Study: Cellphone use fights Alzheimer's
TAMPA, Fla., Jan. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say they're surprised to discover radiation from cellphones may protect against and even reverse Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers at the Florida Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, led by University of South Florida neuroscientist Gary Arendash, said exposing old Alzheimer's mice to electromagnetic waves from cellphones erased brain buildups of a harmful protein known as beta amyloid and eliminated memory problems typical of Alzheimer's.
The radiation also prevented beta amyloid buildup in younger Alzheimer's mice, the researchers said in a study funded in part by the National Institute on Aging and published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
In fact, exposing normal mice to cellphone radiation for two hours a day over seven to nine months actually improved their cognitive abilities compared with so-called control mice tested in a parallel experiment for comparison, Arendash and colleagues said.
The highly controlled study let researchers isolate the effects of cellphone exposure on memory from other lifestyle factors such as diet and exercise, the researchers said.
It involved 96 mice, most of which were genetically altered to develop beta amyloid plaques and memory problems mimicking Alzheimer's disease as they aged.
"It surprised us to find that cellphone exposure, begun in early adulthood, protects the memory of mice otherwise destined to develop Alzheimer's symptoms," Arendash said. "It was even more astonishing that the electromagnetic waves generated by cellphones actually reversed memory impairment in old Alzheimer's mice."
Obesity drug said to reduce sleep apnea
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Jan. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. drug-development company Vivus Inc. said Thursday a clinical study showed its obesity drug Qnexa helped reduce sleep apnea by increasing weight loss.
Vivus of Mountain View, Calif., said Qnexa -- for which it filed for U.S. regulatory approval last week as an obesity treatment -- showed it decreased the incidence of sleep apnea events 69 percent.
Patients on the experimental drug also lost more weight than those who took a placebo, and they registered lower blood pressure and higher oxygen levels during sleep.
Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder characterized by long pauses or struggles in breathing during sleep that cause sleep deprivation and are associated with cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
It affects 1 in 15 Americans, the National Sleep Foundation estimates.
There are no approved pharmaceutical treatments. Treatments currently involve devices or surgery.
Vivus said a 28-week Phase II clinical study of 45 obese men and women suffering from obstructive sleep apnea indicated Qnexa led to a drop in the number of apnea events to an average 14 an hour of sleep from 46 an hour.
Patients taking Qnexa also lost 10.2 percent of their body weight, compared with a 4.3 percent weight loss for placebo patients.
The drug's most common side-effects are dry mouth, altered taste and sinus infection, the company said.
Qnexa may improve obstructive sleep apnea through other mechanisms in addition to weight loss and additional studies are planned to define those mechanisms, Vivus said.
San Fran's famous sea lions now in Oregon
FLORENCE, Ore., Jan. 7 (UPI) -- About 2,000 sea lions spotted off the central Oregon coast may be the popular marine mammals that disappeared from San Francisco's piers, wildlife experts say.
The sea lions may have simply left their Fisherman's Wharf hangout to follow their food to colder water, the experts say.
"We've seen these huge pods out on the ocean -- 200, 300 yards across -- altogether a couple thousand sea lions," said Steve Saubert, co-owner of Sea Lion Caves, a connected system of sea caves and caverns open to the Pacific Ocean near Florence, Ore.
About 500 of the sea lions moved into the caves in the past week or two, Jim McMillan, an assistant manager at the cave preserve, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Saubert, 66, said California sea lions, as well as Steller sea lions, which are threatened, have been attracted to the area by an influx of cold water -- about 51 degrees -- and food, including herring, anchovies, smelt and squid.
The cold water has also attracted pelicans and other marine birds, he said.
Saubert told the newspaper this summer's El Nino event characterized by a warming of surface waters along the California coast pushed the food north and the wildlife followed.
Biologists noted a shortage of herring in San Francisco Bay and along the Northern California coast.
The Marine Mammal Center near San Francisco counted a high of 1,701 sea lions at San Francisco's Pier 39 shopping and tourist attraction Oct. 23. The number dropped to 927 Nov. 21 and was just a half-dozen last week.
Sea Lion Caves is one of the great sea grottoes of the world, comparable in size and coloration to the famed Blue Grotto on the coast of the island of Capri, Italy. The caves contain a wide variety of marine life.
Earthlike exoplanet evaporating near star
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- The most Earthlike planet yet found outside our solar system probably began as a giant Saturn-sized planet that is now evaporating, U.S. astronomers say.
Corot-7b, orbiting the yellow dwarf star Corot-7, is the smallest extrasolar planet discovered, with a diameter 1.7 times that of the earth and a volume 4.8 times Earth's.
The rocky, volcanic planet takes 20.4 Earth hours to circle its sunlike star, located 480 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros, a faint constellation on the celestial equator.
Astronomers believe Corot-7 is about 1.5 billion years old, or about one-third the sun's age.
"Corot-7b is almost 60 times closer to its star than Earth, so the star appears almost 360 times larger than the sun does in our sky," said researcher Brian Jackson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
As a consequence, the planet's surface experiences extreme heating that may reach 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit on the daylight side, he said at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington.
With such a high dayside temperature, "any rocky surface facing the star must be molten, and the planet cannot retain anything more than a tenuous atmosphere, even one of vaporized rock," Jackson said.
He estimated solar heating may have already cooked off several Earth masses of material from Corot-7b.
"You could say that, one way or the other, this planet is disappearing before our eyes," Jackson said.
He said Corot-7b "may be the first in a new class of planet -- evaporated remnant cores."
