For as many as 1 in 20 people, everyday experiences can elicit extra-ordinary associated sensations. The condition is known as synaesthesia and the most common form involves "seeing" colours when reading words and numbers. Many previous studies have shown that the brains of people who experience this phenomenon are different from those who do not and, in a new study reported in the February 2010 issue of Cortex, researchers from the University of Padova, Italy, have discovered that learning may also play an important role in synaesthesia and can lead to synaesthetic behaviour even when the person is not consciously aware of the experience.

Dr Ilaria Berteletti and colleagues tested an Italian synaesthete using a classic test, in which the participant was shown a series of numbers presented in different ink colours and asked to name those colours. A synaesthete for whom the number 2 is red will find it more difficult to name the ink colour of a green 2 than if the number is presented in red ink and will take longer to respond. This slowing of response is generally taken as evidence that synaesthetic experiences are real and automatic.

As predicted, the participant in this study was slower to name the colours of the presented Arabic digits when they did not match the colours that he had reported "seeing." Strikingly, the same slowing was observed when the numbers were presented as dots, such as dice patterns, even though the participant denied seeing any colours for these types of stimuli. The results suggest that the mere concept of a number, regardless of how it was presented visually (as an Arabic digit or pattern of dots), was enough to produce the marker of synaesthetic behaviour, even when the participant was not conscious of experiencing synaesthesia.

Contains zero calories! Countless soft drinks are emblazoned with that slogan as a come-on for those of us locked in a never-ending battle to rein in a spreading waistline. Calorie-free sweeteners certainly have a lot to offer. Food and drink manufacturers have become so good at blending sugar substitutes into their products that it can be almost impossible to tell them apart from the real thing - sucrose - in taste tests.

But while artificial sweeteners may be able to confuse our taste buds, the suspicion is growing that our brain is not so easily fooled. Could it be that our cravings for sugary foods run deeper than a liking for sweetness? If so, a whole bunch of weight-loss strategies may need rethinking.

Non-sugar sweeteners have come a long way. One of the first, and perhaps the worst, was lead. Romans boiled grapes in lead pots, leaching the sweet-tasting metal into their food. The practice outlived the Roman empire by many centuries, and is thought to have led to the deaths of a number of notables, including Pope Clement II, who perished in 1047. Indigenous peoples in South America use a herb called stevia, which contains chemicals that taste sweet but aren't metabolised in the human gut. These early experimenters weren't worried about shedding the kilos - just searching for a way to sweeten food in a world where refined sugar was scarce.

An Oklahoma company said it was voluntarily recalling 248,000 lbs (112,000 kg) of beef products in six states following an outbreak of illnesses involving E. coli bacteria.

In a recorded telephone message, National Steak and Poultry of Owasso, Oklahoma, said it was recalling various products in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, Michigan, and Washington state.

The company said it was cooperating with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service as a precautionary measure because some of its beef products might be linked to a series of E. coli-linked illnesses in the six states.

The company did not confirm any contamination at its production facilities, but said it "will err on the side of being cautious" by recalling the products.

A new study in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology reports a surge in drug-resistant strains of Acinetobacter, a dangerous type of bacteria that is becoming increasingly common in U.S. hospitals. This study is being posted online December 23 and will appear in the journal's February print edition.

Acinetobacter infections attack patients in hospital intensive care units (ICUs) and others and have recently plagued soldiers returning home from the war in Iraq. These infections often appear as severe pneumonias or bloodstream infections, and require strong drugs to be treated, when they can't be stopped at all.

Using data from 300 hospitals around the country, researchers at the Extending the Cure project analyzed trends in resistance to imipenem, an antibiotic often reserved as a last-line treatment. The study found that between 1999 and 2006, there was more than a 300% increase in the proportion of Acinetobacter cases resistant to the drug. Extending the Cure is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio, which funds innovative ideas that may lead to breakthroughs in the future of health and health care.

