News Articles

A new study led by researchers at The Miriam Hospital’s Weight Control & Diabetes Research Center finds that dieters who have the tendency to eat in response to external factors, such as at festive celebrations, have fewer problems with their weight loss than those who eat in response to internal factors such as emotions. The study also found that emotional eating was associated with weight regain in successful losers.
The study is published in the October 2007 issue of Obesity.
“We found that the more people report eating in response to thoughts and feelings, such as, ‘when I feel lonely, I console myself by eating,’ the less weight they lost in a behavioral weight loss program.

Statement of Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases:
The new analyses revealed today from the STEP HIV vaccine clinical trial are both disappointing and puzzling. At this time, the data offer no clear explanations as to why the vaccine showed no measurable efficacy or why among individuals with background immunity to the adenovirus vector, there were more HIV infections in the vaccinees as compared to those in the placebo group.

The English Reformation spurred a fundamentalist approach to Bible reading, according to new research by a Harvard professor.
“Evangelical reading habits after 1525 were disciplinary, punishing and even demeaning,” says James Simpson, Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English in Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
In 1525, Protestant reformer William Tyndale translated the Bible into early modern English. Scholars have widely hailed that moment as a liberating step for the literate public, who could suddenly read the Bible on their own terms, without the constraints of priestly interpretation.

Is sexual orientation something people are born with - like the color of their skin and eyes - or a matter of choice?
Canadian scientists say they have uncovered new evidence which shows genetics has a role to play in determining whether an individual is homosexual or heterosexual.
The research was conducted by Dr. Sandra Witelson, a neuroscientist in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University, and colleagues at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto who studied the brains of healthy, right-handed, 18- to 35-year-old homosexual and heterosexual men using structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

New work on fruit fly genomics suggests new ways to look at the much larger human genome, and gives insights into the role of adaptation in evolution.
In two recent papers, researchers led by David Begun and Charles Langley, professors of evolution and ecology at the UC Davis Center for Population Biology, compared the whole genomes of several individuals of the fly Drosophila simulans to close relatives D. melanogaster and D. yakuba.
The same approach could be extended to the much larger genomes of humans and our close relatives, Begun said, showing which changes in the genome are uniquely human.

Copper is an essential trace element found in many living organisms, but at high levels it is potentially harmful and when discharged at high concentration into natural water resources could pose a serious environmental threat to marine ecosystems.

An Israeli-Jordanian-U.S. cooperative project aimed at measuring air quality in the area between the neighboring southern cities of Aqaba in Jordan and Eilat in Israel has been launched by scientists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem together with scientists from the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Administration (ASEZA) and the Desert Research Institute of Reno, Nevada, in the US.
The one-month, intensive, transboundary regional air quality research study began earlier this month, with the Israeli team operating a mobile laboratory located north of Eilat, and the Jordanian researchers performing continuous measurements of air quality in Aqaba.

Babies driving robots. It sounds silly but it is actually the focus of innovative research being conducted at the University of Delaware to help infants with special needs.
Two researchers – James C. (Cole) Galloway, associate professor of physical therapy, and Sunil Agrawal, professor of mechanical engineering – have outfitted kid-size robots to provide mobility to children who are unable to fully explore the world on their own.
The work is important because much of infant development, both of the brain and behavior, emerges from the thousands of experiences each day that arise as babies independently move and explore their world.

The scientific community is progressively experiencing a greater interest in environmentally friendly energy generation technologies, and their suitable applications, such is the case of hydrogen fuel cells applied to aeronautics.
This contamination free technology has taken a crucial role in the development of modern aeronautics and the present objective is the realization of fully electrical planes. Hydrogen fuel cells are currently being tested as propulsion system in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles by companies like Boeing, where all the advantages it could offer are being taken into consideration, from its efficiency to the possibility to recycle the water generated as by-product, maybe for use in the plane’s toilets.

An appetite-suppressing chemical also improves glucose tolerance and lowers insulin levels in obese and diabetic mice, researchers report in the November issue of Cell Metabolism, a publication of Cell Press. Importantly, the researchers found, those effects of the drug occurred at a low dose that had no influence on feeding behavior, body weight, activity level, or energy expenditure.
The decades-old drug compound, known as m-chlorophenylpiperazine (mCPP), triggers serotonin receptors in the brain. The findings suggest a new strategy for treating the rising tide of people with type 2 diabetes via targeting the so-called serotonin 2C (5-HT2C) receptors.

Researchers at Harvard University and Pennsylvania State University have invented a technology, inspired by nature, to reduce the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by human emissions.
By electrochemically removing hydrochloric acid from the ocean and then neutralizing the acid by reaction with silicate (volcanic) rocks, the researchers say they can accelerate natural chemical weathering, permanently transferring CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean. Unlike other ocean sequestration processes, the new technology does not further acidify the ocean and may be beneficial to coral reefs.

Scientists can now measure how full or hungry a mouse feels, thanks to a new technique which uses imaging to reveal how neurons behave in the part of the brain which regulates appetite.
Researchers hope the technique, which uses magnetic resonance imaging, will enable a far greater understanding of why certain people become obese when others do not, and why different people have different appetites. The new study, led by researchers from Imperial College London, is described in a paper published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
It had previously been very difficult to measure satiety, which is the psychological feeling of being full and satisfied rather than physical fullness.