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Tag: University of Nevada

  • Food as Medicine: How Strawberries Can Reduce Diabetes Risk

    Food as Medicine: How Strawberries Can Reduce Diabetes Risk

    Strawberries may seem like a small dietary addition, but their health benefits pack a serious punch.

    For more than a decade, UNLV professor Arpita Basu has been studying how strawberries can help reduce the risks of diabetes and improve overall metabolic and cardiovascular health.

    “I’m quite passionate about the concept of food as medicine,” said Basu, a registered dietitian and associate professor in the School of Integrated Health Sciences. “It’s gratifying when working with patients and research study participants to give them something natural – instead of medication – to lower their risk of diabetes.”

    Basu is now studying how bioactive compounds in strawberries may contribute to lowering a person’s risk for diabetes. She’s also conducted studies over the years examining the health benefits of tea, berries, and cocoa.

    We caught up with Basu to learn more about her latest research and how a simple serving of strawberries each day can immensely improve our health.

    What makes strawberries so healthy?

    Any fruits with a deep color are typically good for you. The darker the color, the greater amount of health benefits. 

    This is especially true for strawberries because they are all red in color. All that red comes from different plant pigments. Some people use red wine as another common example, but berries have less sugar content than grapes. 

    How do strawberries reduce the risks of diabetes and other health afflictions?

    A key takeaway from our strawberry studies – which I’ve been conducting at UNLV since 2017 – is a marked improvement in blood total and LDL cholesterol among participants. And better numbers in these areas is shown to reduce the possible risk of heart attack and stroke. 

    And one thing to point out is that you don’t need to consume a pound of strawberries a day to see a difference. There is some good research out there showing that consuming even half a cup of strawberries each day will provide your body with benefits. 

    Can you explain your theory of using food as medicine?

    When people feel helpless about their situation, that’s when I generally see a lot of interest from them about which foods they should consume – whether it’s to prevent their risk of diabetes or something else. So, thinking of food as a form of medicine incentivizes people to eat better. 

    Americans don’t eat anywhere near enough fruits and vegetables in this country. It’s an urgent issue. According to the CDC, 80 million Americans have pre-diabetes and, most likely, one-in-two people with pre-diabetes will develop Type 2 diabetes. This will lead to both health and economic burdens on so many people. 

    In addition to my work with strawberries, I also do nutrition epidemiology research because I want to study what people are habitually consuming. I did an interventional study on the effectiveness of blueberries for women with gestational diabetes, for example, and saw improvements in blood glucose levels.

    This is the importance of food as medicine. None of these adults were taking medications to manage blood glucose at the time.

    There’s so much out there on which foods are healthiest for us. Any tips to cut through the clutter and make the right decision for ourselves?

    As a registered dietician, I get questions about which foods certain people should eat all the time. And as a researcher, I know that there is so much information out there. When I put myself in someone else’s shoes, I think we tend to overload the public with information and it can become confusing.

    I try to make recommendations by realizing what’s realistic in terms of dietary changes, food access, etc. Foods make up our diets, but if we don’t have the means, which should we focus on? Just food? Or a specific diet? It’s almost like the chicken and the egg. Something that works for me might not work for someone else.

    What’s next for your research?

    During our previous studies, which consisted of eight-week and 12-week trials, we worked with adults who had elevated LDL cholesterol and features of metabolic syndrome. Our studies showed some great results in that two-and-a-half servings of strawberries each day looked to be very beneficial in improving insulin resistance and lowering risk of diabetes. 

    Our study was funded by the USDA and the California Strawberry Commission, which gave us a wonderful opportunity to support our farmers producing these great fruits. For our next study, we are hoping to work with 60 adults who have pre-diabetes to measure the benefits of strawberries. It will be a larger study, but we are excited to see what the results show.

    University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)

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  • Astronomers Shed New Light on Formation of Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts

    Astronomers Shed New Light on Formation of Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts

    Newswise — More than 15 years after the discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs) – millisecond-long, deep-space cosmic explosions of electromagnetic radiation – astronomers worldwide have been combing the universe to uncover clues about how and why they form. 

    Nearly all FRBs identified have originated in deep space outside our Milky Way galaxy. That is until April 2020, when the first Galactic FRB, named FRB 20200428, was detected. This FRB was produced by a magnetar (SGR J1935+2154), a dense, city-sized neutron star with an incredibly powerful magnetic field. 

    This groundbreaking discovery led some to believe that FRBs identified at cosmological distances outside our galaxy may also be produced by magnetars. However, the smoking gun for such a scenario, a rotation period due to the spin of the magnetar, has so far escaped detection. New research into SGR J1935+2154 sheds light on this curious discrepancy. 

    In the July 28 issue of the journal Science Advances, an international team of scientists, including UNLV astrophysicist Bing Zhang, report on continued monitoring of SGR J1935+2154 following the April 2020 FRB, and the discovery of another cosmological phenomenon known as a radio pulsar phase five months later. 

