Intensity of light may influence spending behaviour: study

Washington D.C., Jan 5: After a woman filed a lawsuit against a diet soda company, the California court has declared that the beverage does not promise to help buyers in losing weight.

The woman had gulped down the drink for over a decade but did not lose inches as a result.

The three-judge panel declared during the hearing: "The prevalent understanding of the term in (the marketplace) is that the 'diet' version of a soft drink has fewer calories than its 'regular' counterpart."

However, the members of the US 9th circuit court have felt that the consumers tend to make out something of their own that is unreasonable and eventually hamper the reputation of brands through a deceptive allegation, reports Fox News.

The response was due to a misleading case filed against Diet Dr Pepper by Shana Becerra from Santa Rosa, California. Shana claimed that she has been addictively purchasing the low-calorie beverage for the past 13 years hoping for losing some fat but failed to lose even a single inch.

The woman also stated that the attractive and fit models misled her into believing that drink will help her in perfecting her body like them.

However, the court's decision was that advertisements are for representational purposes only. "Cannot be reasonably understood to convey any specific meaning at all," as written by Judge Jay Bybee.

Shana had last week made such allegation against Diet coke as well where the court came to a similar verdict. She claimed that she had found various studies where it is evident that the artificial sweetener aspartame used in diet beverages actually boosts weight gain.

But the artificial sweetener is approved in by the concerned administrative department and thus is used in most American drinks.

New Delhi, Mar 16: A recent survey across 140 districts of the country shows that about 54 per cent of Indians are finding travelling to be unsafe as the deadly coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic sweeps globally.

The big worry that people have is community transmission, something that researchers from around the world have approximated at 10 per cent of total infections and more common in places like Wuhan in China, South Korea, Iran and Italy.

The months of March to June have historically been high travel season for most Indians, largely due to the summer vacations in schools. "But it seems that Indians do not want to take a chance with this rather scary virus and are either cancelling or postponing their travel plans," concluded the survey by LocalCircles.

The survey gathered more than 22,000 responses from participants in tier one, two and three cities. It said 48 per cent Indians plan to cancel their international business travel for the next four months.

Besides, nearly 38 per cent of respondents said they had to pay cancellation fee to the website, travel agent, airline or railways.

"These are testing times for the entire travel and tourism industry -- airlines, hotels, travel agents as well as small tour and taxi operators. The best solution at this point is to adjust cost structures, stay flexible and work with a collective approach to minimise the period of impact to both citizens and business," said LocalCircles.

Washington, Feb 21: The fat around arteries may play an important role in keeping the blood vessels healthy, according to a study in rats that may affect how researchers test for treatments related to plaque buildup, as seen in conditions leading to heart attack.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, noted that the fat, known as perivascular adipose tissue, or PVAT, helps arteries let go of muscular tension while under constant strain.

According to the researchers, including Stephanie W. Watts from the Michigan State University in the US, this feature is similar to how the bladder expands to accommodate more liquid, while at the same time keeping it from spilling out.

"In our study, PVAT reduced the tension that blood vessels experience when stretched," Watts said.

"And that's a good thing, because the vessel then expends less energy. It's not under as much stress," she added.

According to Watts and her team, PVAT has largely been ignored by researchers believing its main job was to store lipids and do little more.

Until now, she said, scientists only divided blood vessels into three parts, the innermost layer called the tunica intima, the middle layer called the tunica media, and the outermost layer called the tunica adventitia.

Watts believes PVAT is the fourth layer, which others have called tunica adiposa.

Tunica, she said, meant a membranous sheath enveloping or lining an organ, and adiposa is a synonym for fat.

"For years, we ignored this layer -- in the lab it was thrown out. In the clinic it wasn't imaged. But now we're discovering it may be integral to our blood vessels," Watts said.

"Our finding redefines what the functional blood vessels are, and is part of what can be dysfunctional in diseases that afflict us, including hypertension. We need to pay attention to this layer of a blood vessel because it does far more than we originally thought," she added.

Earlier studies, Watts said, had shown that PVAT plays a role in the functioning of blood vessels, finding that it secretes substances that can cause blood vessels to relax as well as substances that can cause it to contract.

In the current study, the researchers decided to test whether PVAT provides a structural benefit to arteries by assisting the function of stress relaxation.

They tested the thoracic aorta in rats, and found those with intact PVAT had more stress relaxation than those without.

The study revealed that the pieces of artery with surrounding fat had measurably relaxed more than those without.

Watts and her colleagues then tested other arteries, and were able to duplicate the same response.

"It's not something you see only in this particular vessel or this particular species or this particular strain. But that maybe it's a general phenomenon," she said.