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TAICHUNG, Taiwan, Sept. 30 (UPI) — Garlic oil shows a protective effect against diabetic cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease in people with diabetes, researchers in Taiwan say.

Wei-Wen Kuo of the China Medical University in Taichung, Taiwan, and colleagues say people with diabetes have at least twice the risk of death from heart disease as others — heart disease accounts for 80 percent of all diabetes-related deaths.

People with diabetes are especially vulnerable to this form of heart disease, which inflames and weakens the heart’s muscle tissue.

The scientists fed either garlic oil or corn oil to laboratory rats with diabetes. Animals given garlic oil experienced beneficial changes associated with protection against heart damage. The changes appeared to be associated with the potent antioxidant properties of garlic oil.

The researchers identified more than 20 substances in garlic oil that may contribute to this protective effect.

“In conclusion, garlic oil possesses significant potential for protecting hearts from diabetes-induced cardiomyopathy,” the study authors say in a statement.

The findings are published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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TORONTO, Sept. 30 (UPI) — Homeless young people are the victims of crime at rates that would be considered unacceptable for any other groups, Canadian researchers say.

Researchers at York University in Toronto and University of Guelph suggest youth homelessness needs to be addressed with a balanced response rather than reliance on emergency services. They say transitional support is needed to help move young people out of homelessness.

“The very people we are taught to fear are the ones who are most at risk,” Stephen Gaetz of York University says in a statement. “More than 76 percent of the homeless youth we surveyed said they had been victims of violent crime in the past year and almost three-quarters of them reported multiple incidents.”

In contrast, Gaetz says, the Canadian General Social Survey reports about 40 percent of general population young people reported being crime victims in the previous year.

Gaetz and colleagues interviewed 244 homeless youths in Toronto. Their report was commissioned by Justice for Children and Youth, a non-profit clinic that provides legal advice and support to homeless youth in Toronto.

Copyright 2010 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI’s prior written consent.

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio, Sept. 30 (UPI) — U.S. researchers associate increased incarceration of fathers to elevated use of illegal drugs by their children.

Researchers at Ohio’s Bowling Green State University say more than 51 percent of young men and almost 40 percent of young women whose biological fathers have a history of incarceration report using marijuana — vs. 38 percent and 28 percent, respectively, of comparable men and women whose fathers were never incarcerated.

The study, published in the journal Addiction, finds youth with incarcerated fathers showed marijuana usage extending into their mid-20s. In contrast, marijuana use in youth whose fathers were not incarcerated peaked at about age 20.

The biological father’s incarceration was also associated with elevated use of other illegal drugs — such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines.

The researchers note the associations observed should not be taken to indicate a causal process.

“Further research is needed to more fully examine if it is father’s incarceration, or other closely related factors such as father’s criminality, family histories of drug use, or stresses associated with family instability, that are driving these detrimental relationships,” study co-author Dr. Raymond Swisher says in a statement.

Swisher and colleagues used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health — a nationally representative sample of teens in school in 1995 periodically followed into their mid-20s.

Copyright 2010 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI’s prior written consent.

ST. LOUIS, Sept. 30 (UPI) — U.S. researchers say family and friends detect Alzheimer’s signs sooner than memory tests do.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis tested a 2-minute Ascertain Dementia 8 questionnaire, in which a family member or close friend — the informant — indicates whether the patient has problems with thinking, memory and judgment. Informants watch for indications of bad financial decisions, trouble handling complicated matters such as balancing a checkbook, losing interest in activities, repeating questions and stories, problems using tools such as a remote control or forgetting the month or year.

The study, published in the journal Brain, validated the questionnaire by finding it could highlight individuals who had Alzheimer’s disease biological indicators known as biomarkers — such as abnormal levels of certain factors in the spinal fluid or positive brain scans for Alzheimer’s plaques — more consistently than traditional cognitive tests.

“It’s not economically feasible to screen everyone for Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers,” Dr. John Morris says in a statement. “The AD8 gives us a brief and very low-cost alternative that takes a few minutes of the informant’s time to screen for dementia and thus identify those individuals who need follow-up evaluations to determine if there truly are signs of Alzheimer’s.”

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WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (UPI) — The Mediterranean diet is usually considered a healthy one but a U.S. food advocacy group says it is not healthy to deep-fry lasagna as Olive Garden does.

Jayne Hurley, senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, says the Lasagna Fritta appetizer is described by Olive Garden as: “Parmesan-breaded lasagna pieces, fried and served over Alfredo sauce, topped with Parmesan cheese and marinara sauce.”

The appetizer has 1,030 calories, or one-half a day’s calories; 21 grams of fat, or one day’s worth of saturated fat and 1,590 milligrams sodium.

The CSPI publication Nutrition Action Healthletter describes Lasagna Fritta as “food porn.”

“Lasagna’s not exactly health food to begin with, but bread it with cheese, deep-fry it, and plate it with cream sauce and still more cheese, and you have a killer app,” Hurley says in a statement. “Shared with four or five people it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But odds are these 1,000-calorie appetizers are split with just one, amidst all-you-can-eat breadsticks and in advance of a 1,000-calorie entree. Lasagna Fritta is just garden variety food porn.”

Copyright 2010 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI’s prior written consent.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Sept. 30 (UPI) — Two distinct species of dolphins with separate calls and sounds seem to attempt to find a common language when they come together, a U.S. researcher says.

Bottlenose and Guyana dolphins, two distantly related species, often come together to socialize in waters off the coast of Costa Rica, and although each species normally makes distinct, different sounds, they change the way they communicate when together and begin using an intermediate language, the BBC reported Thursday.

