Teams of pharmacologists, studying the cannabis-like compounds which exist naturally in our bodies (endocannabinoids), are exploring the potential for medical treatment. This includes treating conditions as diverse as obesity, diabetes, depression and addiction to substances like nicotine.

Scientists have known about endocannabinoids since the mid-1990s. This led to an explosion in the number of researchers looking into the future medical uses of cannabinoids and cannabis compounds.

Dr Steve Alexander, Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences, focused on a number of these projects in editing the first themed podcast for the British Journal of Pharmacology.

Dr Alexander said: "It is clear that there is very realistic potential for cannabinoids as medicines. Scientists are looking at a range of possible applications."

One of these researchers is Professor David Kendall, a cellular pharmacologist at the University: "The brain is full of cannabinoid receptors. And so, not surprisingly with diseases like depression and anxiety, there's a great deal of interest in exploiting these receptors and in doing so, developing anti-depressant compounds."

Addiction is a real target - researchers like Professor Kendall believe the endocannabinoids could be a crucial link to addictive behaviour: "We know that the endocannabinoid system is intimately involved in reward pathways and drug seeking behaviour. So this tends to indicate that that if the link involving endocannabinoids and the reward pathway, using inhibitors, can be interrupted, it could turn down the drive to seek addictive agents like nicotine."

Because cannabinoids have also been shown to bring down blood pressure, it is hoped that related compounds can be used in patients with conditions like hypertension.

Dr Michael Randall, a cardiovascular pharmacologist at the University has looked at how endocannabinoids cause blood vessels to relax. "This could have many implications," Dr Randall said. "The endocannabinoids appear to lower blood pressure under certain conditions; states of shock for example. If the endocannabinoids are of physiological importance, this could have real therapeutic possibilities."

"In terms of getting better medicines the endocannabinoid system has a lot to offer," said Dr Alexander. "The range of cannabis-related medicines is currently limited, but by increasing our knowledge in this area we can increase our stock."

Whether you are a habitual list maker, or you prefer to keep your tasks in your head, everyone pursues their goals in this ever changing, chaotic environment. We are often aware of our conscious decisions that bring us closer to reaching our goals, however to what extent can we count on our unconscious processes to pilot us toward our destined future?

Hebrew University psychologists, Baruch Eitam, Ran Hassin and Yaacov Schul, examined the benefit of non-conscious goal pursuit (moving toward a desired goal without being aware of doing so) in new environments. Existing theory suggests that non-conscious goal pursuit only reproduces formerly learned actions, therefore ineffective in mastering a new skill. Eitam and colleagues argue the opposite: that non-conscious goal pursuit can help people achieve their goals, even in a new environment, in which they have no prior experience.

In the first of two experiments, Eitam and colleagues had participants complete a word search task. One half of the participants’ puzzles included words associated with achievement (e.g. strive, succeed, first, and win), while the other half performed a motivationally neutral puzzle including words such as, carpet, diamond and hat. Then participants performed a computerized simulation of running a sugar factory. Their goal in the simulation was to produce a specific amount of sugar. They were only told that they could change the number of employees in the factory. Although participants were not told about the complex relationship that existed between the number of employees and past production levels (and could not verbalize it after the experiment had ended); they gradually grew better in controlling the factory.

As predicted, the non-consciously motivated participants (the group that had previously found words associated with achievement) learned to control the factory better than the control group.

In a second experiment the researchers replicated the findings by having participants perform a simple task of responding to a circle that repeatedly appeared in one of four locations. They were not told that the circle (sometimes) appeared in a fixed sequence of locations. Non-consciously motivated participants had again (nonconsciously) learned the sequence better than control participants.

“Taken together, both studies suggest that the powerful, unintentional, mechanism of implicit learning is related to our non-conscious wanting and works towards attaining our non-conscious goals,” the researchers write. These results, which appear in the March issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal an unconscious process that has both an advantage over conscious processing and an ability to serve a person’s current goals. Such unconscious processes may be responsible for far more of human ability than is yet recognized.

"Contamination of cosmetic products is rare but some products may be unable to suppress the growth of certain bacteria," says Dr Bakir from the Japan Collection of Microorganisms, Saitama, Japan. "We discovered a new species of bacteria called Microbacterium hatanonis, which we found contaminates hairspray."

