions turn out to be in practice. Partly this is because conventions govern our reactions to people as roles and not just as individuals—an assassinated president can be replaced by a vice president, and the system as a whole can go on functioning, with people listening to the new president much as they would have listened to the old. Partly it is because the hydra of social life has too many heads to be easily incapacitated: The conventions that sustain our physical security are not coordinated in one place, such as the U.N. or the Pentagon, but are the result of billions of individual decisions concerning how we react to neighbours, friends and colleagues. © Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society

Keyword: Evolution; Aggression
Link ID: 7208 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WHETHER it's driving too fast, bungee-jumping or reckless skateboarding, young men will try almost anything to be noticed by the opposite sex. But a study of attitudes to risk suggests that the only people impressed by their stunts are other men. Futile risk-taking might seem to have little going for it in Darwinian terms. So why were our rash ancestors not replaced by more cautious contemporaries? One idea is that risk-takers are advertising their fitness to potential mates by showing off their strength and bravery. This fits with the fact that men in their prime reproductive years take more risks. To test this idea, William Farthing of the University of Maine in Orono surveyed 48 young men and 52 young women on their attitudes to risky scenarios. Men thought women would be impressed by pointless gambles, but women in fact preferred cautious men (Evolution and Human Behaviour, vol 26, p 171). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7207 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine in Goettingen (Germany) have uncovered the behaviour of microglial cells in the brain. In the current online edition of Science (Science, Epub ahead of print, 14. April 2005) they report on the busy action of these immune defense cells in the normal brain and their rapid response to cerebral hemorrhage in the first few hours following injury. Their imaging approach is transferable to other models of disease, and monitoring microglia behaviour under such circumstances promises to substantially enhance our knowledge about brain pathologies. Microglial cells are the primary immunocompetent cells in the brain. They are the first responsive element to any kind of brain damage or injury. Microglia are critically involved, for example, in neurodegenerative diseases and stroke. So far, microglial cells have been studied in vitro, i.e. outside the living organism. As a result, key aspects of microglia function have remained elusive such as their behavior in the intact brain or their immediate response to brain injury. Now a German team of researchers from two Max Planck Institutes in Heidelberg and Goettingen (Germany) report a breakthrough in the study of microglial cells in vivo. They uncovered the behaviour of microglial cells in the intact brain by making use of two key technologies: two-photon microscopy and a transgenic mouse model. While mice employed in their experiments were genetically modified to produce a green fluorescent protein (GFP), infrared laser light was used to excite GFPs and thus to visualize stained cells in the micoscope via detection of emitted fluorescent light - even through the intact mouse skullcap. Their findings appear in this weeks online edition of Science (Epub ahead of print).

Keyword: Glia; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 7206 - Posted: 04.16.2005

Understanding the interaction of Fragile X mental retardation protein and kissing complex RNAs Fragile X syndrome is the most common inherited form of mental retardation, affecting approximately 1 in 3600 males and 1 in 4000-6000 females. Fragile X syndrome results from loss of expression of the Fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP), the product of the FMR1 gene. Now, Drs. Robert and Jennifer Darnell and colleagues, from The Rockefeller University, report the uncovering of a new interaction between FMRP and messenger RNAs (mRNAs) containing a tertiary RNA structure termed a "kissing complex". Their studies, published in the April 15th issue of Genes & Development, provide a new direction for efforts to understand how the loss of FMRP function leads to the complex behavioral and cognitive defects characteristic of Fragile X syndrome. While the importance of identifying a function for FMRP has been clear for some time, what this function actually is has continued to evade researchers. FMRP is a protein characterized by the presence of three RNA binding domains: two tandem KH-type RNA binding domains and an RGG box. Scientists have focused on the identification of FMRP RNA ligands in an effort to understand FMRP function. This effort is particularly meaningful since FMRP is believed to regulate mRNA translation in the brain, and identifying the mRNA targets of this regulation would be a huge step in understanding how loss of this protein results in the varied and complex phenotypes of Fragile X syndrome.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 7205 - Posted: 04.16.2005

Rest assured, the cells that guard your brain are no slackers. New movies of brain cells called microglia reveal that these sentries constantly extend and retract tiny arms to probe the fluid spaces between brain cells for signs of injury or infection. The findings present a radically new view of how these cells protect the brain. Microglia are the immune system's foot soldiers in the brain. They spring into action when damage occurs, creating a protective barrier around the injury and cleaning up dead cells and other debris. What the microglia do between crises has been unclear, largely because getting the cells under a microscope has required excising a chunk of brain tissue--thereby causing damage that sends the cells into emergency response mode. The new study gets around that obstacle by using genetically engineered mice whose microglia produce a fluorescent green protein. The research team, led by Axel Nimmerjahn at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, created a window on the brain of 12 such mice by shaving away a small patch of skull until only a transparent sliver of bone remained. Using a noninvasive technique called two-photon microscopy, the team snapped pictures of glowing microglia near the surface of the brain for several hours and compiled the images into time-lapse movies. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 7204 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Sid Perkins For the first time, scientists have found eggs with shells inside a dinosaur fossil, strengthening previous conjectures about the ancient reptiles' reproductive physiology. The dinosaur remains were unearthed in southern China from petrified sediments laid down between 100 million and 65 million years ago. The fragmentary fossil includes six back vertebrae, two adjacent tail vertebrae, and other bones from the dinosaur's pelvic area, says Tamaki Sato of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. The remains were too scant to assign to a particular species but enough for Sato and her colleagues to identify the creature generally as an oviraptorosaur, a member of a group of dinosaurs that includes the feathered Caudipteryx. The newfound specimen probably would have measured about 3 meters from head to tail. It's crystal clear that the creature was a female. Inside its pelvis, paleontologists found two 17-centimeter-long, potato-shaped eggs, complete with shells. Because the eggs nearly filled the dinosaur's pelvic cavity, they were ready to be laid, says Sato. The soft tissues inside eggs at that stage of development wouldn't have readily fossilized, so the shells are probably all that's preserved. Sato and her colleagues describe the fossil find in the April 15 Science. Copyright ©2005 Science Service.

