Rats Fed on Bacon, Cheesecake, and Ding-Dongs Become Addicted to Junk Food | 80beats

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Chocolate_cupcakesDo you often feel the need for a sweet sugar rush or a moment of bacon-induced bliss? A new study offers evidence that that surge of pleasure is similar to a heroin high, and that eating junk food regularly can significantly change the brain’s chemical make-up, creating junk food addicts who are driven to overeat.

Lead researcher Paul Kenny says it had previously been unclear whether extreme overeating was initiated by a chemical irregularity in the brain or if the behavior itself was changing the brain’s biochemical makeup. The new research by Kenny and his colleague Paul Johnson, a graduate student, shows that both conditions are possible [Scientific American].

For the study, published online in Nature Neuroscience, Kenny and colleagues headed to the grocery store. “We basically bought all of the stuff that people really like — Ding-Dongs, cheesecake, bacon, sausage, the stuff that you enjoy, but you really shouldn’t eat too often,” he said [Reuters]. One set of lab rats was allowed unfettered access to these high-calorie foods, while another rat group was allowed just one hour of access to the junk food per day. Both sets of rats also had the option of eating standard healthy lab rat fare. Finally, a control group of rats were kept on a healthy diet.

Scientists found that rats with unlimited access to junk food quickly became addicted. They constantly munched on the junk food through the day, becoming substantially overweight and turning into compulsive overeaters. Meanwhile, the rats with limited access to the food held their hunger, preferring to binge-eat in a limited time than consume healthy rat food. These rats gorged for 60 minutes, consuming 66 percent of their daily calorific intake in just one hour and soon developed a pattern of compulsive binge eating.

The researchers found that rats that overate had altered brain chemistry. Initially, each time they ate a Ding-Dong or rasher of bacon, they got a shot of the feel-good chemical dopamine. But just like human drug addicts, they soon had to increase their dosage to get the same dopamine rush. As the pleasure centers in the brain became more and more blasé, and less responsive, the rats quickly turned into compulsive overeaters. They were motivated to keep eating to get their fix [The Vancouver Sun]. Specifically, Kenny and his colleagues found that overeating decreased levels of the dopamine 2 receptor in the rats’ brains; human drug addicts have also been showed to have reduced levels of dopamine 2 receptors.

The altered brain chemistry also seemed to make it difficult for the rats to switch away their unhealthy eating habits–in other words, they were hooked. When the rats were eventually barred from eating junk food and given only what researchers called “the salad bar option,” they took an average of 14 days before they would even consider eating healthy food. “I was really shocked at the magnitude of the effect,” Kenny says. “They basically don’t eat anything. If that translates over to us as a species, that’s a major problem” [Scientific American].

The findings in a study of animals cannot be directly applied to human obesity, but may help in understanding the condition and in developing therapies to treat it [Reuters]. But Kenny says it’s possible that some people may be born with a predisposition to have lower D2 levels. “That may be why they’re more likely to gain weight. They’re already halfway down that road, if you will” [The Vancouver Sun].

Related Content:
80beats: Cheesecake Is Like Heroin to Rats on a Junk-Food Diet
Not Exactly Rocket Science: Making Sense of Obesity Genes
Cosmic Variance: Cheap, Crappy Calories
Discoblog: Just Like Humans, Crows Embrace Junk Food… and Pay the Price

Image: Wikimedia


Shell Eco-Marathon: Meet the 1,000-MPG Cars of the Future | Discoblog

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High school and college engineers can do a lot with a lawn trimmer engine, bicycle wheels and a few wires—like build prototype cars that get in the thousands of miles per gallon. Here we bring you the best images from this weekend’s Shell Eco-marathon Americas competition.

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A Powerful Prototype

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All weekend long, prototype cars built by students around the country and shipped down to Texas battled it out. They ran 10-lap races around the 0.6 course of city streets in downtown Houston, striving to be top dog in miles per gallon.

The cars in the prototype division, like this one from Loyola-Marymount University, didn’t have many of the luxuries of the normal cars driving by and wondering what was going on. But those normal cars also don’t run at more than 1,000 miles per gallon, as many racers achieved.

The winning team in the prototype category, from Universite Laval in Canada, achieved nearly 2,500 MPG. (See a full list of winners here.)