Biologist Laura May-Collado of the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan made the discovery while studying dolphins swimming in Costa Rica’s Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge off the country’s southern Caribbean coast.

When bottlenose dolphins swim together, they emit longer, lower frequency calls that are modulated, she said. In contrast, Guyana dolphins usually communicate using higher frequency whistles that have their own particular structure.

But the two species often swim together in one group and when they do they produce quite different calls, May-Collado has discovered.

Calls emitted during these multi-species encounters are of an intermediate frequency and duration, a style that is somewhere between those of the two separate species.

“I was surprised by these findings, as I was expecting both species to emphasize, perhaps exaggerate, their species-specific signals,” May-Collado told the BBC. “Instead the signals recorded during these encounters became more homogenous.”

May-Collado said she could not be sure whether both species are changing the way they communicate, or if it is one species attempting to call more like the other.

Copyright 2010 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI’s prior written consent.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 30 (UPI) — The fossil of a giant red penguin, nearly twice as tall as the largest living species, has been discovered in Peru, U.S. paleontologists say.

Standing 5 feet tall, nearly twice the height of an Emperor penguin, the fossil, discovered in Peru’s Reserva Nacional de Paracas and nicknamed Pedro, is 36 million years old, the BBC reported.

The ancient bird, named Inkayacu paracasensis — the Water King — had reddish-brown feathers suggesting the distinctive black and white “tuxedo” marking of modern penguins is a relatively recent evolutionary development.

It also had stiff, narrow flippers like modern penguins that make them such accomplished swimmers, researchers said.

“Before this fossil, we had no evidence about the feathers, colors and flipper shapes of ancient penguins,” paleontologist Julia Clarke from the University of Texas said.

“We had questions and this was our first chance to start answering them,” she said.

The fossil is the latest penguin discovery by Clarke’s team in Peru, suggesting penguins thrived there in the late Eocene period, 36 million to 41 million years ago, the BBC said.

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CHICAGO, Sept. 30 (UPI) — The development of a promising drug for osteoarthritis pain was put on hold when some patients in drug trials developed worse symptoms, health officials said.

A phase II clinical trial of the first new type of drug for musculoskeletal pain since aspirin shows that it significantly reduces knee pain in osteoarthritis, the most common osteoarthritis pain, a Northwestern University release said Thursday. But phase III trials of the drug tanezumab were put on hold after 16 of several thousand participants developed progressively worsening arthritis and bone changes that required total joint replacements.

“The bottom line is this is a very effective drug for relieving pain; unfortunately, it appears some people go on to have their osteoarthritis progress more quickly,” Dr. Thomas Schnitzer, a rheumatologist and professor in the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Northwestern Medicine, said. “The long-term safety of tanezumab needs to be better understood.

“The effects of tanezumab were remarkable,” principle investigator Dr. Nancy Lane, a professor of internal medicine at the University of California, Davis, said. “People on the drug went from having very limited activity to practically being on the dance floor. No medication available today has such dramatic results.”

Schnitzer and Lane said the worsening of certain patients’ conditions could be because the drug allowed patients to increase physical their activity to the point of putting more stress on their diseased joints.

Schnitzer said the Food and Drug Administration is examining data to decide how to proceed.

“The FDA may decide it’s too dangerous overall or, rather, that there may be a specific patient population in which it should not be used or who need to be warned about possible serious side effects,” he said.

Copyright 2010 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI’s prior written consent.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (UPI) — The U.S. House has passed a bill that would add one more shuttle flight to NASA’s schedule and supports further heavy-lift rocket research, officials say.

Wednesday’s 304-118 vote marked a major milestone after much debate toward relying on commercial rockets instead of the space shuttle to ferry people to the International Space Station, Florida Today reported.

“This legislation will define NASA’s future by building on its past,” Democratic Rep. Suzanne Kosmas said. “Failure is not an option.”

Not everyone was enthusiastic about the measure, which has been approved by the Senate and now goes to President Obama for his signature.

“The legislation before us asks NASA to do too much with too little,” Republican Rep. Bill Posey said. “There is something in here for everybody to hate, sure enough. But there is no other alternative.”

NASA advocates considered the legislation key to securing the start of an additional $6 billion over five years Obama proposed for the agency.

“It immediately gives direction to NASA to go ahead and do the third shuttle flight, which they have to start planning now,” said Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, who visited the House floor repeatedly during the day to urge approval.

“And it gives the certainty that we’re going to have a heavy-lift vehicle, plus we’re going to have the commercial.”

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MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 30 (UPI) — Some women say carrying a Victoria’s Secret bag makes them feel sexier and more feminine, U.S. researchers suggest.

Marketing Professor Deborah Redder John and Jo Myung Park, both of the University of Minnesota, said the study suggests women can be affected by brands that not have anything to do with using the product itself.

The researchers asked women in a mall to carry either a Victoria’s Secret bag or a regular pink shopping bag.

“These people carried the bag for an hour and as a result felt more glamorous, more sexy and more feminine. They didn’t even use or wear any of the products,” John told the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune.

“A brand like Victoria’s Secret, people think of that as being very sexy and glamorous and feminine. We were interested in finding out, if you use that brand, will you start to believe that you are more glamorous, sexy feminine?”

The study, scheduled to be published in December, found women who believe their personality can’t be improved through their efforts perceived themselves as more attractive when they carried the Victoria’s Secret bag. Conversely, women who said their personalities can be improved did not appear to be affected by which bag they carried.

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