"We also found a related species, Microbacterium oxydans in hairspray which was originally isolated from hospital material. Microbacterium species have been identified in milk, cheese, beef, eggs and even in the blood of patients with leukaemia, on catheters and in bone marrow."

The scientists looked at the appearance and diet of the bacterium, then analysed its genome to show that it is an entirely new species. "It has been named in honour of Dr Kazunori Hatano, for his contribution to the understanding of the genus Microbacterium," says Dr Bakir. Microbacterium hatanonis is rod-shaped and grows best at 30°C and pH neutral.

Scientists now need to determine the clinical importance of the new species, as similar bacteria have been found to infect humans. "Further testing will establish whether the species is a threat to human health," says Dr Bakir. "We hope our study will benefit the formulation of hairspray to prevent contamination in the future."

New research from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine reveals how hunger works in the brain and the way neurons pull your strings to lunge for the sweet fried dough.

Krispy Kremes, in perhaps their first starring role in neurological research, helped lead to the discovery.

In the study, subjects were tested twice -- once after gorging on up to eight Krispy Kreme donuts until they couldn't eat anymore, and on another day after fasting for eight hours.

In both sessions, people were shown pictures of donuts and screwdrivers, while researchers examined their brains in fMRI's.

When the subjects saw pictures of donuts after the eating binge, their brains didn't register much interest. But after the fast, two areas of the brain leaped into action upon seeing the donuts. First, the limbic brain -- an ancestral part of the brain present in all animals from snakes to frogs to humans -- lit up like fireworks.

"That part of the brain is able to detect what is motivationally significant. It says, not only am I hungry, but here is food," said senior author Marsel Mesulam, M.D., the Ruth and Evelyn Dunbar Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School and a neurologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

Next, the brain's spatial attention network shifted the hungry subject's focus toward the new object of desire -- in this case the Krispy Kremes.

"If we didn't have this part of the brain, every time you passed by a bakery you would have no control over your eating," explained Mesulam, who also is director of the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at the Feinberg School. "If your nerve cells fired every time you smelled something edible, then you'd eat all the time, not just when you're hungry."

"There's a very complex system in the brain that helps to direct our attention to items in our environment that are relevant to our needs, for example, food when we are hungry but not when we are full," said Aprajita Mohanty, lead author of the paper and a post-doctoral fellow at the Feinberg School. The study was published on-line last week in the journal Cerebral Cortex.

Mesulam noted the research demonstrates how our brain decides what to pay attention to in a world full of stimuli -- not just sweets. "If you are in a forest and you hear rustling, the context urges you to pay full attention since this could be a sign of danger," he said. "If you are in your office, the context makes the identical sound less relevant. A major job of the brain is to match response to context."

The giant panda is a much loved animal all over the world and is considered a symbol of China, as illustrated by its being one of the mascots for the upcoming Olympics in Beijing. The excitement surrounding the launch of this ambitious project, however, has been built around how this new genomic information will have extensive impact in numerous scientific areas - from ecology to evolution to sequencing technology. Such data will aid in understanding the genetic and biological underpinnings of this unique species, especially with regard to its very specific niche in the environment and the molecular mechanisms of its evolution. Of special interest is that these data will be extremely useful for protecting and monitoring this endangered species and will provide information on the impact of captive breeding. In addition, it will have considerable use in controlling diseases that could devastate these fragile populations. Because scientists will be utilizing the latest Now-Gen sequencing technology to carry out this research, this project will also have far-reaching implications for promoting advances in sequencing tools and techniques.

"The most noteworthy aspect of the project," said Oliver Ryder of the San Diego Zoo's Center for Conservation and Research for Endangered Species (CRES) and a participant at the January workshop, "is that it is the first genome project to be undertaken specifically to gather information that will contribute to conservation efforts for an endangered species. The giant panda is a global conservation symbol and deserving of such an effort."

Ya-Ping Zhang, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Director of the Kunming Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, put equal emphasis on the evolutionary impact of these studies, saying, "the genome project will help scientists to understand the genetic basis for giant panda adaptation to its special diet and behavioral style, and to reveal the history of population isolation and migration."