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Sherlock Holmes Blu-ray DVD Giveaway | Discoblog

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We here at DISCOVER have managed to score 9 Blu-ray DVD copies of the recent Warner Bros production of Sherlock Holmes. (Let’s just say they fell off a truck.) Anybody out there want ‘em? We’re going to post a tweet in mere moments about the giveaway; the first 9 people to comment here or retweet our message will find themselves the lucky—and fast—winners. Here’s the official description of this Holmes re-boot:

The action-adventure mystery “Sherlock Holmes” is helmed by acclaimed filmmaker Guy Ritchie. Robert Downey Jr. brings the legendary detective to life, and Jude Law stars as Holmes’ trusted colleague, Watson. Revealing fighting skills as lethal as his legendary intellect, Holmes will battle as never before to bring down a new nemesis and unravel a deadly plot that could destroy the country.

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Buy it on Blu-ray™ Combo Pack, DVD and For Download 3/30

Sherlock Holmes © 2009 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.


Upcoming Policy-related Events in Florida

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Posey Highlights Space in Upcoming Local Events

"Congressman Bill Posey (R-Rockledge) has announced a schedule of events he will be attending focusing on space related issues. Below is a list of events, with indication of events that are open to the media. In addition to the events listed below, Congressman Posey will meet with the Space Union Leaders to discuss jobs and the issues currently facing the space industry. He will also meet with Colonel Ed Wilson, the new Commander of the 45th Space Wing."

Climate and Ecosocialism

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Below are a couple of articles on Ecosocialism for people who just want to read about it or are interested in it.  It’s a new model of solving the climate crisis with something besides capitalism, which is based on selling as many things as possible in order to make as high a profit as possible. Waste is built into capitalism to the point where it is seen as a plus.   Anyone who has seen Michael Moore’s movie called “Capitalism” knows this economic system is killing us, and you can’t solve climate change with the free market, while making lots of money.  See the video “The Story of Stuff” too,  for why it’s impossible to continue on with this model and still stop climate change.   We can either have growth and capitalism, many believe, or we can stop climate change, but we can’t do both.

There are many resources online for people interested in ecosocialism that explain why it should be the model of the future.  The current model of using our planet to make things that we throw away to make more and more things, using tons of energy in the process, shipping them all over the world — isn’t working anymore.

People should get back in touch with nature and appreciate our planet, basic as that may sound. President Obama agrees with that, and is creating a Conservation Summit. Great idea!   Naturally, anti-nature corporate types will ridicule the idea and call it “socialist”. The fact is that eco-socialism might be the best option for a new economic model as we attempt to stop and/or adapt to climate change.

Anti-capitalism and climate justice

by Esther Vivas

Today, climate change is an undeniable reality. The political, social and media impact of the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009 was a good proof of this. A summit that showed the inability of the capitalist system to give a credible response to a crisis that it has itself created. Green capitalism offers a series of technological solutions (nuclear power, capture of carbon from the atmosphere to be stored, biofuels and so on) that will have a major social and environmental impact. These are false solutions to climate change that try to hide the structural causes that have led us to the current crisis situation and raise the contradiction between the short term calculations of capital and the long rhythms of ecological equilibrium.

In this context, a movement able to challenge the dominant discourse of green capitalism, recognising the impact and the responsibility of the current model of capitalist production, distribution and consumption and linking the global climate threat with everyday social problems is urgent. Copenhagen saw the increased expression of the movement for climate justice, precisely to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the mobilizations against the WTO [...]

Crazy Pseudoscience Theory of the Day: Cell Phone Ringtone Can Cure Your Allergies! | Discoblog

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Japanese-woman-cell-phoneAre spring allergies making you feel a little stuffed up? No problem–a small outlay of cash and a lot of faith in crackpot science should soon set you straight. Just invest in one of the new “healing ringtones” available in Japan; then the next time your phone rings, stick your cell phone close to your nose and let the ringtone work its magic.

According to Japan Ringing Tone Laboratory, each downloadable therapeutic ringtone can heal a certain ailment. From weight loss to hay fever, creator Matsumi Suzuki is confident that his ringtones can perk you up. (His previous innovation was the “Bow-lingual,” a device that he claimed could translate dog barks into human-speak.)

Explaining how a healing ringtone can fight hay fever, for example, Suzuki said the sound waves produced by the ringing phone dislodge stuck pollen in the nose, thus clearing the airway and making the allergen-crazed individual feel better.

While healing ring tones sound entertaining, it seems pretty obvious that they won’t save you a trip to the doctor. The BBC cautions:

Index, the mobile phone content provider which markets the therapeutic ring tones, admits the technology behind them is perhaps a little unproven but insists the number of downloads suggests they may be working.

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80beats: Surprise! Study Suggests Cell Phone Use Could Actually Fight Alzheimer’s

Image: iStockphoto