briefs

(MCT) SACRAMENTO, Calif., – Just in time for Thanksgiving comes the message we’ve been… (MCT) SACRAMENTO, Calif., – Just in time for Thanksgiving comes the message we’ve been longing for: People who carry a little extra weight are dying at lower rates than their “normal” sized .

The latest research, published in last Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association, stirs up unresolved conflicts about the true risks of those love handles.

Even the federal Centers for Disease Control has flip-flopped, sharply lowering its estimates of obesity-related deaths over the past three years.

Now federal officials are downplaying the death risk angle and instead telling people that their daily lives and health care costs will improve if they weigh less.

Those who study obesity – and those who study obesity researchers – suspect two things are going on.

First, the relationship between weight and health is much more nuanced and personal than can be explained with a simple weight chart or a single study. Blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, family health history and even waist circumference play a role.

And second, we have such a cultural horror of fat that we’re predisposed to believe even a little is bad for us.

“We see our data through cultural lenses, and the cultural lens that most of us wear in contemporary American society is one in which thin is better,” said Abigail Saguy, a UCLA sociology professor who is writing a book on medical and political debates about weight.

More broadly, the CDC now recommends that people of all weights should exercise regularly and eat nutritiously to optimize health. Yet the CDC also promotes a weight range that is coming under increasing fire, from its own researchers and others.

By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg, McClatchy Newspapers

CHICAGO – It started with Apple, but here comes Google.

In the second major announcement this year by a Silicon Valley stalwart that aims to shake up the way people use mobile phones, Google Inc. officially announced Monday a sweeping plan to encourage a new breed of software development designed to make it easier to surf the Internet from a phone.

But Google’s not going at it alone. It is working with a newly created global coalition of companies, called the Open Handset Alliance, which includes phonemaker Motorola Inc. and wireless carriers Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile. And unlike Apple’s iPhone, sold exclusively in the U.S. by AT’T Inc., the Google software platform could be available on countless phones and sold through multiple carriers.

Google is not introducing its own phone – the gPhone, as has been rumored – but a suite of software that can be used on countless phones starting in the second half of next year. Besides Motorola, the other phonemakers participating so far include Samsung, LG Electronics and HTC.

Google’s software platform, called Android, runs on open-source code so any software developer can create a program for it. The idea is to encourage innovation, and thus improve the chances of developing an advanced mobile phone capable of enticing more people to use Web tools on their phones. It also creates new competition for handsets that use Microsoft’s operating system for phones as well as Apple’s iPhone.

“In order to get a tremendous new mobile phone experience, you need to attract people who haven’t had access to the mobile platform before,” Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, said in a conference call Monday. “And that’s software developers. This is a developer announcement … You can now build the great things you’ve done on the Internet” on a mobile phone.

By luring more people onto the Internet via a phone, Google envisions a bigger market for its sprawling online advertising business.

Eric Benderoff, Chicago Tribune

(MCT) WALNUT CREEK, Calif., – A record-setting fifth planet discovered orbiting a star 41 million light years away suggests there may be many populous planetary systems like our own, some of which could harbor life.

The new planet is about 45 times the mass of Earth, scientists said Tuesday, and is situated at a similar distance from its star, which is known as 55 Cancri and is part of the constellation Cancer. It has a circular orbit that takes 260 days.

The planet is the fourth in distance from the star, and though resides within the habitable zone where mild temperatures would allow water to exist in liquid form, it is too big and gaseous to host life. But similarities between the 55 Cancri system and our own solar system have astronomers intrigued about the possibility that smaller Earth-like planets or moons could be found there someday.

“The host star of these planets is very much like our own sun,” said astronomer Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University, a member of the team that discovered the planet. “It appears to be a system packed with planets.”

The five planets span a similar distance from the star as the eight planets in our solar system. The outermost planet resembles Jupiter, though larger, while the innermost is similar to Neptune.

“Architecturally, this new system is reminiscent of our own system, albeit souped up,” said UC Berkeley astronomer and co-discoverer Geoff Marcy.

Small, rocky planets like Earth are beyond the detection limits of current technologies, but NASA has plans to someday launch telescopes into space that will be able to photograph and analyze these planets and assess their ability to sustain life.

The new planet’s discovery took 18 years of careful measurements by some of Earth’s most powerful telescopes.

Betsy Mason, Contra Costa Times