Often referred to as a living fossil, given evidence that its ancestors existed in China over 8 million years ago, the giant panda has been the focal point of many research projects. So far, however, little research has been done on a genomic scale. The giant panda has a genome size of about 3 Gb, which is approximately the same size as the human genome, and is thought to have 20,000-30,000 genes. Taxonomy and genetic studies indicate that the giant panda is most closely related to bears, not to raccoons as was once considered, given their unique physical characteristics.

The Giant Panda is the logo and flagship species for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), China. Zhiyong Fan, Species Program Director of the WWF-China, made comments based on the importance of protecting the panda in the wild: "The project is a really ambitious. Its contribution to wild panda conservation has been discussed in the workshop. We are looking forward to its effort".

Dr. Lin He, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who works at both Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Fudan University, noted that the panda sequence obtained from this project will greatly benefit our understanding of the reduced fecundity in pandas when living under certain environmental conditions. This is a major issue for breeding programs that are carried out to strengthen the panda species as a whole. Dr. Lin He also raised an important point about how this sequence will further aid in learning about the interaction between genetics and the environment, and their impact on the physiology and pathology of the panda.

The panda to be sequenced for the Giant Panda Genome Project will be chosen from the Chengdu and Wolong breeding centers. In addition to producing a high quality genome sequence, the researchers will do a survey of the genetic variations in the panda population. The fine map of the panda's genome and the transcriptome studies will provide an unparalleled amount of information to aid in understanding both current and past status of the species, including historical population size, current levels of inbreeding, precise estimates of gene-flow, and past connectedness between the two different mountain-top giant panda populations.

Extensive research carried out by Dr Iain Lang at the Peninsula Medical School looked at the relationship between smoking and psychological wellbeing. Dr Lang and colleagues used a measure of quality of life called the CASP-19 and found that smokers experienced lower average levels of pleasure and life satisfaction compared with non-smokers. The difference was even more pronounced in smokers from lower socio-economic groups.

In short - smoking doesn't make you happy.

Dr. Lang and his team carried out a study involving 9176 individuals aged 50 or over, who took part in ELSA, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. The studies for the research categorised people as never-smokers, ex-smokers and current smokers, and used household wealth as an indicator for socio-economic position.

Said Dr. Lang: "We found no evidence to support the claim that smoking is associated with pleasure, either in people from lower socio-economic groups or in the general population."

He added: "People may feel like they're getting pleasure when they smoke a cigarette but in fact smokers are likely to be less happy overall - the pleasure they feel from having a smoke comes only because they're addicted. These results show smoking doesn't make you happy - in fact, it is associated with poorer overall quality of life. Anyone thinking of giving up smoking should understand that quitting will be better for them in terms of their well-being - as well as their physical health - in the long-run."

The predator represents one of the biggest species of pliosaur known to science, researchers say. Pliosaurs were the top marine predators during the dinosaur era.

Exposure to secondhand smoke has been extensively shown to increase the risk for numerous illnesses and premature death. The household study, conducted in 31 countries, found that 82 percent of parents who smoked reported smoking around their children. Measurements of nicotine levels from household air and children's hair samples also indicated high exposure to secondhand smoke among those living with a smoker. The study is among the first to demonstrate that secondhand smoke is a global concern, particularly for children. It was published on February 28 in the online version of the American Journal of Public Health and will appear in the journal's April 2008 print edition.

According to the findings, concentrations of nicotine in the air were 17 times higher in households with a smoker compared to those without. Air concentrations were 12.9 times higher in households that permitted smoking indoors, compared to those that voluntarily restricted indoor smoking. Median air nicotine levels in households with smokers were highest in Europe, followed by Latin America and Asia. Nicotine was detected in hair samples in 78 percent of children living with a smoker and 59 percent of those who did not live with a smoker. In most cases, hair nicotine levels were positively correlated with nicotine air concentrations.

"Our research clearly shows that parents are failing to protect their children from secondhand smoke exposure, perhaps because they are unaware of the risks" said lead author, Heather Wipfli, PhD, project director at the Bloomberg School's Institute for Global Tobacco Control. "The results highlight the need to improve public awareness of the importance of going outside to smoke to limit the exposure to children living in the home."

A related study, also published in the American Journal of Public Health, concluded that paternal smoking diverts money from basic necessities to cigarettes, putting children at greater risk for chronic malnutrition. Richard Semba, MD, MPH, a professor with the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and his colleagues found that paternal smoking was associated with increased mortality among infants and children under age 5 in Indonesia.

