By Kathleen Fackelmann, USA TODAY A study out today suggests a hormone might prompt people to eat 30% less — even when they're feasting at an all-you-can-eat buffet. This hormone, or drugs designed to act the same way, may help fight the "epidemic of obesity" in the USA and other developed nations, says researcher Stephen Bloom of the Imperial College at the Hammersmith Hospital in London. Experts say 61% of all Americans are now overweight or obese and thus are at high risk of developing heart disease, diabetes and other health problems. But Bloom and others say that such folks often face an uphill battle when it comes to body fat. He says humans evolved to stuff themselves with food in times of plenty. That meant a cushion of body fat that acted as protection in times of famine. But in a society in which cheap eats are available 24/7, that urge to eat has led to an ever-increasing number of overweight people, he says. © Copyright 2002 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Keyword: Obesity; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 2436 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DENISE GRADY Scientists have identified a hormone that causes the sensation every dieter craves: the feeling of fullness. The hormone, Peptide YY3-36 or PYY, is made by cells in the small intestine in response to food and then circulates to the brain, where it switches off the urge to eat. "It stops you feeling hungry," said Dr. Stephen R. Bloom, a professor of endocrinology at Hammersmith Hospital at Imperial College School of Medicine in London, who led a study of the hormone that was being published today in the journal Nature. "It controls you and me after every meal we eat." Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 2435 - Posted: 08.08.2002

Simple cerebral activities such as doing a crossword can help to ward off Alzheimer's disease, says a US scientist. Neuroscientist Dr Gary Small, director of the centre for ageing at the University of California, says adopting a healthy lifestyle is an important way to minimise the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases. This includes keeping physically active, eating a low fat diet with plenty of anti-oxidant foods such as fruit and vegetables and avoiding long-term chronic stress. But he also advocates exercising the brain by doing what he terms "mental aerobics". This can include doing crosswords, learning a new language, or writing with your left hand if you are normally right handed. Dr Small said: "We have done studies repeatedly looking at the brain activity of people at every age, and we are finding that we can see the subtle signs of Alzheimer's of people even in their thirties and forties. (C) BBC

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 2434 - Posted: 08.07.2002

By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D. The woman fantasized about having a face-lift for years, but had an insurmountable fear of the knife. So when Botox was approved in April for cosmetic use by the Food and Drug Administration, she jumped at the opportunity. Recently divorced and a recovering alcoholic, she had just turned 48 before the first Botox injection. And like the 1.6 million Americans who used Botox last year, she hoped to recapture her youthful appearance. At about $600 a pop every four to six months, she considered this an endlessly renewable face-lift. Except for a quick sting, she barely felt the injection of Botox into her forehead and went back to work later that day. By the end of the week, she noticed the effect. Standing in front of her bathroom mirror, she was stunned to see that the deep wrinkles that scored her forehead had been erased, and that her skin was smoother. Though she was pleased by her new look, she felt ill at ease without knowing why. It was obvious later — her physical and psychological self-images were suddenly incongruent. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions; Movement Disorders
Link ID: 2433 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE DENVER, — Wildlife experts from the United States and Canada are meeting here to discuss strategies for containing the spread of chronic wasting disease, the variant of mad cow disease that kills deer and elk. The malady, once found only in the brushy foothills near Fort Collins, Colo., has now been identified in both captive and wild herds of deer and elk in Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Wyoming and the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Some states, like New Mexico, have found only one infected animal in the wild. But Saskatchewan, for example, has diagnosed the disease in more than 100 captive animals bred for their meat and antlers. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Prions
Link ID: 2432 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Push-pull between cells keeps retina sharp. HELEN PEARSON Cells in the eye keep their neighbours at arm's length, a new study reveals1. This helps to build the exquisite architecture of the retina that discerns fine details. A regular mosaic of light-sensitive cells tiles the back of the eye. The cells turn light into signals to the brain. Their precise spacing ensures that the eye can make out details in an image. As the eye develops, retina cells stretch out thin arms that interlock with their neighbours, Lucia Galli-Resta and her colleagues of the Istituto di Neuroscienze in Pisa, Italy, have now shown. Like a wire mesh, the tensed arms keep the cells spaced out. "They hold hands to keep them together and stretch arms to keep them apart," says Galli-Resta. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2002

Keyword: Vision; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 2431 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Dartmouth Medical School geneticists have found a molecular shortcut from light reception to gene activation in their work to understand biological clocks. Their research has revealed that the protein called White Collar-1 does double duty: it perceives light and then, in response to light, directly turns on a key gene called frequency, which is a central component of the clock. Biological clocks are molecularly driven and are set, or synchronized, by the daily cycles of light and dark. Using the fungus Neurospora, the Dartmouth team is studying how organisms keep track of time using this internal clock. "What we have discovered is that a protein called White Collar-1 is both the photoreceptor and the mechanism that turns on the frequency gene, all in one molecule,” explains Allan Froehlich, the lead author. “It’s the combination of the two activities that is so interesting.” Copyright 2002 Trustees of Dartmouth College

