Diabetes fears over corn syrup in soda

clipped from www.newscientist.com Chi-Tang Ho at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and his colleagues found that adding the syrup to fizzy drinks makes them up to 10 times richer in harmful carbonyl compounds - elevated in people with diabetes and blamed for causing diabetic complications such as foot ulcers and eye and nerve damage - than fizzy drinks containing cane sugar. The most harmful compound, called methylglyoxal, is known to damage cells directly.

The Hormone That Helps You Read Minds

clipped from blog.sciam.com We've long accepted that hormones can make you amorous, aggressive, or erratic. But lately neuroscience has been abuzz with evidence that the hormone oxytocin -- which also acts as a neuromodulator -- can enhance at least one cognitive power: the ability to understand the gist of what others are thinking. Oxytocin is a peptide hormone composed of nine amino acids. It is produced in the brain (specifically, in the magnocellular neurosecretory cells within the supraoptic nucleus and paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus) and is released into the blood stream Research with rodents and non-human primates has shown that oxytocin, as well as the structurally similar peptide vasopressin, plays an important role in attachment and affiliative behaviors including pair-bond formation, maternal behavior, sexual behavior and separation distress. researchers have suggested that oxytocin may be involved in autism's etiology -- and that oxytocin may have potential in treating it.

Periodic Table of the Internet

clipped from www.wellingtongrey.net