"Tobacco control should be considered as part of the strategy for reducing child mortality," said Semba.

Carnegie Mellon University scientists have shown that just listening to a cell phone while driving is a significant distraction, and it causes drivers to commit some of the same types of driving errors that can occur under the influence of alcohol.

The use of cell phones, including dialing and texting, has long been a safety concern for drivers. But the Carnegie Mellon study, for the first time, used brain imaging to document that listening alone reduces by 37 percent the amount of brain activity associated with driving. This can cause drivers to weave out of their lane, based on the performance of subjects using a driving simulator.

The findings, to be reported in an upcoming issue of the journal Brain Research, show that making cell phones hands-free or voice-activated is not sufficient in eliminating distractions to drivers. "Drivers need to keep not only their hands on the wheel; they also have to keep their brains on the road," said neuroscientist Marcel Just, director of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging.

Other distractions, such as eating, listening to the radio or talking with a passenger, also can divert a driver. Though it is not known how these activities compare to cell phone use, Just said there are reasons to believe cell phones may be especially distracting. "Talking on a cell phone has a special social demand, such that not attending to the cell conversation can be interpreted as rude, insulting behavior," he noted. A passenger, by contrast, is likely to recognize increased demands on the driver's attention and stop talking.

The 29 study volunteers used a driving simulator while inside an MRI brain scanner. They steered a car along a virtual winding road at a fixed, challenging speed, either while they were undisturbed, or while they were deciding whether a sentence they heard was true or false. Just's team used state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methods to measure activity in 20,000 brain locations, each about the size of a peppercorn. Measurements were made every second.

The driving-while-listening condition produced a 37 percent decrease in activity of the brain's parietal lobe, which is associated with driving. This portion of the brain integrates sensory information and is critical for spatial sense and navigation. Activity was also reduced in the occipital lobe, which processes visual information.

The other impact of driving-while-listening was a significant deterioration in the quality of driving. Subjects who were listening committed more lane maintenance errors, such as hitting a simulated guardrail, and deviating from the middle of the lane. Both kinds of influences decrease the brain's capacity to drive well, and that decrease can be costly when the margin for error is small.

"The clear implication is that engaging in a demanding conversation could jeopardize judgment and reaction time if an atypical or unusual driving situation arose," Just said. "Heavy traffic is no place for an involved personal or business discussion, let alone texting."

Because driving and listening draw on two different brain networks, scientists had previously suspected that the networks could work independently on each task. But Just said this study demonstrates that there is only so much that the brain can do at one time, no matter how different the two tasks are.

The study emerges from the new field of neuroergonomics, which combines brain science with human-computer interaction studies that measure how well a technology matches human capabilities. Neuroergonomics is beginning to be applied to the operation of vehicles like aircraft, ships and cars in which drivers now have navigation systems, iPods and even DVD players at their disposal. Every additional input to a driver consumes some of his or her brain capacity, taking away some of the resources that monitor for other vehicles, lane markers, obstacles, and sudden changes in conditions.

"Drivers' seats in many vehicles are becoming highly instrumented cockpits," Just said, "and during difficult driving situations, they require the undivided attention of the driver's brain."

A hush falls and, if you're like most people, your eyes will dart towards the person most likely to take offense to the faux pas. It's a doubly unpleasant experience for the offended: Not only have you been insulted, but you have also suddenly become the center of unwelcome attention.

This almost instinctive stare toward the potentially offended has garnered the attention of researchers seeking to understand why this phenomenon occurs. Psychologist Jennifer Randall Crosby of Agnes Scott College and her colleagues created an experiment using the especially sensitive topic of race in order to take a closer look.

In a study appearing in the March issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, the researchers had participants watch recorded discussions between four males (three White and one Black) that dealt with university admissions. In the course of the video, one of the white males makes this potentially controversial remark:

"I think one problem with admissions is that too many qualified White students are not getting the spots they've earned. These students work hard all through school and then lose their spots to members of certain groups who have lower test scores, and come from less challenging environments. They get an unfair advantage."

In one condition, an off-screen narrator explicitly states that all participants are involved in the discussion. In the other, the narrator states that only two of the discussants (both white) could hear what was being said. The researchers then tracked participants' eye movements as they watched the videos to examine when their gaze would shift toward the Black discussant.