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 2430 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A man of vision, Michael Phelps first recognized PET imaging technology's potential -- and then fought to get it accepted Michael E. Phelps has done his share of mingling with the rich and the famous: The late entrepreneur, philanthropist, and art collector Norton Simon was a friend. But the lessons that shaped Phelps's life were the skills he mastered in the rough Irish neighborhood in Port Orchard, Wash., where he boxed and brawled -- and missed out on whatever his school had to teach about chemistry and math because he was kicked out of class. Now one of the world's most famous scientists, Phelps works at the crossroads of chemistry, biology, and math. At 62, he likes to say that his fighter's instincts got him where he is. "The world is about training and fighting," Phelps declares. "Training is a way of becoming, and fighting is about standing and delivering when the time arrives." SECOND OPINION. Phelps delivered his knockout blow in 1974, when he and postdoctoral student Ed Hoffman invented the first positron emission tomography (PET) scanner. Unlike X-rays, which display only the body's structure, PET reveals chemical and biological processes within the body. It illustrates, for example, how the brain remembers and thinks, how the heart beats, and how the pancreas synthesizes insulin. Copyright 2002, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 2429 - Posted: 08.07.2002

SUNY Buffalo's Thenkurussi Kesavadas is developing tactile-feedback systems that could let brain docs practice delicate manuevers The procedures used in brain surgery are some of the most complex in medicine, with the margin for error minimal. Yet neurosurgeons have no way to effectively practice for an operation before they cut into a patient. Thenkurussi Kesavadas hopes to change that. A professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Kesavadas has built a virtual-reality tool for brain docs. The system, which runs on a Windows computer, allows physicians to examine three-dimensional images of what surgery would be like. More radical still, neurosurgeons wearing a special glove wired to software Kesavadas designed receive tactile feedback that replicates what their fingers and hands would experience in the operating room. "When surgeons virtually cut the skull, they actually feel the tool vibrating in their hands. They can feel smoothness and roughness. And they say, 'Wow, this seems real!'" says Kesavadas, who's developing the brain-surgery simulator with help from neurosurgeons at the University of Miami in Florida and should go into service sometime next year. Kesavadas is a visionary on the cutting edge (for lack of a better phrase) of a medical field that has yet to get a specific name. It comprises disparate disciplines including telemedicine, robotic surgery, and three-dimensional imaging of the human body. These developing technologies, combined with powerful computers and the Internet, are on the cusp of radically altering many facets of medicine by pushing those who live by the Hippocratic oath into the realm of video games. Copyright 2002, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Robotics
Link ID: 2428 - Posted: 08.07.2002

By Celia Hall, Medical Editor After decades of inconclusive research, doctors believe they may have found out why people stammer. Research from Germany shows that persistent developmental stammering, which develops in childhood, can result from an abnormality in the left side of the brain. Dr Martin Somner and colleagues of the universities of Hamburg and Göttingen say in The Lancet that this results in a disconnection of the speech-related area of the cortex. © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.

Keyword: Language; Brain imaging
Link ID: 2427 - Posted: 06.24.2010

From the Science & Technology Desk INDIANAPOLIS, (UPI) -- Five mothers whose college-aged students were injured or killed by meningitis urged parents of college-bound children Wednesday to consider having them vaccinated against the potentially deadly illness -- which causes several deaths each year. "All of our kids had meningitis. Two of us have survivors, the other three lost their children to this horrible thing," said Paige Kach of Carmel, N.Y., whose son John survived but lost one leg below the knee as well as his fingers and toes after contracting the disease while at college. Two of the mothers, Lynn Bozof of Marietta, Ga., and Deb Kepferle of Lexington Park, Md., lost their sons to meningitis at college. Judy Miller of Coal City, Ill., lost her daughter to meningitis during sophomore year. Candie Benn's daughter Melanie survived the disease after contracting it freshman year but she had to undergo life-saving amputation of her arms and legs. Copyright © 2002 United Press International

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 2426 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Three young severely obese people from Turkey who could find no way to rein in their uncontrollable appetites have found the answer to their problems on the American west coast. They have become among the first people in the world to benefit from an experimental technique that is showing great promise in helping severely obese people to shed their excess weight. The treatment is based on injections of leptin, a hormone that appears to play a central role in suppressing appetite by informing the brain when the stomach is full. Doctors believe its use could form the basis of a new and highly effective way to treat severe obesity. Byrom Domsak and his two cousins flew out to Los Angeles after their cases were brought to the attention of doctors at the University of California at Los Angeles. In the 10 months that they have been receiving leptin injections, they have each shed more than half their body weight. (C) BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 2424 - Posted: 08.06.2002

