Community Briefs

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.

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