Their results show that participants fixed their eyes on the Black discussant four times longer when they believed he could hear what was being said. According to the authors, this demonstrates that complex cognitive processes are work when we glance at potentially insulted persons. According to the researchers, "participants are simultaneously attending to what is said, who can hear what is said, the social identity of the listeners, and the possible reactions of the listeners."

Why we do this behavior is still a somewhat of a mystery, but the authors suggest that people may seeking out the responses of potentially victimized group members to help them assess the situation. "Additional research is needed to address these issues," write the authors, "but we believe this paradigm is rich with possibilities and can help illuminate how people go about answering the thorny question of what is appropriate and what is offensive."

The oryx, along with eight others from American and European zoos, was sent to Tunisia in December 2007 for an eventual reintroduction into the wild, where they have been extinct since the late 1970s. Oryx are a type of desert antelope that are mostly white with reddish-brown necks and marks on the face and a long, dark, tufted tail. They stand up to 4 feet and 6 inches tall at the shoulder, and both male and female oryx have curved horns that grow to be several feet long.

Although the animals have been returned to Tunisia, scientists cannot just simply release them into the wild. For now, the oryx are being kept in a 20,000-acre fenced area in the Dghoumes National Park. Within this protected zone, the five males and four females will reproduce and become acclimated to their arid surroundings. Once a sustainable population has been established, possibly a decade or so from now, the fences will come down.

Oryx were once common in the wild. As recently as 1900, there were as many as 1 million of them in North Africa. But their numbers began to dwindle as they were hunted, both for sport and food. To ensure that the same problems do not plague the oryx that are being reintroduced into the wild, the Tunisian government is planning conservation programs to educate local people about the importance of protecting the animals.

The plan to send oryx to Tunisia came about after that country approached the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and the Secretariat for the Convention on Migratory Species for help. Population managers for oryx decided which of the animals were the most genetically valuable to send to Tunisia.

Oryx from the National Zoo’s Conservation and Research Center, the Kansas City Zoo, the Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Texas, The Wilds in Ohio and Texas’ Bamberger Ranch joined oryx from Fota Wildlife Park in Ireland and France’s Le Pal Parc Animalier et D’Attractions in Tunisia in December 2007. The National Zoo’s oryx will provide a significant infusion of valuable genes into the reintroduced population.

Scientists at the National Zoo’s Conservation and Research Center also are continuing important research to help find ways to better manage scimitar-horned oryx, both in the wild and in zoos. National Zoo scientists pioneered artificial insemination techniques for oryx in order to ensure that genetically valuable but behaviorally incompatible pairs could reproduce.

Two oryx are on exhibit at the National Zoo, and several more oryx remain at the Conservation and Research Center.

Biologists examining ecosystems similar to those that existed on Earth more than 3 billion years ago have made a surprising discovery: Viruses that infect bacteria are sometimes parochial and unrelated to their relatives in other parts of the globe.

The finding, published online this week by the journal Nature, is surprising because bacteria are ubiquitous on Earth. They've been found from the upper reaches of the atmosphere to miles below the ocean floor. Because of their ubiquity, scientists have long believed bacteria to be cosmopolitan, having similar genetic histories across the globe. The same was also believed to be true for phages, the viruses that infect bacteria.

"The idea that things in the microbial world can have endemic properties is relatively new," said study co-author Janet Siefert, a Rice University computational biologist who has made a half-dozen trips to one of the study sites in Mexico's remote Cuatro Ciénegas valley. "People really weren't talking about it until about a decade ago, and we certainly didn't expect to find this when we began our work in Mexico."

Bacteria are the dominant forms of life on Earth. They helped shape the planet's land, oceans and atmosphere for 3 billion years before the first appearance of multicellular creatures. Siefert and several of her co-authors began traveling to Cuatro Ciénegas in Mexico's Chihuahuan Desert in 2004 to study cyanobacteria living in a network of more than 200 spring-fed pools, or "pozas." Cuatro Ciénegas' pozas have been compared to the Galapagos Islands, except that their endemic species -- at least 70 species in the valley are found nowhere else on Earth -- are separated from the rest of the world by mountains and a sea of sand rather than an ocean.

