Rats

Until recently, very few people had ever heard of raspberry ketones, the aromatic compounds that give the berries their distinctive smell. Today, health food stores have trouble keeping the capsules or drops of the stuff on their shelves. Almost overnight, an obscure plant compound became the next big thing in weight loss - and all it took was a few words from Dr. Oz. In a February episode of "The Dr. Oz Show," Mehmet Oz told viewers that raspberry ketones were "the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. " Once Oz calls something a "miracle," it doesn't remain obscure for long.

Rats fed fructose-laced drinking water for six weeks performed more slowly in a maze-navigating task, UCLA researchers have found. (Read this L.A. Times opinion article .) They think the effect is due to changes in the way the brain responds to insulin as a result of exposure to fructose. “Our study shows that a high fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body,” study senior author and UCLA professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla said in a release about the finding, which was published in the Journal of Physiology (postdoc Rahul Agrawal was first author)

It was evidently good enough for Gilligan and Robinson Crusoe. But is coconut water a healthy choice for people who aren't stranded on a deserted island? A longstanding treat in tropical regions across the globe, coconut water hit U.S. supermarkets a few years back and is now being marketed with a vengeance. Sometimes billed as nature's sports drink, the slightly sour beverage has also acquired a reputation for being able to improve circulation, slow aging, fight viruses, boost immunity, and reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke.

The comparisons will be inevitable between the Starz drama "Magic City" and AMC's critical darling "Mad Men. " So let's get a few of them out of the way. Each is populated with drop-dead-gorgeous dames and rakishly handsome fellas. Both take place in the glamorous Rat Pack era — late '50s, early '60s — when stylish folks drove cars the size of luxury liners and ordered highballs for lunch. They name-check real historical figures like the Kennedys and Frank Sinatra, and social upheaval bubbles in the background.

Teas from across the globe are becoming more and more popular in the U.S. One relative newcomer, yerba mate, is attracting fans for its allegedly jitter-free caffeine boost and high antioxidant content. Lab research suggests some potential health benefits from drinking yerba mate, but studies of lifelong yerba mate drinkers in the tea's native South America suggest the brew increases the risk of some cancers -- a fact most marketing campaigns omit.

Rats fed fructose-laced drinking water for six weeks performed more slowly in a maze-navigating task, UCLA researchers have found. (Read this L.A. Times opinion article .) They think the effect is due to changes in the way the brain responds to insulin as a result of exposure to fructose. “Our study shows that a high fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body,” study senior author and UCLA professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla said in a release about the finding, which was published in the Journal of Physiology (postdoc Rahul Agrawal was first author)

A tangy, sour, fermented milk drink may not sound like a likely candidate to move from health food stores to mainstream supermarkets, but that's exactly what kefir has done. The beverage is steadily gaining fans convinced of the health benefits -- proponents tout its purported ability to help cure cancer, reduce high cholesterol and treat high blood pressure -- yet the scientific studies to support the claims are still few. Kefir's closest cousin is yogurt, also made by fermenting milk with bacteria.

We love our digital gadgets -- "magic" devices that define cool and promise to remake our lives for the better. But there is growing evidence of a dark side to the techno-magic. Your cellphone, and any other wireless device that depends on electromagnetic (EM) microwave radiation to function, may be hazardous to your health. Most of the bad news comes from major labs and research institutions in Europe. What they're reporting is that using cellphones and Wi-Fi transmitters -- which operate using similar frequencies -- can have biological effects on the brain and body.

Any devoted reader of the Rodent of the Week knows by now how much science depends on our furry friends. Without them, we would know next to nothing. That's why this week's news of a better way to study rats' brains deserves notice. Researchers reported they have developed a wearable, portable PET scanner that will measure the rodent brain function while the animals are awake and moving. The device was developed by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University.

