USAC officer may not be able to finish term
Tuesday evening’s Undergraduate Student Association
Council meeting revealed one of its members did not meet
eligibility requirements to continue his or her term.
The vacant position will not be announced until this evening, at
which point arrangements for a special election will need to be
made, said President Elizabeth Houston.
To take any action, such as making committee appointments or
passing contingency requests, USAC needs to have quorum, which
means nine out of the 13 council members need to be present.
Thus, scheduled agenda items for Tuesday’s meeting were
tabled until next week.
At one point, only five council members were at the meeting.
Facilities Commissioner Steve Davey said he was disappointed in
those who did not attend the meeting because he felt they were
neglecting their duties as elected officers.
Nicotine causes brain problems
Nicotine causes degeneration in a region of the brain that
affects emotional control, sexual arousal, REM sleep and seizures,
UCLA neuroscientists report in the current issue of the journal
Neuropharmacology.
“Nicotine causes the most selective degeneration in the
brain that I have ever seen,” said UCLA neuroscientist
Gaylord Ellison, a professor of psychology and member of
UCLA’s Brain Research Institute. “Only one tract of the
brain is affected.”
The part of the brain that is affected by nicotine is called
fasciculus retroflexus, which has two halves. In previous research
conducted over more than two decades, Ellison’s research team
has shown that such drugs as amphetamines, cocaine and ecstasy
damage one-half of fasciculus retroflexus. In the journal
Neuropharmacology and at the Society for Neuroscience’s
annual meeting in New Orleans this month, Ellison’s research
team reports for the first time that nicotine causes degeneration
in the other half of fasciculus retroflexus. The neuroscientists
further report that the drugs that damage one-half of fasciculus
retroflexus do not damage the other half that nicotine affects.
“Our findings suggest that this (fasciculus retroflexus)
is the brain’s weak link for stimulant addictive
drugs,” Ellison said. “This tract is affected more by
chronic drug use than any other tract in the brain.
“It seems likely that fasciculus retroflexus is linked to
drug addiction and relapse,” Ellison said. “In chronic
smokers, this tract may well play a major role in the addiction to
nicotine.”
Report calls for research on diet drugs
A study undertaken for the Food and Drug Administration to
assess the safety of popular dietary supplements containing ephedra
concludes that these products can pose severe health risks and even
kill some people.
The report called for need to pinpoint those at greatest risk
and establish safe daily doses for the supplements. Scientists at
the University of California, San Francisco who conducted he study
also said products containing ephedra should be more uniformly and
explicitly labeled.
The analysis will appear in the Dec. 21 issue of The New England
Journal of Medicine. It has been posted early on the
journal’s Web site due to its health implications. The paper
draws on a study the UCSF team prepared for the FDA, assessing 140
reports the agency received on adverse effects from
ephedrine-containing supplements. The full report was published in
the Federal Register earlier this year.
Of the 140 reports the FDA received concerning adverse effects
analyzed, the researchers found that just under a third (31
percent), or 43 of the people “definitely” or
“probably” suffered an adverse effect from ephedrine in
a dietary supplement.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff and wire reports.