Purdue University
Supplementing the diet with a certain fatty acid may lead to better weight control and disease management in diabetics, a new study suggests. Diabetics who added an essential fatty acid called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) to their diets had lower body mass as well as lower blood sugar levels by the end of the eight-week study. Hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar, is a hallmark of diabetes. Researchers also found that higher levels of this fatty acid in the bloodstream meant lower levels of leptin, a hormone thought to regulate fat levels. Scientists think that high leptin levels may play a role in obesity, one of the biggest risk factors for adult-onset diabetes.
In an effort to help create spacecraft that can think, NASA and a group of six colleges led by Purdue University today are meeting in West Lafayette, Ind., to officially launch the NASA Institute for Nanoelectronics and Computing. Institute scientists and engineers will collaborate to work on methods to make electronics measured in nanometers -- much smaller than today's components. A nanometer is roughly 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Purdue scientists will work with researchers at Northwestern, Cornell and Yale universities, the University of Florida and the University of California at San Diego.
Coonhound puppies on diets containing the type of fat found in deep-fried foods are furthering understanding of how these fats contribute to aging and development of human diseases such as atherosclerosis and cancer, according to Purdue University scientists. One group of dogs fed a highly-oxidized lipid diet and another group fed one with a moderate level of this fat type, both had reduced growth, bone formation and immune function, said John Turek, Purdue professor of basic sciences. This was the first study in dogs to assess the effects of oxidized lipids on growth, antioxidant status, bone development and immune function.
An environmentally friendly solution to one of the world's most notorious chemical contamination problems may be a step closer to reality, reports a research team from Purdue University and the University of British Columbia. The team has identified one of the key stumbling blocks that prevent microorganisms from decomposing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), a persistent and potentially hazardous industrial chemical that has become nearly ubiquitous in the environment. While capitalizing on the discovery will take time, it could eventually show researchers how to teach microorganisms to break down PCBs into ecologically safe molecules, a process known as bioremediation.
Engineers have developed a new mathematical formula that can spot flaws in automobile designs before they get to the costly assembly line stage. Engineers now use complicated models in which numerous car parts are represented by mathematical expressions that must take into consideration many precise mechanical details. The models have to include information such as the mass of components, their stiffness and dampening characteristics, and the exact forces involved. These models are themselves flawed, the researchers believe, because they rely on approximations about the characteristics and interactions of automotive parts. "A major difference in our method is that we don't use approximations," said one of the Purdue team. "We have found that you don't need to know all of those parameters."
Physicists have devised a new experiment that will be used in the quest for exotic forces in nature and "additional spatial dimensions." The researchers have shown what they say is a new way to measure a phenomenon known as the Casimir effect ? findings that also could have implications for the design of microscopic machines that contain tiny parts on the size scale of nanometers ? or billionths of a meter. The Casimir effect, predicted in 1948 by Dutch physicist Hendrick Casimir, is a force that pushes together two plates of metal placed near each other in empty space ? or a vacuum. The closer the plates are to each other, the stronger the force.
The hunt to find a gene that causes a disease typically costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and requires years of research - and it still may fail to turn up the sought-after culprit, driving the research back to square one. The result is that while the genes involved in a few inherited diseases such as cystic fibrosis have been identified, many have not. Now, two scientists say they may have found a way to make the search more economical and speed it up. In an article to appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences next week, scientists from the University of Florida and Purdue University report merging two established genetic-screening techniques to create one that's better. The new technique narrows the pool of "candidate" genes in a study from thousands of possibilities to fewer than 100 - perhaps as few as 20.