Keyword: Evolution; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 7203 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PRACTICE doesn't make perfect for duelling meerkats. Vigorous play fighting as a pup does not improve a meerkat's chances in important adult battles, dispelling the most popular theory to explain youthful brawls. As juveniles, many animals indulge in dangerous and energetically costly battles with litter-mates or other youngsters. Biologists have often assumed the rationale behind this play fighting is to develop the motor skills and coordination necessary for successful adult fights. For meerkats the stakes are particularly high as only the dominant male-female pair in a colony gets to breed. The others are condemned to mere nest attendant duties. Lynda Sharpe at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, studied a population of wild meerkats in the southern Kalahari desert in South Africa from 1996 to 2002. She followed 18 pairs of same-sex litter-mates, recording the number, frequency and outcome of play fights and the individuals' ultimate status within the group as an adult. She found that young meerkats who played frequently were no more likely to win play fights, adult fights or become a member of the dominant pair. Furthermore, meerkats showed no sign of improvement with extra play sessions (Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2004.07.013). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 7202 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Chris Roberts THE enterprising vision of a medical electronics engineer at Bart's hospital has earned him a top prize. Clive Curtis's unique walking glasses, which improve mobility for people with brain conditions, won first prize in the technology section of the London NHS Innovation Competition. Mr Curtis came up with the idea after hearing about the walking problems of a friend with Parkinson's disease. "People with some brain conditions can walk reasonably well if they have a line to follow like the pattern of slabs on pavement," said Mr Curtis. "But if the pattern suddenly ends, they freeze and find it difficult to carry on. It makes life very difficult and could put them into potentially difficult situations if they step off a pavement into a road, for example." Mr Curtis's glasses generate these cue lines and are worn over a pair of normal specs. Now Mr Curtis has been given £5,000 from the East London Innovations Hub (ELIH) to further his work. Copyright © 2005 Archant Regional.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Vision
Link ID: 7201 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Mark Thiessen SALT LAKE CITY, -- A federal judge Thursday struck down the FDA ban on supplements containing ephedra, the once-popular weight-loss aid that was yanked from the market one year ago after it was linked to dozens of deaths. The judge ruled in favor of a Utah supplement company that challenged the Food and Drug Administration's ban. Nutraceutical International Corp. claimed that ephedra has been safely consumed for hundreds of years. Industry groups said supplements that included ephedra were once used by 12 million people. Last year's ban of ephedra was the first such outlawing of a dietary supplement. Research shows that ephedra -- an amphetamine-like herb -- can speed heart rate and constrict blood vessels even in seemingly healthy people but that it is particularly risky for those with heart disease or high blood pressure or who engage in strenuous exercise. Among the deaths linked to the substance was that of Baltimore Orioles pitching prospect Steve Bechler, who collapsed and died during spring training two years ago. © 2005 The Washington Post Company

Keyword: Obesity; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 7200 - Posted: 06.24.2010

-- Fatty molecules may modulate the electrical characteristics of nerve and heart cells by regulating the properties of key cell pores, according to research conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The findings suggest a novel mechanism in which dietary fat can attach directly to proteins that regulate bioelectricity. This can affect the performance of nerve and heart cells, with potentially broad-ranging health implications. The researchers report in the April 26 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the proteins in specific electrically responsive cell pores--voltage-sensing potassium channels--can bind to molecules of palmitate. Palmitate is a saturated fatty acid previously linked to "hardening" of the arteries and obesity and is a common fat in unhealthy diets. "In effect, the attachment of palmitate makes these potassium channels, called Kv1.1 channels, open more easily, and this can influence the transmission of electrical impulses along nerve cells and the contraction of heart muscle cells," says senior author Richard Gross, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine, of chemistry and of molecular biology and pharmacology and director of the Division of Bioorganic Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 7199 - Posted: 04.15.2005

NEW YORK--When Daniel Tammet set the European record for pi memorization last year, memorizing 22,514 digits in just over 5 hours, he attributed the feat to his ability to see numbers as complex, 3-dimensional landscapes, complete with color, texture, and sometimes even sound. Now researchers say they've found evidence to support Tammet's claim that his enriched perception is at the heart of his knack for number memorization. Tammet's experience with numbers is an example of synesthesia, a puzzling phenomenon in which a certain type of stimulus triggers a hallucinatory perception. Some synesthetes associate musical notes with distinct colors, for example, or foods with shapes (as in "pointy" flavored chicken) [ScienceNOW, 24 March 2005]. Tammet, a 26-year-old from Kent, United Kingdom, says he sees digits from 0 to 9 as having distinct sizes and locations in space. To test whether this aspect of his synesthesia aids his numerical memory, neuroscientists Vilayanur Ramachandran, Shai Azoulai, and Edward Hubbard at the University of California, San Diego, gave him a series of memory tests in which he had 3 minutes to memorize 100 digits and their locations in a 10 by 10 array. When the digits were all the same font size, Tammet recalled 68 correctly, compared to an average of about eight for a control group, and he remembered all 68 when tested again 3 days later. But when the researchers repeated the test using an array in which the digits varied in size to disrupt Tammet's synesthetic sizing scheme, his performance plummeted to just 16 correct on the day of the test and zero 3 days later, according to a poster presented here 10 April at a meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. Copyright © 2005 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 7198 - Posted: 06.24.2010