Month: October 2016

Alzheimer’s drug research continues to look to the future, toward new drugs that might one day treat the ravaging symptoms of the neurodegenerative disease, such as memory loss and even lead to a cure. However, a research team out of the University of Manchester in the UK, led by neuroimmunologist David Brough, has taken their work in the opposite direction, looking at old drugs that are successfully reversing memory loss in a mouse model. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

When it comes to understanding what causes the dangerous buildup of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain that are prevalent in Alzheimer’s, “evidence is building for inflammation,” neuroimmunologist Jack Rivers-Auty, a co-author on the paper, tells mental_floss. “It’s a bit like when you roll your ankle—you put ice on it to reduce swelling because you’re worried about inflammation causing more damage,” he says. “Inflammation is a very complex process made up of many cell types and proteins… many of which may be causing collateral damage in the brain.”

He and neuroimmunology colleague Mike Daniels conducted experiments on mice after their lab director theorized that common non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) might inhibit a key inflammatory pathway in the brain that damages brain cells, called the NLRP3 inflammasome complex. “I screened a number of drugs against the inflammasome with cells in a dish,” Daniels tells mental_floss. He was expecting ibuprofen and other more well-known drugs to be the most potent, but in fact, “they had no effect,” he says.

What did work was a less commonly known NSAID called mefanimic acid, which is mainly used for menstrual pain, he says. It worked because it has a different structure. Classic NSAIDs inhibit a protein called cyclooxygenase, whereas mefanimic acid inhibits the inflammasome complex itself.

Next they tested the drugs in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study on mice that were at an age when memory deficits begin to show up, approximately 15 months old. Rivers-Auty says if they were to translate this into a clinical setting with humans, “we would want to aim for people who have just started Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s [partly causes] the death of neurons, and it’s hard to grow new neurons.”

They used a range of memory tests on the mice to determine whether their memory was in decline before administering mefanimic acid. The most common among them is called the novel object recognition test. This test is useful because mice, like us, are sensitive to unfamiliar objects. Imagine you enter a parking lot looking for your car. In the lot, you find only two objects: your car and an alien’s spaceship. “You would spend more time exploring the spaceship because you hadn’t seen it before,” Rivers-Auty says.

Mice will behave similarly. But what happens if their memory is deficient? To find out, the team gave 10 mice a placebo, while the other 10 were treated with mefanimic acid via a subcutaneous pump for 28 days. The study found that “the mouse with good memory explores the new object, and the mouse with poor memory explores them both,” Rivers-Auty explains. 

At the end of the study, the mice that had been given the mefanimic acid “did not have memory deficits,” he says. The drug had restored memory function to the mice with failing memory.

The results were so surprising to them, Rivers-Auty says, “We were literally hooting and hollering. We couldn’t believe how well it worked. It’s very unusual for groups to reverse memory deficits.”

The team is hopeful that this discovery could bypass as much as 15 years of the usual process to develop a new drug because mefanimic acid is already in use by humans and has been deemed safe. “We can skip the extensive animal testing and the first stage of human trials,” says Rivers-Auty. “This saves a huge amount of time and money.”

However enthusiastic he and his colleagues are about their results, Rivers-Auty is skeptical that the team will find commercial funding sources for the next stage of trials in humans because “pharmaceutical companies who usually fund these studies have no interest in funding a study they can’t make money off,” he says. Instead, this team relies on charities such as the Alzheimer’s Society and Alzheimer’s Research UK, which funded their work.

Chatham, Ontario—located about an hour over the border from Detroit—may not be first on your travel bucket list, but it just got a whole lot more exciting. You can now enter to win a night’s stay inside a local Taco Bell courtesy of Airbnb, as First We Feast reports. 

The stay includes two bunk beds, a big screen TV, and a “Taco Bell Butler” devoted to fetching you as much fast food as you can eat. It’s called a SteakCation, so Taco Bell Canada will be providing as many of its new Steak Doubledillas as you want, but presumably you can still get a plain ol’ crunchy taco, too, if you’re so inclined. An ample supply of video games and movies will be provided. Plus, of course, you get to lay in bed and gaze lovingly at the Taco Bell kitchen, just as you always dreamed.

The stay is slated for the night of October 17. Enter here.

[h/t First We Feast]

All images courtesy Taco Bell Canada / Airbnb

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Julia Child’s list of accomplishments is almost comically lengthy: She was the first woman inducted into the Culinary Institute of America’s Hall of Fame. She received the highest civilian honors from both the U.S. and France. She was a bestselling author, a wildly successful TV personality, and a secret spy for the Allies during World War II. But the opening chapter of her latest biography details another achievement. In The French Chef in America (the “sequel” to My Life in France), author Alex Prud’homme explains how his great-aunt was the first person to put a White House State Dinner on television.

Child’s 1968 TV special, White House Red Carpet with Julia Child, was born out of a failed pitch to the Public Broadcasting Library (PBL). PBL had approached Child about doing a newsy half-hour special in 1966 while she was on hiatus from her cooking show, The French Chef. She initially hoped to document Paris’s legendary Les Halles food market, but PBL deemed the project too expensive. So she proposed a behind-the-scenes look at a White House State Dinner instead. When PBL passed again, National Educational Television (NET) agreed to air the special.

No camera crew had ever been permitted to film a state dinner before. But Julia was able to get the White House on board with countless letters, telegrams, and phone calls from herself and her producers at WGBH, her “home” station in Boston. Once she had approval, Child spent several days interviewing presidential staffers—including the White House executive chef, Henry Haller.

