News Articles

May 27, 2014 – A groundbreaking new study published today in Obesity, the journal of The Obesity Society, confirms definitively that drinking diet beverages helps people lose weight.
"This study clearly demonstrates that diet beverages can in fact help people lose weight, directly countering myths in recent years that suggest the opposite effect – weight gain," said James O. Hill, Ph.D., executive director of the University of Colorado Anschutz Health and Wellness Center and a co-author of the study. "In fact, those who drank diet beverages lost more weight and reported feeling significantly less hungry than those who drank water alone. This reinforces that if you're trying to shed pounds, you can enjoy diet beverages."

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, have identified how a specific stretch of DNA controls far-off genes to influence the formation of the face. The study, published today in Nature Genetics, helps understand the genetic causes of cleft lip and cleft palate, which are among the most common congenital malformations in humans.
"This genomic region ultimately controls genes which determine how to build a face and genes which produce the basic materials needed to execute this plan", says François Spitz from EMBL, who led the work. "We think that this dual action explains why this region is linked to susceptibility to cleft lip or palate in humans."

Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered a signaling pathway in cancer cells that controls their ability to invade nearby tissues in a finely orchestrated manner. The findings offer insights into the early molecular events involved in metastasis, the deadly spread of cancer cells from primary tumor to other parts of the body. The study was published today in the online edition of Nature Cell Biology.

Michael Lewis's bestselling book "Flash Boys" describes how some brokers, engaging in high frequency trading, exploit fast telecommunications to gain fraction-of-a-second advantage in the buying and selling of stocks. But you don't need to have billions of dollars riding on this-second securities transactions to appreciate the importance of fast signal processing. From internet to video streaming, we want things fast.

BOSTON, MA – A new research study from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) that compares low-dose oral estrogen and low-dose non-hormonal venlafaxine hydrochloride extended release (XR) to placebo were both found effective in reducing the number of hot flashes and night sweats reported by menopausal women. The study is the first clinical trial to simultaneously evaluate estrogen therapy (ET), known as the "gold standard" treatment for hot flashes and night sweats, and a non-hormonal treatment, venlafaxine, a first-line treatment in women who are unwilling or unable to use ET.
The study titled, "Randomized Controlled Trial of Low-Dose Estradiol and the Serotonin-Norepinephrine" is published in the May 27 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.

Children with bronchiolitis (a common respiratory tract infection that can result in hospitalization) who were treated in the emergency department showed less clinical improvement after receiving nebulized 3 percent hypertonic saline (HS) than infants who received normal saline (NS).  
Nebulized HS has been shown to increase mucociliary clearance (the clearing of mucus) in healthy people and in those patients with conditions such as asthma and cystic fibrosis because it is believed to lower the viscosity of mucus secretions. Other studies have suggested HS may reduce the length of hospital stays and lessen severity in children with bronchiolitis.

Ants are capable of complex problem-solving strategies that could be widely applied as optimization techniques. An individual ant searching for food walks in random ways, biologists found. Yet the collective foraging behaviour of ants goes well beyond that, as a mathematical study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals: The animal movements at a certain point change from chaos to order. This happens in a surprisingly efficient self-organized way. Understanding the ants could help analyze similar phenomena - for instance how humans roam in the internet.

Soil from thousands of years ago that is now deeply buried has been found to be rich in carbon, adding a new dimension to figuring out the planet's carbon cycle.
The element carbon comes in many forms and cycles through the environment – land, sea and atmosphere – just as water in various forms cycles through the ground, oceans and the air. Scientists have long known about the carbon storage capacity of soils, the potential for carbon sequestration, and that carbon in soil can be released to the atmosphere through microbial decomposition.

A signal that promotes insulin secretion and reduces hyperglycemia in a type 2 diabetes animal model is enhanced by the inhibition of a novel enzyme discovered by researchers at NuChem Therapeutics of Montreal and the Montreal Diabetes Research Center.

Feed a cold, starve a...cancer?
 A new paper in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment says that the triple negative subtype of breast cancer – one of the most aggressive forms – is less likely to spread, or metastasize, to new sites in the body when mice were fed a restricted diet. 
Years ago, calorie restriction was touted as a way to live longer - left out of media stories on the subject were details like that it only worked in mice that were weaned on a starvation diet from birth - but claiming an epigenetic treatment for cancer is relatively new. This decade, everything is attributed to epigenetics so calibrate accordingly.

This news release is available in French.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — As the largest purchaser of wholesale produce in Santa Barbara County, UC Santa Barbara's residential dining services provided the perfect avenue for a pilot project incorporating local pesticide-free or certified organic produce into an institutional setting.
The idea was conceived almost 10 years ago, when a group of students approached environmental studies professor David Cleveland about becoming a faculty adviser for student-led sustainable living classes. The group wanted to explore how to bring more local organic food in the dining halls. In 2010 Cleveland and a group of student researchers began documenting the process, which led to the publication of a paper in the Journal of Rural Studies.