The cyanobacteria in the pozas live communally, forming coral-like structures called "stromatolites," or microbialites, that are geologically identical to 3.5 billion-year-old fossils that are believed to be the oldest evidence of life on Earth.

"We had very little funding when we started going to Cuatro Ciénegas," Siefert said. "We were taking a shot in the dark to see if we could better understand the physical, chemical and geological context of the bacterial communities and the stromatolites."

The work drew interest and seed funding from NASA's astrobiology program, which hoped the work might provide important clues about the way early life might develop on other planets.

Siefert said biogeography -- the study of species' biodiversity and distribution across time and space -- has only recently been possible for viruses, mainly due to advancements in software and other computer tools. New sequencing technologies made it possible to analyze and geographically map the genetic differences among viral genotypes in Cuatro Ciénegas and other locations. The new study's findings contrast with previous studies that found viruses are widely dispersed on Earth and share almost the same genotypes.

Stromatolite samples collected from two pozas in 2004 were examined by several co-authors in the research group of San Diego State University biologist Forest Rohwer, who has prepared the world's largest database of phage DNA. In the first step of the tests, researchers crushed small bits of the coral-like stromatolites and extracted DNA from the samples. The DNA from each sample was decoded and compiled into a database called a "metagenome." The metagenomes from the Mexican pozas were compared with each other and with metagenomes from stromatilites in Highborne Cay, Bahamas. Finally, all three of these metagenomes were compared with Rohwer's phage database and with several large gene-sequence databases, like GenBank.

"Taken together, these results prove that viruses in modern microbialites display the variability of distribution of organisms on our planet," Rohwer said. "It also suggests that they may be derived from an ancient, microbial community."

The analyses found that the phages in the Bahamas and in both Mexican pozas shared only about 5 percent of the same DNA sequences. Moreover, the analyses revealed that the Mexican phages appeared to have evolved from ancient, ocean-going relatives. Siefert said the finding is amazing given that Cuatro Ciénegas has been cut off from the ocean for about 100 million years, but it complements prior findings of marine genetic signatures in some of Cuatro Ciénegas' other endemic species.

"Over that length of time, we would expect the marine signature to get washed out of the genetic code," she said. "In fact, when we compared the phages from the pozas to oceanic phages, we found cases where the pozas' phages were more closely related to marine relatives than were some of the phages found in other oceans."

Even with three Gold Gloves, Yankees captain Derek Jeter has been labeled the worst fielding shortstop in baseball, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania examined every hit from the 2002-2005 baseball seasons and developed a formula to calculate the probability of a player recording an out on a batted ball.

The sensor, which detects binding of prion proteins by detecting frequency changes of a micromechanical oscillator, could lead to a reliable blood test for prion diseases in both animals and humans, the researchers say. Their study is scheduled for the April 1 issue of ACS' Analytical Chemistry, a semi-monthly journal.

Prions are infectious proteins that can cause deadly nerve-damaging diseases such as Mad Cow Disease in cattle, scrapie in sheep, and a human form of Mad Cow Disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Conventional tests are designed to detect the proteins only upon autopsy and the tests are time-consuming and unreliable.

In the new study, Harold G. Craighead and colleagues describe a high-tech, nano-sized device called a nanomechanical resonator array. The device includes a silicon sensor, which resembles a tiny tuning fork, that changes vibrational resonant frequency when prions bind. Its vibration patterns are then measured by a special detector. In experimental trials, the sensor detected prions at concentrations as low as 2 nanograms per milliliter, the smallest levels measured to date, the researchers say.

Researchers examined the association between breakfast frequency and five-year body weight change in more than 2,200 adolescents, and the results indicate that daily breakfast eaters consumed a healthier diet and were more physically active than breakfast skippers during adolescence. Five years later, the daily breakfast eaters also tended to gain less weight and have lower body mass index levels - an indicator of obesity risk - compared with those who had skipped breakfast as adolescents.

Mark Pereira, Ph.D., corresponding author on the study, points out that this study extends the literature on the topic of breakfast habits and obesity risk because of the size and duration of the study. "The dose-response findings between breakfast frequency and obesity risk, even after taking into account physical activity and other dietary factors, suggests that eating breakfast may have important effects on overall diet and obesity risk, but experimental studies are needed to confirm these observations," he added.