One of the high-profile areas of research for stem cells is in treatment of spinal cord injuries -- and there was progress to report this week. Researchers were able to transplant a type of human cell into rats with spinal cord injuries to help the animals regain some motor function. Previous studies have shown that certain types of rat cells are necessary to repair spinal cord injuries. But the new study "brings it up to a human level," said Chris Proschel, the lead author of the paper and an assistant professor of genetics at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

Singer and actress Kaye Stevens, 79, who performed with the Rat Pack and frequently appeared on Johnny Carson's late-night talk show, died Wednesday at Villages Hospital north of Orlando, Fla. She had breast cancer and blood clots, said her friend Gerry Schweitzer. During the Vietnam War era, Stevens also performed for American soldiers in the war zone with Bob Hope's USO tour. Rat Pack members she shared the stage with included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. She also sang solo at such venues as Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

In the den of Darryl Roth's Corona home, cartoon ogres cover the walls, staring back at him with salivating tongues, bloodshot eyes, jagged claws and gnashing teeth. To Roth, the images represent rebellion, a gloriously grotesque imagination — and his father. "I look around and I swear, it's like he's still alive. He's still here," Roth said. He's the youngest son of iconic hot rod artist Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, and this year marked the 10th anniversary of his father's passing. "Even now," said the son, "I'm blown away by him. " Between the late 1950s and the mid-1960s, Ed Roth was what famed journalist Tom Wolfe described as the Salvador Dali of the hot rod world.

Forget about rock 'n' roll: When rats are administered the highly addictive stimulant methamphetamine and allowed to engage in sexual behavior while high, all they want is more of both. That's the raw finding of a study published Tuesday by the Journal of Neuroscience. It's important because many who use methamphetamine report that it enhances their sexual experience. But because it also reduces their inhibitions , those abusers are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior , including unprotected sex and anal intercourse.

This city of 20 million people, the frenetic embodiment of India's energy, ambition and chaos, doesn't do quiet very well, even as it pauses for a few hours after midnight to rejuvenate. Tonight, monsoon rains from the Arabian Sea are forcing its thousands of street dwellers to retreat to dank hallways and dimly lit underpasses. Mahesh Suresh Kamble and his co-worker, Sangpal Sitaram Bachate, wait for the rain to ease before heading to a complex of four-story apartments in the heart of the city, aware that their prey prefers indoor comfort in such weather.

Four in 10 kids who get a diagnosis of either depression or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) end up getting both diagnoses sometime in their young lives. That means a lot will spend some part of their adolescence taking two psychiatric medications: methylphenidate (better known by its commercial name, Ritalin) and fluoxetine (better known as Prozac, the only of the new-generation antidepressants approved for kids as young as 8 years old). A new study conducted on rats suggests that taking that combination of drugs may change the adults they will become in ways that are distinctly troubling.

Do you wish you could forget that time singing karaoke with your boss or recall the location of that great restaurant you visited last year? Take heart: Scientists are coming closer to being able to turn memories on and off with the flip of a switch. A team led by Theodore Berger, a professor of biomedical engineering at USC, has figured out how to manipulate brain cells in rats so that memories stored in the hippocampus, a region crucial for memory formation, were activated or suppressed.

Poor rats. William Jordan ("A Rat's Niche," Feb. 1) finds that because they have become similar to humans in many respects, "it is not surprising that rats are used universally in medical research." How lucky can an animal get? The closer they are to us, the more compelled and justified we feel in burning, vivisecting, starving, electrocuting, frustrating, isolating and drowning them; inducing insanity, forcing cannibalism, filling them with all the products we make, addicting them, and injecting them with cancer, AIDS and anything else.

The Food section's Newsbites column (Sept. 6) contained a short article about rats who died of respiratory failure after ingesting large quantities of hot sauce. The article was light in tone and admonished readers not to drink quarts of hot sauce or "shoot up" with hot sauce lest they suffer a similar fate. Can you imagine, however, the suffering involved in this reported experiment? Obviously the rats didn't rush to overindulge a hot-sauce passion--they must have been force-fed. A death by respiratory failure, for man, rat, dog, horse, etc. is a horrible one.

Steady exposure to the electromagnetic radiation given off by cellphones during use may disrupt fetal development, disturb memory and weaken the barrier that protects the brain from environmental toxins, says a welter of new research being presented this week in Istanbul, Turkey. The authors of the studies, published in the past two years, highly preliminary and conducted on rabbits, mice and rats, suggested that the non-ionizing radiation emitted by cellphones and the base stations that broadcast cellphone signals may fundamentally damage cells by means other than the heat that they generate.