University of Iowa researchers have found the existence of a new, rare inherited retinal disease. Now the search is on to find the genetic cause, which investigators hope will increase understanding of more common retinal diseases.

The findings appeared in the Nov. 9 issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.

The macula, located within the retina, is an area of high-resolution central vision that is needed to read or drive, for example. This area is damaged in more common retinal conditions such as macular degeneration and can be damaged by diabetes.

"It is rare to find a new inherited eye disease that affects the macula. We thought we had seen them all," said the study's lead author Vinit Mahajan, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.

Minute organs hidden deep within the ear appear to directly alter blood flow to the brain, scientists have revealed.

Until now, experts thought the inner ear's job was to control balance alone.

But Harvard medics working with Nasa found that as well as helping us keep our head, the balance organs affect brain blood flow.

They told BMC Neuroscience journal that the connection probably evolved to enable man to stand upright and still get enough blood up to the brain.

The organs of balance are deep within the ear, inside a maze of bony chambers.

There is one driving factor that contributes, above all else, to the epidemic of diabesity and other chronic illnesses we see today. By addressing this one problem you may reverse many of your health problems, even if you don't do anything else. In today's blog, the last in my three-part series on diabesity, I will tell you what that problem is and how you can effectively treat it. Here's a hint: You won't find the solution in a pill bottle ...

Remember, in the last week's blog on diabesity, we learned what doesn't work to treat the condition--namely conventional, outdated approaches to medicine that focus on treating symptoms with medications instead of addressing the underlying causes of illness. Now that we know what doesn't work, I want to spend some time in this week's blog explaining what DOES work.

If we want to effectively treat this epidemic of diabesity, we must start focusing on the underlying causes that are driving these problems in the first place. You see, ALL of these phenomenon we see in diabesity are the result of the same thing: Imbalances in the seven underlying key systems in your body that are at the root of all health and illness.

Today you will learn what those seven systems are and how you can use this exciting new field of medical research and practice known as Functional medicine to help you prevent and even reverse Diabesity.

It's official now, real autism rates have exploded to 1 in 100 American children. We're facing a national public health emergency of historic proportions. Bigger than swine flu. Bigger than polio. Bigger than almost anything one can imagine except AIDS. No matter how hard some may try, it's impossible to escape the inexorable upward march of the numbers. Even Tom Insel, head of autism research at NIH and not exactly the autism world's greatest forward thinker, has conceded the obvious: "There is no question that there has got to be an environmental component here."

Following last week's release of the latest CDC autism surveillance report, no amount of methodological obfuscation ("autism prevalence has clearly gone up but there are no real incidence studies"), epidemiological nihilism ("we simply can't know without large scale, well-controlled, prospective studies") or social deconstructionist nonsense ("autism is an intolerant invention of modern society") should escape scorn. Anyone with brain, a conscience and an ounce of integrity must acknowledge that we face a crisis. Meanwhile, those who would accuse the autism parent community of "denialism", unscientific reasoning and irresponsible irrationality need to explain how their own theories, so dependent on the evidence-free suggestion that rates are rising because of "better diagnosing", deserve to be considered respectable scientific speech. There is no more unscientific position in public health today than the fiction that rising autism rates come from better diagnosing. Let's be clear, the only evidence for better diagnosing is wishful thinking. Our public health institutions deserve no credit for a job done better; quite the contrary, they deserve an investigation into their negligence.

Bone cells known as osteoblasts were recently shown to have a role in controlling the biochemical reactions that generate energy via secretion of the molecule osteocalcin. A team of researchers, led by Stavroula Kousteni, at Columbia University, New York, has now determined that the protein FoxO1 regulates this function of osteoblasts in mice.

Specifically, FoxO1 increases expression of osteocalcin and decreases expression of Esp, a gene that makes a protein responsible for decreasing the bioactivity of osteocalcin.

This is a new role for FoxO1, which is also involved in regulating glucose levels via effects on cells in the pancreas and liver.

The research is reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.