UCLA
A dietary staple of India, where Alzheimer's disease rates are reportedly among the world's lowest, holds potential as a weapon in the fight against the disease. The new UCLA-Veterans Affairs study involving genetically altered mice suggests that curcumin, the yellow pigment in curry spice, inhibits the accumulation of destructive beta amyloids in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and also breaks up existing plaques.
Scientists have shown that a protein called telomerase prevents the premature aging of the immune cells that fight HIV, enabling the cells to divide indefinitely and prolong their defense against infection. The research suggests a future therapy for boosting the weakened immune systems of HIV-positive people. Every cell contains a tiny cellular clock called a telomere, which shortens each time the cell splits in two. Located at the end of the cell's chromosome, the telomere limits the number of times a cell can divide.
Low-income Asian and Pacific Islander children in California are becoming overweight at an alarming rate -- and will soon catch up to low-income white, black and Latino children in the proportion who are overweight or obese, according to new research. The percentage of low-income Asian and Pacific Islander children in California who are overweight more than doubled between 1994 and 2003, from 7 percent to 15 percent.
Earthquakes can be triggered by the Earth's tides, UCLA scientists confirmed Oct. 21 in Science Express, the online journal of Science. Earth tides are produced by the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun on the Earth, causing the ocean's waters to slosh, which in turn raise and lower stress on faults roughly twice a day. Scientists have wondered about the effects of Earth tides for more than 100 years. ''Large tides have a significant effect in triggering earthquakes,'' said Elizabeth Cochran, a UCLA graduate student in Earth and space sciences and lead author of the Science paper. ''The earthquakes would have happened anyway, but they can be pushed sooner or later by the stress fluctuations of the tides.''
Microbiologists report the discovery of a new class of genetic elements, similar to retroviruses, that operate in bacteria, allowing them to diversify their proteins to bind to a large variety of receptors. The team discovered this fundamental mechanism in the most abundant life-forms on Earth: bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria. ''A problem with antibiotics is that bacteria can mutate and become resistant to a particular antibiotic, while the antibiotic is static and cannot change... Bacteriophages are nature's anti-microbials, and they are amazingly dynamic. If the bacterium mutates in an effort to evade, the bacteriophage can change its specificity using the mechanism we discovered, to kill the newly resistant bacterium.''
One of science's most popular metaphors -- the ''tree of life,'' with its evolutionary branches and roots, showing groups of bacteria on the bottom and multicellular animals on the higher branches -- turns out to be a misnomer, UCLA molecular biologists report in the Sept. 9 issue of the journal Nature. ''It's not a tree; it's actually a ring of life,'' said James A. Lake, UCLA professsor of molecular biology. ''A ring explains the data far better.'' Lake initially titled the Nature article, ''One Ring to Rule Them All.'' The ring of life has significant implications for eukaryotes (cells with nuclei), the group that includes all multicellular forms of life, such as humans, animals and plants.
UCLA neuroscientists have shown for the first time that a diet high in the omega-3 fatty acid DHA helps protect the brain against the memory loss and cell damage caused by Alzheimer's disease. The new research suggests that a DHA-rich diet may lower one's risk of Alzheimer's disease and help slow progression of the disorder in its later stages. ''This is the first proof that our diets affect how our brain cells communicate with each other under the duress of Alzheimer's disease,'' said Greg Cole, senior author and a professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. ''We saw that a diet rich in DHA, or docosahexaenoic acid, dramatically reduces the impact of the Alzheimer's gene.
While nearly three-quarters of Americans believe that the public health system would respond fairly in a bioterrorist event, African-Americans and Asians adhere to this view in smaller proportions, perhaps because of past discriminatory policies put in place by health officials, according to a new UCLA study. The multivariate study, based on a random-digit, population-based telephone survey of Los Angeles County residents, found that 72 percent of respondents overall believe that the public health system would respond fairly in a bioterrorist event.
While important gains have been made during the past decade, African Americans still have a long way to go to achieve equality in America, according to a new report from UCLA. While the 1960s through the 1980s were characterized with gains in civil rights, data from the decade of the 1990s indicates that the struggle has become increasingly economic in nature, according to the study.
Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.
Quantum computing, which holds the promise of nearly unlimited processing power, secure communications and the ability to decode encrypted conversations by terrorists and others, is a significant step closer to becoming a reality today with new research published by a team of UCLA scientists in the journal Nature. The team succeeded in flipping a single electron spin upside down in an ordinary commercial transistor chip, and detected that the current changes when the electron flips.
UCLA neuroscientists using a new MRI analysis technique to examine myelin sheaths that insulate the brain's wiring report that as people age, neural connections that develop last degenerate first. The computer-based analysis method is unique in its ability to examine specific brain structures in living people at millimeter resolution.
About 40 percent of Los Angeles County residents say they get no more than 10 minutes of continuous physical activity each week, according to a new report.
Women interviewed for the study were almost twice as likely as men to be physically inactive, say Antronette Yancey, M.D., M.P.H., of the UCLA School of Public Health and colleagues. Older and less educated residents, along with those born outside the United States, were also apt to be sedentary.
A long look by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has revealed new evidence that extremely hot gas exists in a large region at the center of the Milky Way. The intensity and spectrum of the high-energy X-rays produced by this gas present a puzzle as to how it is being heated.
The discovery came to light as a team of astronomers, led by Michael Muno of UCLA used Chandra's unique resolving power to study a region about 100 light years across and painstakingly remove the contributions from 2,357 point-like X-ray sources due to neutron stars, black holes, white dwarfs, foreground stars, and background galaxies.
A study by researchers reveals the daily, detailed and deliberate planning behind the unprecedented coaching success of UCLA basketball legend John Wooden, who led teams to an unprecedented 10 NCAA championships. The researchers also revisit their methods and offer assessments of what they might do differently were they to conduct a similar study today.