Americans spend nearly $33 billion a year on weight-loss products and services to combat ever-increasing waistlines. But as the prevalence of obesity keeps rising, scientists continue to search for a more thorough understanding of the factors that make some people more susceptible to weight gain than others. To that end, findings published in the current issue of the journal Science could help. Researchers have identified the mechanism behind an internal fat 'furnace' in mice that helps the animals stave off excess poundage. © 1996-2002 Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 2423 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Children who are poor readers appear to have a disruption in the part of their brain involved in reading phonetically, according to a sophisticated brain imaging study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The study also found that children who read poorly but who do not receive any extra help or training eventually compensate for their disability by using other parts of the brain as backup systems for the impaired brain regions. Although most of these children eventually do learn to read, they never do so with the same fluency as do good readers. This is probably because the "backup" brain systems they use when reading apparently cannot process printed information as easily as can the brain systems primarily involved in reading. The researchers, led by Bennett Shaywitz, M.D., of the Yale University School of Medicine, published their results in the July Biological Psychiatry.

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 2422 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Children who suffer abuse and who have a common variation in a gene linked to behaviour are much more likely to become aggressive, anti-social adults, a major new study has found. It is the first clear link between anti-social behaviour and a specific interaction of genes and environment, the researchers say. They think it could help explain why childhood mistreatment increases the risk of criminality by 50 per cent, while most abused children do not become delinquents. "This is a very important piece of work," Greg Carey, a geneticist at the University of Colorado, told Science, which has published the team's paper. "It's pretty convincing for just a single study." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Aggression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 2421 - Posted: 06.24.2010

John Travis A promising class of anticancer-drug candidates, which work by depriving growing tumors of needed blood vessels, also prevent obesity or cause dramatic weight loss in rodents. This discovery rests upon the unappreciated fact that fat tissue, like a tumor, requires an increased blood supply to grow, says Maria A. Rupnick of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the study on the drugs. "It's clearly a potential way to think about treating obesity," says Marc L. Reitman, director of obesity research at Merck Research Laboratories in Rahway, N.J. "I think the paper is very interesting, novel, and provocative." Rupnick works with M. Judah Folkman of Children's Hospital in Boston, who originated the once-controversial idea that a growing tumor requires the creation of blood vessels in a process called angiogenesis. The new study stemmed from Rupnick's desire to study angiogenesis in healthy adult tissues. The conventional view, however, was that because most adult tissues and organs maintain a stable size, adult animals rarely need new blood vessels except during specialized circumstances, such as wound healing and reproduction. However, Rupnick had an epiphany several years ago while recalling her own decade-old work to isolate cells that form blood vessels in fat tissue. From Science News, Vol. 162, No. 5, Aug. 3, 2002, p. 67. Copyright ©2002 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 2420 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LYDIA DENWORTH The debate on hormone replacement therapy has centered on its effects on heart disease and cancer. But at a recent medical conference in Seattle, researchers presented a hormone study that focused on a different question: sleep. The researchers, from Stanford University, found that estrogen improved the breathing of postmenopausal women who had sleep apnea, a condition involving repeated breathing pauses. The study, by Dr. Tracy Kuo, a postdoctoral fellow, and Dr. Rachel Manber, the director of the insomnia program at the Stanford Sleep Disorders Center, was small, but it is one of a number of recent investigations into how sex hormones may disturb or improve sleep. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 2419 - Posted: 08.06.2002

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Two ancient skulls, one from central Africa and the other from the Black Sea republic of Georgia, have shaken the human family tree to its roots, sending scientists scrambling to see if their favorite theories are among the fallen fruit. Probably so, according to paleontologists, who may have to make major revisions in the human genealogy and rethink some of their ideas about the first migrations out of Africa by human relatives. Yet, despite all the confusion and uncertainty the skulls have caused, scientists speak in superlatives of their potential for revealing crucial insights in the evidence-disadvantaged field of human evolution. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 2418 - Posted: 08.06.2002

Like a double-edged sword, radiation therapy for brain cancer wipes out tumors but sometimes causes cognitive decline as well. Now researchers have found that, in rat brains, the treatment prevents new neurons from growing. Further findings suggest that dampening the brain's inflammatory response to radiation therapy may help avert such damage. To destroy brain tumors, neurosurgeons give patients a strong dose of radiation that’s supposed to kill the fastest growing cells--those in the tumor--while leaving slow-growing neurons alone. Years later, however, patients cured of brain cancer often lose their ability to make new memories. Researchers suspected that radiation therapy damages the stem cells that give rise to new neurons, which are concentrated in the hippocampus, a brain region necessary for storing memories. Copyright © 2002 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Neurogenesis; Stem Cells
Link ID: 2417 - Posted: 06.24.2010

- A crucial piece of the puzzle into how the eye becomes wired to the brain has been revealed by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. In findings published in today’s edition of Neuron , the researchers report that a certain class of Eph receptors and ephrin ligands - proteins that cause cells to either repel or attract each other - control how nerve connections from the developing eye form maps that present what we see to visual centers in the brain. Neurobiologists had long sought to answer how neural maps are established. © 2002 The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Vision
Link ID: 2416 - Posted: 06.24.2010