Over the past two decades, rates of obesity have doubled in children and nearly tripled in adolescents. Fifty-seven percent of adolescent females and 33 percent of males frequently use unhealthy weight-control behaviors, and it is estimated that between 12 and 24 percent of children and adolescents regularly skip breakfast. This percentage of breakfast skippers, while alarming, has been found to increase with age.

Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Ph.D., principal investigator of Project EAT, says that this research confirms the importance of teaching adolescents to start the day off 'right' by eating breakfast. "Although adolescents may think that skipping breakfast seems like a good way to save on calories, findings suggest the opposite. Eating a healthy breakfast may help adolescents avoid overeating later in the day and disrupt unhealthy eating patterns, such as not eating early in the day and eating a lot late in the evening."

The study, conducted by researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, found that if black mothers having VLBW babies gave birth at the same hospitals as white mothers of VLBW babies, death rates for black VLBW babies would fall nearly 5 percent, to a rate of 132 deaths for every 1,000 VLBW births in New York City hospitals. This would reduce the disparity that currently exists between black and white VLBW deaths by 34%.

"It is important to understand why black very low birth weight infants in New York City are more likely to die in their first month of life than white infants. This study tells us that a big part of that difference can be attributed to the hospital where the baby is born," says lead study author Elizabeth Howell, M.D., of the Department of Health Policy at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "It further tells us that we have an opportunity to save the lives of babies and eliminate a significant portion of the black-white gap."

In addition to the disparity in where black and white VLBW babies are born, the authors also found a striking variation in the neonatal death rates for VLBW babies in New York City hospitals. The death rates ranged from 9.6 to 27.2 deaths for every 1,000 births and standardized mortality rates (ratio of observed deaths to actual deaths) ranged from 0.70 to 1.97.

Eliminating the wide variation in death rates could substantially improve the difference in death rates between black and white VLBW babies. In fact, 25 percent of the disparity would be eliminated if the hospitals with the highest neonatal death rates could do as well as the hospitals with an average neonatal mortality rate.

"This study clearly shows that hospital quality is a big part of the reason that very low birth weight babies who are black have such poor survival rates in New York City," said Commonwealth Fund Assistant Vice President Anne Beal, M.D. "These findings hold even when controlling for other factors that contribute to differences in infant mortality. In order to save these babies, we need to find out where the delivery of high quality care breaks down and take steps to make improvements at all hospitals; especially those hospitals with the highest neonatal death rates, which often care for more minority infants."

Researchers reviewed all live births and deaths of infants born in 45 New York City hospitals between January 1996 and December 2001, measuring very low birth weight neonatal mortality rates, or deaths within 28 days after delivery, for the study. They adjusted for outside risks such as prenatal care and the mother's health.

Throughout the world, amateurs, experts and the media agree that prolonged jogging raises people's spirits. And many believe that the body's own opioids, so called endorphins, are the cause of this. But in fact this has never been proved until now. Researchers at the Technische Universität München and the University of Bonn succeeded to demonstrate the existence of an 'endorphin driven runner's high'. In an imaging study they were able to show, for the first time, increased release of endorphins in certain areas of the athletes' brains during a two-hour jogging session. Their results are also relevant for patients suffering from chronic pain, because the body's own opiates are produced in areas of the brain which are involved in the suppression of pain. The researchers, some of whom are also members of the German Research Network of Neuropathic Pain (Deutscher Forschungsverbund Neuropathischer Schmerz, DFNS), which is also funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF), thereby show that jogging not only makes you high, but can also relieve pain. The results of the study have now been published in the scientific journal 'Cerebral Cortex'.

Endurance sports have long been seen as reducing stress, relieving anxiety, enhancing mood and decreasing the perception of pain. The high that accompanies jogging even led to the creation of its own term, 'runner's high'. Yet the cause of these positive effects on the senses was not clear until now. The most popular theory was and still is the 'Endorphin Hypothesis', which claimed that there was increased production of the body's own opioids in the brain. However, since until now direct proof of this theory could not be provided; for technical reasons, it was a constant source of controversial discussions in scientific circles. The result was that the myth of 'runner's high through endorphins' lived on.

