Community Briefs

Published: Friday, October 30, 1998

Friday, October 30, 1998

Community Briefs

Halloween costumes invade Mexican market

Halloween costumes and plastic pumpkins have flooded into Mexico on the North American Free Trade Agreement's commercial tide, changing that country's Day of the Dead festivities.

In response, Mexican nationals have united to stop what they view as "gringo imperialism," according to research by Professor Stanley Brandes, chairman of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

"All over Mexico today, there appears evidence of resistance to the Halloween invasion from the north," said Brandes, in an article published this month in the Journal of American Folklore.

He said that clerics in several Mexican states have prohibited the celebration of Halloween on the grounds that it represents a threat to the sanctity of the Day of the Dead, traditionally held on Nov. 2. In other signs of resistance, the city of Oaxaca moved to protect its competition for the best home altar - set up to honor the dead - by disqualifying any altar that presents "foreign elements."

By contrast, the huge department store chain, Sanborn, which caters to the Mexican urban, middle class, has begun large-scale marketing of Halloween costumes and candies throughout the country, said Brandes. In spite of Mexican resistance, he said, "Halloween has indeed become a palpable part of Day of the Dead festivities."

UCSF researchers

discover secrets of fat

Not only do Americans consume a lot of fat, they are consumed by how to control it.

Now a research team led by scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and the University of California, San Francisco has discovered a major piece in the puzzle of how our bodies build and regulate fat.

The researchers have found a gene that encodes DGAT, a key enzyme in fat production. Their study results were published on Oct. 27 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

Known officially as acyl CoA:diacylglycerol acyltransferase, the DGAT enzyme joins other smaller molecules to produce, or synthesize, a specific group of fats called triglycerides. Triglycerides are one of the major lipids (fats) found in the bloodstream, and they constitute more than 95 percent of the fat stored in the adipose (fat) tissue of mammals, thereby serving as the major source of stored energy.

"This finding has implications for many aspects of biology," said Robert Farese, Jr., M.D., Gladston scientist and UCSF assistant professor of medicine, who is principal investigator of the study.

"Identifying a gene encoding DGAT gives us a valuable tool to evaluate this enzyme and to explore triglyceride synthesis as it relates to human energy cycles, obesity and cardiovascular disease. The finding also may have implications for potential development of drug therapies aimed at lowering triglyceride levels or treating obesity."

Los Alamos projects receive research grants

Four projects at Los Alamos National Laboratory have received Department of Energy grants for advanced research in biology.

The DOE, which announced the grants last week, is funding projects that will build on the wealth of information from the Human Genome Project and other research activities to solve complex biological problems.

Three of the grants to Los Alamos support research in advanced technology development, and one supports microbial genome research. The total funding for the Los Alamos projects is about $1.3 million.

Compiled from Daily Bruin staff reports.

Comments, feedback, problems?