Dutch research has shown that a diet of low-fat products is better than smaller portions of normal high-fat food for preventing diabetes in obese people. Mice put on a low-fat diet were more sensitive to insulin than mice that received the same amount of energy in the form of high-fat food.
Martin Muurling put obese mice on different diets in which the total energy intake and the final body weight were the same. He then studied the effect of these diets on insulin sensitivity.
Mice
A promising new way of controlling the mites that can cause asthma and other allergies is now under development.
It could lead to dramatic progress in preventing these conditions and reduce the estimated £700 million a year spent in the UK on treating them.
The technique uses a computer model to assess how modifying a domestic environment can reduce numbers of house dust mites in beds, carpets and elsewhere.
Development of the model has been led by University College Londo
The possibility of using the Earth’s abundant supply of water as a cheap source of hydrogen is a step closer thanks to researchers from Imperial College London. By mimicking the method plants use to split water, researchers say that a highly energy efficient way to form cheap supplies of hydrogen fuel may be possible in the future.
Reporting online in the journal Science today Imperial researchers reveal the fine detail of the protein complex that drives photosynthesis – the process tha
Solitary organisms can minimise fitness loss from parasitism with a facultative change to an earlier reproduction. Such a shift of the reproductive effort gives the host a chance to compensate for the cost on future reproduction resulting from the infection. In the case of social insects, where brood care and reproductive effort are shared between the queen and her workers, adjustments of the reproductive effort would depend on collective decision-making.
In the February issue of Ecology L
CSIRO Livestock Industries and animal health company, Imugene Limited, have started research work designed to develop a vaccine for chickens at risk of contracting the deadly strain of avian influenza now causing havoc in Asia.
The research team aims to deliver a trial vaccine against the virulent H5N1 strain of the disease, within a matter of months. Once developed, the vaccine could be used to safeguard Australia’s poultry industry.
CSIRO’s Dr Chris Prideaux says that ev
Study with transgenic mice could lead to omega-3-containing meats, dairy products
Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have found that tissues from mice transgenic for a gene usually found in the c.elegans roundworm contain omega-3 fatty acids, consumption of which has been shown to protect against heart disease. Usually mammals cannot produce omega-3s from the more abundant omega-6 fatty acids, which do not have the health benefits of omega-3s. The finding, published
A membrane protein, NCX1, that transports sodium and calcium into and out of cells, may determine the frequency as well as strength of the heartbeat, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas report.
The findings are published in today’s issue of Nature.
“This calcium transporter really is an important key to understanding how the heart is regulated,” said Dr. Donald Hilgemann, professor of physiology and senior author of the study. “At every beat, calcium in hear
Researchers also find current immunosuppression drug therapy may be harmful for transplanted Islets
Treating pancreatic islet cells with a growth factor can dramatically reduce the number of these cells needed for transplants to reverse Type 1 diabetes, according to a study by University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers. In the animal model study, researchers also found that the triple-drug immunosuppression therapy currently used after human islet cell transplants is harm
Jet lag occurs when we travel across multiple time zones by air. Anyone who has experienced jet lag knows that it causes sleep disturbances and daytime sleepiness, and can impair performance after landing. A team of researchers has investigated the effects of slow release caffeine (SRC) and melatonin (Mlt) on recovery sleep and daytime sleepiness after a seven-time zone eastbound flight and found that both drugs have positive effects on some jet lag symptoms after an eastbound flight. They found that
Are all tunas alike? It is true that they are all swift, powerful swimmers that benefit from high metabolic rates – and that in order to support these rates, they have evolved into a state of high heart rates. Consider the skipjack tuna, which has been clocked at a heart rate of over 200 beats-per-minute. But is the cardiac stamina of the cold water (endothermic) tuna, such as the bluefin, albacore and yellowfin, the same as that of its warm water (ecothermic) sister the mackerel? Why should it matte
As any new mother knows, getting a baby to sleep at night is an art, and perhaps using snippets from Shakespeare’s Hamlet may help. But the science of how babies sleep – and what their processes may have in common with their adult counterparts – could be a small step closer to being better understood.
Background
Sleep shows dramatic changes across early development. Quiet sleep (also known as non-rapid eye movement sleep [QS/NREMS]) increases in the course of the first year of life
Researchers at Purdue University have developed a miniature device sensitive enough to detect a single virus particle, an advancement that could have many applications, including environmental-health monitoring and homeland security.
The device is a tiny “cantilever,” a diving board-like beam of silicon that naturally vibrates at a specific frequency. When a virus particle weighing about one-trillionth as much as a grain of rice lands on the cantilever, it vibrates at a different frequency,
Teenage girls who have sex with more than one partner in a short period of time are likely to engage in other risk behaviors such as fighting, binge drinking, smoking cigarettes, using cocaine or sniffing glue, according to results from a national survey of American high school youth.
The study of more than 3,000 female students appears in the American Journal of Health Behavior.
Having sexual intercourse with multiple partners increases the risk of pregnancy, sexually transmitted
Recent results from a phase IIA clinical trial on the use of tetrodotoxin – a neurotoxin extracted from puffer fish – in patients with refractory cancer pain show extremely promising results.
The study, reported in the January/February issue of the Journal Supportive Oncology, details the findings from the open-label dose finding trial, showing that the majority of patients who received the novel analgesic experienced either a complete or partial response to the agent. Overall, 68% (17/25) p
Potential applications in robotic surgery, more
The bubbly clarinet solo that opens a 1940s swing classic begins, setting a pair of dancers in motion. They move in constant rhythm, varying their steps to the song’s changing tempo. Slight pushes and pulls of the dancers’ hands allow seamless transitions between swing-outs, tuck turns and Texas Tommies.
You might call this swing dancing. Or you might call it a highly evolved system of communication and control via haptic (touc
Heavy Internet use may be therapeutic for those people facing social isolation and loneliness, says a University of Alberta study–dispelling the belief that high computer usage leads to psychological problems.
A team of researchers, lead by graduate student Mary Modayil, challenged the notion that heavy Internet use increases levels of depression for its users. The research was recently published in the journal Cyberpsychology and Behavior.
Modayil and her team, made up of Dr. G
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