    Unraveling a Cosmological Conundrum

    To aid them in their quest for answers, astronomers rely in part on powerful radio telescopes like the massive Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) in China to track FRBs and other deep-space activity. Using FAST, astronomers observed that FRB 20200428 and the later pulsar phase originated from different regions within the scope of the magnetar, which hints towards different origins.  

    “FAST detected 795 pulses in 16.5 hours over 13 days from the source,” said Weiwei Zhu, lead author of the paper from National Astronomical Observatory of China (NAOC). “These pulses show different observational properties from the bursts observed from the source.”

    This dichotomy in emission modes from the region of a magnetosphere helps astronomers understand how – and where – FRBs and related phenomena occur within our galaxy and perhaps also those at further cosmological distances.  

    Radio pulses are cosmic electromagnetic explosions, similar to FRBs, but typically emit a brightness roughly 10 orders of magnitude less than an FRB. Pulses are typically observed not in magnetars but in other rotating neutron stars known as pulsars. According to Zhang, a corresponding author on the paper and director of the Nevada Center for Astrophysics, most magnetars do not emit radio pulses most of the time, probably due to their extremely strong magnetic fields. But, as was the case with SGR J1935+2154, some of them become temporary radio pulsars after some bursting activities. 

    Another trait that makes bursts and pulses different are their emission “phases”, i.e. the time window where radio emission is emitted in each period of emission. 

    “Like pulses in radio pulsars, the magnetar pulses are emitted within a narrow phase window within the period,” said Zhang. “This is the well-known `lighthouse’ effect, namely, the emission beam sweeps the line of sight once a period and only during a short interval in time in each period. One can then observe the pulsed radio emission.” 

    Zhang said the April 2020 FRB, and several later, less energetic bursts were emitted in random phases not within the pulse window identified in the pulsar phase. 

    “This strongly suggests that pulses and bursts originate from different locations within the magnetar magnetosphere, suggesting possibly different emission mechanisms between pulses and bursts,” he said. 

    Implications for Cosmological FRBs

    Such a detailed observation of a Galactic FRB source sheds light on the mysterious FRBs prevailing at cosmological distances. 

    Many sources of cosmological FRBs – those occurring outside our galaxy – have been observed to repeat. In some instances, FAST has detected thousands of repeated bursts from a few sources. Deep searches for seconds-level periodicity have been carried out using these bursts in the past and so far no period was discovered. 

    According to Zhang, this casts doubt on the popular idea that repeating FRBs are powered by magnetars in the past. 

    “Our discovery that bursts tend to be generated in random phases provides a natural interpretation to the non-detection of periodicity from repeating FRBs,” he said. “For unknown reasons, bursts tend to be emitted in all directions from a magnetar, making it impossible to identify periods from FRB sources.” 

    Publication Details

    The study, “A radio pulsar phase from SGR J1935+2154 provides clues to the magnetar FRB mechanism”, appeared July 28 in the journal Science Advances and includes 37 co-authors from 10 co-authors from 17 institutions. Besides NAOC and UNLV, primary collaborating institutions include Peking University and Beijing Normal University from China, George Washington University from the U.S., and Sabancı University from Turkey. 

    University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV)

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  • Clarence Gilyard, ‘Die Hard’ and ‘Matlock’ actor, dies at 66

    Clarence Gilyard, ‘Die Hard’ and ‘Matlock’ actor, dies at 66

    Clarence Gilyard Jr., a popular supporting actor whose credits include the blockbuster films “Die Hard” and “Top Gun” and the hit television series “Matlock” and “Walker, Texas Ranger,” has died at age 66

    NEW YORK — Clarence Gilyard Jr., a popular supporting actor whose credits include the blockbuster films “Die Hard” and “Top Gun” and the hit television series “Matlock” and “Walker, Texas Ranger,” has died at age 66.

    His death was announced this week by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he taught stage and screen acting. Additional details were not immediately available Tuesday.

    “Professor Gilyard was a beacon of light and strength for everyone around him at UNLV,” the school’s film chair, Heather Addison, said in a statement. “Whenever we asked him how he was, he would cheerfully declare that he was ‘Blessed!’ But we are truly the ones who were blessed to be his colleagues and students for so many years.”

    Gilyard was a Moses Lake, Washington, native. He had a prolific career as an actor, starting in the 1980s with appearances in “Diff’rent Strokes,” ”The Facts of Life” and other shows. He then appeared in two of the biggest movies of the decade: “Top Gun,” in which he played Sundown, a radar intercept officer, and “Die Hard,” when he was featured as a villainous computer maven whose one liners included “You didn’t bring me along for my charming personality.”

    In the 1990s, he was on the side of law enforcement in “Matlock,” playing opposite Andy Griffith, and “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which starred Chuck Norris. His other credits include “The Karate Kid: Part II,” a stage production of “Driving Miss Daisy” and an appearance alongside “Die Hard” star Bruce Willis in a commercial for DieHard batteries.

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