A team of scientists has revealed that Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS) related defects can be reduced with the help of a substance found in broccoli.

Children who suffer from the disease age prematurely due to a defective protein in their cells, but scientists at Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) have now identified another important pathological factor, like, the system responsible for removing cellular debris and for breaking down defective proteins operates at lower levels in HGPS cells than in normal cells.

Most HGPS patients carry a mutation that produces a defective form of the protein lamin A, which is referred to as progerin and the normal lamin A is a key component of the matrix surrounding the DNA in the cell nucleus and plays a role in gene expression.

By contrast, the defective form, progerin, is not functional but is nevertheless continuously synthesized. The result is that progerin accumulates in the nucleus and causes the cell to "age". Consequently, HGPS patients develop classic diseases of old age such as atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, heart attacks and strokes. The disease is therefore regarded as a possible model system for the natural aging process in cells.

Researcher Karima Djabali added that progerin is also produced in healthy cells, probably as a byproduct and a well-functioning cellular waste disposal system can break down these small quantities of progerin. The scientists found, however, 10 to 20 times more progerin in the nuclei of diseased cells, a huge backlog of debris that needs to be removed.

However, scientists found a substance in broccoli called sulforaphane that activates protein degradation in cells and then treated the HGPS cells with the substance and found that significantly less progerin accumulated within the cells. Moreover, DNA damage and nuclear deformations, other effects of the disease, were also reduced in treated cells as compared with untreated cells.

Djabali explained that of course their experiments are very basic, but every active substance and every new approach brings us a step closer to a treatment for HGPS patients. It could also help us develop anti-aging strategies in the future.

A new study has shed light on why some people pick junk over healthy food when it comes to midnight snacking.

According to the study by Caltech neuroeconomists, a person's ability to exercise self-control may depend upon just how quickly your brain factors healthfulness into a decision.

Nicolette Sullivan, lead author of the study, said that in typical choices, individuals need to consider attributes like health and taste in their decisions and what the study wanted to find out was at what point the taste of the foods starts to become integrated into the choice process, and at what point health is integrated.

The researchers assumed, the healthiness of a food likely is not factored into a person's food choice until after taste is and for those individuals who exercised less self-control, they hypothesized, health would factor into the choice even later.

Sullivan-along with her colleagues in the laboratory of Antonio Rangel, Bing Professor of Neuroscience, Behavioral Biology, and Economics, including Rangel himself-developed a new experimental technique that allowed them to evaluate, on a scale of milliseconds, when taste and health information kick in during the process of making a decision. They did this by tracking the movement of a computer mouse as a person makes a choice.

In the experiment, 28 hungry subjects-Caltech student-volunteers who had been fasting for four hours-were asked to rate 160 foods individually on a scale from -2 to 2, based on that food's healthfulness, its tastiness, and how much the subject would like to eat that food after the experiment was over. The subjects were then presented with 280 random pairings of those same foods and were asked to use a computer mouse to click on-to choose-which food they preferred from each pairing.

The researchers then used statistical tools to analyze each subject's cursor movements and, therefore, the choice process. They looked at how fast taste began to drive the mouse's movement-and how soon health did.

Sullivan and her colleagues found that, on average, taste information began to influence the trajectory of the mouse cursor, and thus the choice process, almost 200 milliseconds earlier than health information. For 32 percent of subjects, health never influenced their food choice at all; they made every single choice based on taste, and their cursor was never driven by the healthfulness of the items.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.

With 90 per cent of the world's e- cigarettes being made in China, health experts have warned that poorly manufactured devices can vaporise heavy metals and carcinogens alongside the nicotine, harming the users.

This year, Chinese manufacturers are expected to ship more than 300 million e-cigarettes to the US and Europe, where they will reach the shelves of Walmart, 7-Eleven stores, gas station outlets and so-called vaping shops.

The devices have become increasingly popular, particularly among young adults, and yet hundreds of e- cigarette manufacturers in China operate with little oversight, The New York Times reported.

Experts say flawed or sloppy manufacturing could account for some of the heavy metals, carcinogens and other dangerous compounds, such as lead, tin and zinc, that have been detected in some e-cigarettes.

One study found e-cigarette vapour that contained hazardous nickel and chromium at four times the level they appear in traditional cigarette smoke; another found that half the e-cigarettes sampled malfunctioned and some released vapour tainted with silicon fibers.

There have also been reports in the US of e-cigarettes that exploded after a lithium ion battery or electric charger overheated, causing burns.

"We need to understand what e-cigarettes are made of," says Avrum Spira, a lung specialist at the Boston University School of Medicine, "and the manufacturing process is a critical part of that understanding."

A review by The Times of manufacturing operations in Shenzhen, a booming city in southern China, found that many factories were legitimate and made efforts at quality control, but that some were lower-end operations that either had no safety testing equipment or specialised in counterfeiting established brands, often with cheaper parts.

Chinese companies were the first to develop e-cigarettes, and that happened in a regulatory void. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just begun to move toward regulating e-cigarettes, working on rules that would force global producers, in China and elsewhere, to provide the agency with a list of ingredients and details about the manufacturing process.

