After the stampede to oat bran a few years ago by people eager to cut their cholesterol, there was a flurry of research to uncover other edibles with similar properties.
Now comes word that consuming garlic, noted in folklore for repulsing vampires, also can lower cholesterol.
Reporting in a recent issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, Dr. Stephen Warshafsky and colleagues from New York Medical College noted that on average serum cholesterol declined by 9 percent in people who ate one-half to one clove daily. Their finding was based on a statistical technique called meta-analysis applied to several studies.
ARGONNE OPTICAL SWITCH CALLED HIGHLY RELIABLE
Using bits of light called photons to carry information has several advantages over electricity, but a major disadvantage is difficulty in switching all optical photonics systems.
Many scientists are working to develop optical switches, and researchers at Argonne National Laboratory have a candidate they believe holds great promise. It is a complex molecule that causes a predictable transfer of electrons when struck by light of a certain wavelength.
The Argonne switch appears to be 10 to 100 times faster than other molecular switches under development and is highly reliable, say its developers.
“We’ve tested it more than 86 million times in a day without malfunction,” said Michael R. Wasielewski, the device’s co-inventor.
A key problem yet to be solved before the switch could find practical application is embedding it into a usable memory medium, said David Gosztola, the switch’s other inventor.
LOW SAT SCORES BLAMED ON READING TEXTS
Dropping test scores among high schoolers taking the Scholastic Aptitude Tests over the past few decades may be explained by an earlier trend among educators to provide reading texts more simple-minded than a farmer’s discourse with his cows, one researcher suggests.
Donald Hayes, a Cornell University sociologist, has developed a computerized analysis to measure text difficulty and found that the texts used in elementary schools have gotten less challenging than texts from 50 years ago.
The decline in school text difficulty correlates nicely with declining SAT scores, Hayes reported at the recent meeting of the American Sociological Association. He suggests returning to school texts as challenging in content as those used by the parents and grandparents of youngsters taking SAT tests today.
STUDY: PLASTICS MOLECULES MOVE LIKE SNAKES
Materials scientists long have pondered whether the long, chain-like molecules of plastics move headfirst like snakes when they mix or if they mingled from their middles in a random fashion.
In an elegant but complex experiment conceived by researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana and carried out at Argonne National Laboratory, the answer is in: Plastics molecules move like snakes.
The results caused “shouting and roaring” among jubilant scientists, said Richard P. Wool, a materials science and engineering professor on the Urbana campus.
The experiment confirms a theory called reptation, for reptile, developed more than 20 years ago by Pierre-Gilles deGennes, a French physicist and 1991 Nobel Prize winner, who speculated that plastics molecules slithered around like snakes.
After obtaining results from Argonne, the researchers confirmed their findings using different equipment at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in California. They reported their findings in a recent issue of the journal Nature.
LOW-PROTEIN DIET LINKED TO STROKES
Eating a lot of vegetables and grains while cutting back on meats and fats is widely advocated as a healthy choice, but almost nothing, it seems, is totally free of ambiguity.
A recent study published in the journal Neurology finds that residents of North and South Carolina and of Georgia are about twice as likely to die of a stroke as their counterparts in the rest of the United States.
The study’s author, Douglas J. Lanska of the University of Kentucky Medical Center, said his analysis indicates that the low-protein, high-carbohydrate diet of people in Georgia and the Carolinas may be linked to their high stroke rate.
Their diet is similar in many ways to that of Japanese people who also suffer from high stroke rates, Lanska noted.
BOTTOM WARMER TAKES THE CHILL OFF FANS
Football fans may no longer have to freeze off their bottoms while watching their gladiators perform in zero-degree weather, reserachers from Battelle Laboratory in Columbus, Ohio, report.
The scientists have developed a stadium seat made from material that can absorb and store heat after being treated for only about six minutes in a microwave oven.
The cushions are said to emit heat of about 90 degrees for eight hours after their microwave treatment. The lab has been testing the cushions and hopes to have products on the market next year.
VITAMIN E MAY KEEP BEEF RED LONGER
When people want to eat red meat, they want it really red, and the tendency of beef to turn brown with time costs the industry a billion dollars a year.
One gambit to keep beef cheery red longer may be to feed cattle a little vitamin E before their slaughter for market. Researchers at Colorado State University report their experiments using vitamin E, a biological anti-oxident, may delay the browning of beef by a day or two as it sits in the butcher’s showcase awaiting sale.
The changing color is caused by oxidation, the same process behind the rusting of metals. Delaying this process in meat by even a day could have large financial implications, said Brad Morgan, one of the Colorado scientists who tried giving cattle vitamin E.
HIGH RATE OF DIABETES FOUND IN TOWN’S STUDY
A study of people living in Framingham, Mass., that began in 1948 has provided many insights into factors associated with heart disease, and now raises some ominous new questions.
The children of Framingham’s original participants have about three times as much diabetes as did their parents.
“We’re not sure why,” said Dr. William B. Kannel, the study’s director. “At first we thought it was because the offspring were fatter. The men are, but the women aren’t. This needs further investigation.”
TV ADS PUSHING HIGH-FAT FOOD HAVE INCREASED
Much recent interest in television programming has centered on the violent activities carried out by the actors, but some physicians say the commercials may do at least as much harm to youths as the programming content.
At the recent meeting of the American Heart Association, Dr. Thomas J. Starc of Columbia University reported an analysis showing that from 1989 to 1993 the ads pushing high-fat food to kids went from 16 percent of the child-oriented food commercials to 41 percent.
What especially irked researchers was that during this time, new dietary guidelines were issued by various groups, including the heart association, that discourage high-fat diets in youngsters.
“What sort of attitudes are kids developing toward healthy choices?” asked Lisa C. Cohn, a co-author of the study.
