Good news

A few quick hits:

1. Scientists at Wake Forest University have bred a colony of cancer-resistent mice.

2. Intel has developed voice recognition software that reads lips, and they're open sourcing it.

3. Canada is considering adopting the Netherlands approach toward marijuana, allowing it to be sold in corner drugstores, and a couple in British Columbia "are the first federally licensed medical marijuana growers in Canada to have their crop officially certified 100 per cent organic." In a related story, apostropher begins examining Canadian immigration laws.

4. You may not think this is particularly good news, but since my eating schedule is often as erratic as my sleep schedule and I have some family history of diabetes, I find it exceptionally good news.

Dr. Mattson and his colleagues found mice that were fasted every other day but were allowed to eat unlimited amounts on intervening days had lower blood glucose and insulin levels than either a control group, which was allowed to feed freely, or a calorically restricted group, which was fed 30 percent fewer calories daily than the control group. Despite fasting, the meal-skipping mice tended to gorge when provided food so they did not eat fewer calories than the control group. This finding in mice suggests that meal-skipping improves glucose metabolism and may provide protection against diabetes, Dr. Mattson says.

In the same study, mice on these three diets were given a neurotoxin called kainate, which damages nerve cells in a brain region called the hippocampus that is critical for learning and memory. (In humans, nerve cells in the hippocampus are destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease). Dr. Mattson’s team found that nerve cells of the meal-skipping mice were more resistant to neurotoxin injury or death than nerve cells of the mice on either of the other diets.