Family ties

Photo by Robert BostonChristine Yokoyama (left), a first-year medical student, receives a white coat from her father, Wayne Yokoyama, M.D., professor of medicine and director of the Medical Scientist Training Program, at the Class of 2013 White Coat Ceremony Aug. 14 at the Eric P. Newman Education Center.

Fat in the liver — not the belly — is a better marker for disease risk

New findings from nutrition researchers at the School of Medicine suggest that it’s not whether body fat is stored in the belly that affects metabolic risk factors for diabetes, high blood triglycerides and cardiovascular disease, but whether it collects in the liver. They report online in the journal PNAS Early Edition that when fat collects in the liver, people experience serious metabolic problems such as insulin resistance, which affects the body’s ability to metabolize sugar.

Research shows why low vitamin D raises heart disease risks in diabetics

Low levels of vitamin D are known to nearly double the risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes, and now researchers at the School of Medicine think they know why. They have found that diabetics deficient in vitamin D can’t process cholesterol normally, so it builds up in their blood vessels, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Cambodians unsure tribunals will heal wounds of mass killings, JAMA study suggests

These skulls, from victims of the Khmer Rouge, are on display in a Buddhist stupa at Choeung Ek, a mass burial site commonly known as one of “the killing fields.”Lessons learned from research into the societal effects of post-Apartheid “truth and reconciliation” hearings in South Africa are now being applied to a U.S. National Institute of Peace-sponsored study of the long-term mental health impact on Cambodians from human rights tribunals targeting the killing of millions by the nation’s former Khmer Rouge regime, says James L. Gibson, a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of a study published Aug. 6 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Metabolic City at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum Sept. 18 to Jan. 4, 2010

Amidst the cultural and political ferment of the 1960s, avant-garde artists and architects began embracing biological and scientific models as well as the potentials of emerging technologies to explore radical new directions in urban design, developing projects that were at once fanciful, complex and conceptually serious. This fall the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Metabolic City, an exhibition surveying work by the British collective Archigram; the Japanese Metabolists (whose members include Fumihiko Maki, architect of the Kemper Art Museum); and the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys, an early member of the Situationist International.
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