Very active 2008 hurricane season forecast
FORT COLLINS, Colo., April 10 (UPI) -- U.S. hurricane experts William Gray and Philip Klotzbach say they expect a busy 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, with as many as 15 named storms.
The Colorado State University scientists in their April forecast said they also anticipate an above average probability of major hurricanes making landfall in the United States.
Gray and Klotzbach said they expect 2008 will have about eight hurricanes (the average is 5.9) and four intense hurricanes (average is 2.3).
They also predict:
-- A 69 percent probability of at least one major hurricane striking the U.S. coastline, with the average for the last century being 52 percent.
-- A 45 percent probability for the U.S. east coast, including the Florida peninsula. The last century's average was 31 percent.
-- A 44 percent probability for the U.S. Gulf Coast, from Florida's panhandle to Brownsville, Texas. The last century's average was 30 percent.
-- An above average major hurricane landfall risk in the Caribbean.
The two hurricane experts said current Atlantic basin conditions appear "quite favorable" for an active hurricane season, with surface temperature patterns being similar to those typically observed before very active seasons.
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.
Potential diabetes drug target identified
TORONTO, April 10 (UPI) -- Canadian scientists announced the discovery of a novel signaling pathway to the gut, brain and liver that lowers blood sugar when it is activated.
The scientists at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, led by Dr. Tony Lam, used a rat model to discover that fats can activate a subset of nerves in the intestine, which then send a signal to the brain and subsequently to the liver to lower glucose production.
"This is a new approach in developing more effective methods to lower glucose or blood sugar levels in those who are obese or have diabetes," said Lam.
"We already knew that the brain and liver can regulate blood glucose levels," he said, "but the question has been, how do you therapeutically target either of these two organs without incurring side effects? We may have found a way around this problem by suggesting that the gut can be the initial target instead.
"If new medicines can be developed that stimulate this sensing mechanism in the gut, we may have an effective way of slowing down the body's production of sugar, thereby lowering blood sugar levels in diabetes," said Lam.
The research appears in the online issue of the journal Science in advance of print publication.
Black hole found in Omega Centauri
GARCHING, Germany, April 10 (UPI) -- German and U.S. astronomers say they've found evidence of a black hole in the center of Omega Centauri, a cluster of stars 17,000 light years from Earth.
The astronomers say the black hole suggests Omega Centauri is a dwarf galaxy, not a globular cluster.
First identified as a single star nearly 2,000 years ago, Omega Centauri was later reclassified as a nebula, and more recently as a globular cluster. It's visible to the unaided eye to those in the southern hemisphere.
The discovery was led by Eva Noyola of the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, using images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, in addition to spectrographic data from the Gemini South telescope in Chile.
Noyola and her colleagues, including astronomer Karl Gebhardt of the University of Texas at Austin, found the high velocities of stars in the cluster's center could be accounted for only by the presence of an invisible object in the center of the cluster with a mass 40,000 times that of the Earth's sun.
"Finding a black hole at the heart of Omega Centauri could have profound implications for our understanding of its past interaction with the Milky Way," said Noyola.
Origin of Alzheimer brain plaques studied
ST. LOUIS, April 10 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say they've found a nerve cell's normal intake and communication processes are essential to the production of Alzheimer's brain plaques.
The Washington University School of Medicine researchers in St. Louis said such plaques are accumulations of fragments of amyloid beta protein, and are found in post-mortem examinations of the brains of Alzheimer's patients.
Neuroscientists at the school experimentally manipulated the ability of brain cells to take in substances from their surface -- a process called endycytosis. To mice having a disease similar to Alzheimer's, the researchers administered a drug that stops the process of endocytosis. The result was a 70 percent reduction in the production of amyloid beta protein.
In another experiment, the researchers gave the mice a drug that reduced brain cell communication, but did not affect endocytosis. The result was a 60 percent reduction in amyloid beta production.
"Blocking endocytosis isn't a viable option for treatment because cells throughout the body, including brain cells, need endocytosis for healthy function," said John Cirrito, a research instructor and first author of the study. "But we are starting to understand the origins of amyloid beta in more detail now …"
The study appears in the journal Neuron.