Scientists from the fields of Nuclear Medicine, Neurology and Anaesthesia at the Technische Universität München (TUM) and the University of Bonn have now subjected the endorphin theory to closer scrutiny. Ten athletes were scanned before and after a two-hour long-distance run using an imaging technique called positron emission tomography (PET). For this they used the radioactive substance [18F]diprenorphine ([18F]FDPN), which binds to the opiate receptors in the brain and hence competes with endorphins. 'The more endorphins are produced in the athlete's brain, the more opiate receptors are blocked,' says Professor Henning Boecker, who coordinated the research at TUM and who is now in charge of the 'Functional Neuroimaging Group' at the Dept. of Radiology, University Hospital Bonn. And further: 'Respectively the opioid receptor binding of the [18F]FDPN decreases, since there is a direct competition between endorphins in the brain and the injected ligand'. By comparing the images before and after two hours of long distance running the study could demonstrate a significantly decreased binding of the [18F]FDPN-ligand. This is a strong argument in favour of an increased production of the body's own opioids while doing long-distance running. 'We could validate for the first time an endorphin driven runner's high and identify the affected brain areas', states Boecker. 'It's interesting to see that the affected brain areas were preferentially located in prefrontal and limbic brain regions which are known to play a key role in emotional processing. Moreover, we observed a significant increase of the euphoria and happiness ratings compared to the ratings before the running exercise.' Professor Thomas Tölle, who for several years has been head of a research group called 'Functional Imaging of Pain' at TU Munich, adds: 'Our evaluations show that the more intensively the high is experienced, the lower the binding of [18F]FDPN was in the PET scan. And this means that the ratings of euphoria and happiness correlated directly with the release of the endorphins.' In addition, as a spokesman of the 'German Association of Neuropathic Pain', he feels happy for patients suffering from chronic pain. 'The fact that the endorphins are also released in areas of the brain that are at the centre of the suppression of pain was not quite unexpected, but even this proof was missing. Now we hope that these images will also impress our pain patients and will motivate them to take up sports training within their available limits.'

It is well known that endorphins facilitate the body's own pain suppression by influencing the way the body passes on pain and processes it in the nervous system and brain. The increased production of endorphins resulting from long-distance running could also serve as the body's own pain-killer, a therapeutic option which is not only of interest to the German Association of Neuropathic Pain. 'Now we are very curious about the results of an imaging study using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging which we are currently carrying out in Bonn in order to investigate the influence of long-distance running on the processing of pain directly,' Professor Boecker says. Further research is required so as to investigate the exact effects on depression and states of anxiety but also on possible aspects which may promote addiction. That is why the relation between genetic disposition and opiate receptor distribution in the brain is being currently investigated at TU Munich. 'A scary thought,' Thomas Tölle comments, 'if we ran because our genes wanted us to do so.' The first step towards researching these connections has now been made.

A problem which has defeated mathematicians for almost 140 years has been solved by a researcher at Imperial College London.

Professor Darren Crowdy, Chair in Applied Mathematics, has made the breakthrough in an area of mathematics known as conformal mapping, a key theoretical tool used by mathematicians, engineers and scientists to translate information from a complicated shape to a simpler circular shape so that it is easier to analyse.

This theoretical tool has a long history and has uses in a large number of fields including modelling airflow patterns over intricate wing shapes in aeronautics. It is also currently being used in neuroscience to visualise the complicated structure of the grey matter in the human brain.

A formula, now known as the Schwarz-Christoffel formula, was developed by two mathematicians in the mid-19th century to enable them to carry out this kind of mapping. However, for 140 years there has been a deficiency in this formula: it only worked for shapes that did not contain any holes or irregularities.

Now Professor Crowdy has made additions to the famous Schwarz-Christoffel formula which mean it can be used for these more complicated shapes. He explains the significance of his work, saying:

"This formula is an essential piece of mathematical kit which is used the world over. Now, with my additions to it, it can be used in far more complex scenarios than before. In industry, for example, this mapping tool was previously inadequate if a piece of metal or other material was not uniform all over - for instance, if it contained parts of a different material, or had holes."

Professor Crowdy's work has overcome these obstacles and he says he hopes it will open up many new opportunities for this kind of conformal mapping to be used in diverse applications.

"With my extensions to this formula, you can take account of these differences and map them onto a simple disk shape for analysis in the same way as you can with less complex shapes without any of the holes," he added.

Professor Crowdy's improvements to the Schwarz-Christoffel formula were published in the March-June 2007 issue of Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society.