But analysts say setting those rules and new manufacturing guidelines could take years. In the meantime, Chinese factories are quickening the pace, hoping to build profits and market share before regulatory scrutiny arrives and most likely forces many e-cigarette makers to close.

"This is really a chaotic industry," says Jackie Zhuang, deputy general manager of Huabao International, a Chinese tobacco flavouring company in Shanghai and an expert on China's e-cigarette market.

"I hope it will soon be well regulated."

In a five-square-mile area in the northwestern part of Shenzhen called Bao'an, in a district packed with industrial parks, there are believed to be more than 600 e-cigarette producers, and many more component suppliers selling bulk orders of tube casings, integrated circuit boards, heating coils and lithium ion batteries, the essential components of the e-cigarette.

If you are a manufacturer in Shenzhen and need 50,000 baked-metal casings, a local manufacturer can supply them for about USD 25,000 and have them delivered within hours.

Unlike the counterfeiters' shops, the largest Shenzhen e-cigarette manufacturing operations are relatively clean, with rows of workers seated on plastic stools along a fast- moving assembly line.

In 2004, a Chinese pharmacist named Han Li helped develop the e-cigarette, which was then sold through his company, Beijing Ruyan. Other manufacturers soon followed, and by 2009, as e-cigarettes became more popular in the United States and Europe, more factories opened.

The boom has made China the breeding ground for a new, and some would say innovative, product. And yet the Chinese government has played no role in the development of the industry or in regulating it.

Some Chinese companies, however, are trying to get ahead of the anticipated FDA rules. First Union is one of the biggest, operating several manufacturing complexes here in Shenzhen with about 6,000 employees. Its plants have glass- enclosed, dust-free rooms that the company says are as clean and sophisticated as pharmaceutical labs.

"We have the same quality-control standards as medical device makers," said Sunny Xu, the chairman at First Union.

Global tobacco giants that have entered the e-cigarette market are also manufacturing in China, and they insist they are doing so with stringent controls.

Scientific studies hint at a host of problems related to poor manufacturing standards. A study published last year in the open access online journal PLoS One found the presence of tin particles and other metals in e-cigarette vapors and said they appeared to come from the ?solder joints? of e-cigarette devices.

Another study of nearly two dozen e-cigarettes bought in the United States found large amounts of nickel and chromium, which probably came from the heating element, another suggestion that poorly manufactured e-cigarettes may allow the metals to enter into the e-liquids.

"We've found on the order of 25 or 26 different elements, including metals, in the e-cigarette aerosols," says Prue Talbot, a professor of cell biology at the University of California, and co-author of several of the studies.

Scientists have, for the first time, developed an ingredient, which when added to foods can make one fell more filling.

The ingredient devised by the researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Glasgow contains propionate, which stimulates the gut to release hormones that act on the brain to reduce hunger. Propionate is produced naturally when dietary fibre is fermented by microbes in the gut, but the new ingredient, called inulin-propionate ester (IPE), provides much larger quantities of propionate than people can acquire with a normal diet.

Professor Gary Frost, who led the study at the Department of Medicine at Imperial College London, said that molecules like propionate stimulate the release of gut hormones that control appetite, but people need to eat huge amounts of fibre to achieve a strong effect. They wanted to find a more efficient way to deliver propionate to the gut.

The small, proof-of-principle study showed encouraging signs that supplementing one's diet with the ingredient they've developed prevented weight gain in overweight people.

The findings are published today in the journal Gut.

Scientists have found that E-cigarettes are less addictive for smokers than cigarettes containing tobacco.

The popularity of e-cigarettes, which typically deliver nicotine, propylene glycol, glycerin and flavorings through inhaled vapor, has increased in the past 5 years, and currently there are more than 400 brands of 'e-cigs' available. E-cigs contain far fewer cancer-causing and other toxic substances than cigarettes, however their long-term effects on health and nicotine dependence are unknown.

Penn State College of Medicine researchers developed an online survey to study e-cigarette dependence, including questions designed to assess previous dependence on cigarettes and almost identical questions to assess current dependence on e-cigs. More than 3,500 current users of e-cigs who were ex-cigarette smokers completed the Penn State Cigarette Dependence Index and the Penn State Electronic Cigarette Dependence Index.

Higher nicotine concentration in e-cig liquid, as well as use of advanced second-generation e-cigs, which deliver nicotine more efficiently than earlier "cigalikes," predicted dependence. Consumers who had used e-cigs longer also appeared to be more addicted.

However, Prof. Jonathan Foulds said that people with all the characteristics of a more dependent e-cig user still had a lower e-cig dependence score than their cigarette dependence score. They think this is because they're getting less nicotine from the e-cigs than they were getting from cigarettes.

Although many regular users on e- cigarettes are trying to quit smoking, the Food and Drug Administration has not approved them for this use, and they cannot be marketed as a smoking cessation product.

The new questionnaire also allows for cross-comparisons between different nicotine and tobacco products. Foulds said that not only were e-cigs a booming industry, but new tobacco products were set to enter the market soon.

The findings are published in Nicotine and Tobacco Research.