Haller had replaced the Kennedys’ renowned chef René Verdon in 1965, after Verdon quit over creative differences with the Johnsons. (“You do not serve barbecued spareribs at a banquet with ladies in white gloves,” he once protested.) Haller did not share Verdon’s aversion to spareribs, but he did share his training in classic French cuisine. This obviously endeared him to Child, who raved about his seafood vol-au-vent as she covered his kitchen prep for the cameras. She was especially glad to hear he used butter and not that “other spread” she hated: margarine.

The dinner’s guest of honor was Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Satō, but the 190 attendees also included foreign dignitaries, local politicians, and actors like Kirk Douglas—as well as MLB commissioner William Eckert and St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson. (Satō was a big fan of baseball.) The cameras captured the guests’ arrival and the exchange of gifts between Johnson and Satō. (Satō got a Tiffany desk set; Johnson got a portable TV camera and tape recorder.) Then it was time to eat.

The seafood vol-au-vent came first. It was a puff pastry stuffed with lobster, bay scallops, shrimp, and fish dumplings, all topped with sauce Americaine. The main course consisted of a sautéed lamb filet with artichoke bottoms, asparagus, and a fluted mushroom cap. Guests also sampled salad, small-batch American wines, cheese, and grapes before the dessert: a Bavarian cream mousse with fresh strawberries. Child declared that it was “one of the best dinners I’ve eaten anywhere.”

The night took a tense turn when Johnson gave his toast, which addressed criticisms of America’s involvement in Vietnam. But the atmosphere eased after Tony Bennett, Satō’s choice of entertainment, grabbed the mic.

White House Red Carpet with Julia Child aired on April 17, 1968. The reviews praised Child for her usual ebullience, but the chef didn’t stick around to hear them. On the night of the telecast, she had already escaped to her small vacation home in Provence, France, where she and her husband Paul had gone to rest, relax, and, of course, cook.

From 1965 to 1971, Green Acres was, indeed, the place to be. For six seasons, the CBS sitcom featuring a couple who traded fast-paced city living for the “simple” country life was a fan favorite. From the real-life inspiration for the show to the identity of one very famous fan, here are 15 things you may not have known about Oliver and Lisa Douglas and their eclectic acquaintances in Hooterville.

1. THE SHOW WAS BASED ON A RADIO PROGRAM CALLED “GRANBY’S GREEN ACRES.”

Like other early TV shows, Green Acres had its roots in an old radio show. “Granby’s Green Acres” had the same basic premise about a banker-turned-farmer who knew more about growing funds than crops. The show only aired for about seven weeks during the summer of 1950, but it allowed Jay Sommers to create and produce the similarly-themed TV show more than a decade later.

2. THE WHOLE RIDICULOUS PREMISE WAS BASED IN REALITY.

If it seems a bit farfetched that a city slicker would leave a lucrative career in finance to rehab a dying farm without knowing a thing about agriculture, well, at least one person has tried it. “I got the idea from my stepfather when I was a kid,” Sommers, the show’s creator, said in a 1965 interview. “He wanted a farm in the worst way and he finally got one. I remember having to hoe potatoes. I hated it. I won’t even do the gardening at our home now, I was so resentful as a child.”

3. EDDIE ALBERT DIDN’T FIND THE PREMISE RIDICULOUS AT ALL.

Eddie Albert, who starred as Oliver Wendell Douglas, had previously eschewed television roles, believing that the medium was “geared to mediocrity.” But after his agent explained the idea behind Green Acres, Albert was hooked. “I said, ‘Swell; that’s me. Everyone gets tired of the rat race. Everyone would like to chuck it all and grow some carrots. It’s basic. Sign me,'” he told TV Guide. “I knew it would be successful. Had to be. It’s about the atavistic urge, and people have been getting a charge out of that ever since Aristophanes wrote about the plebs and the city folk.”

4. BOTH STARS HAD A LITTLE BIT OF THEIR CHARACTERS IN THEM.

Albert turned the front yard of his Pacific Palisades house into a cornfield, and also had a large greenhouse in the back where he grew organic vegetables.

Eva Gabor, who played Lisa Douglas, owned cats, dogs, birds, chickens, roosters, and rabbits. She was a little bit like her urban character, though; according to her assistant, Gabor hadn’t had the rabbits for long when she decided to show them off at a party. When she got to the hutch, it appeared that the rabbits had done what they do best, because there were suddenly quite a few more. “Didn’t I just get a pair of rabbits? Where did the others come from?” she asked her assistant. Her dinner party guests explained that rabbits were famous for their impressive reproduction.

5. THE FAMOUS THEME SONG WAS WRITTEN BY VIC MIZZY.

Vic Mizzy, who created the Green Acres theme, certainly had a knack for composing catchy theme songs; he’s also responsible for The Addams Family song. It marked the first time the stars of a show performed the theme song.

6. THE ACTORS DIDN’T AD LIB—EVER.

“There was no time to improvise on that program,” Albert once said. “And furthermore, it was so well written, it would be impossible to improve on it. We never changed a word. I’ve never been in anything before or since that I didn’t want to monkey with a sentence here or something. But not a word there. It was so clean and so tight.”

7. IT WAS ONE OF DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER’S FAVORITE SHOWS.

During his retirement years, keeping tabs on the residents of Hooterville became one of the former president’s favorite pastimes. The Eisenhowers loved the show so much that they deemed their valet’s pet pig “Arnold” and allowed it to freely roam their house—even letting it lounge on slip-covered chairs that their grandkids weren’t allowed to sit on.

8. ALBERT WASN’T PLEASED WITH GABOR’S FURS AND FEATHERS.

On one occasion, Albert—an environmentalist—asked Gabor to avoid wearing an expensive outfit festooned with feathers onscreen. When Gabor protested, saying how beautiful it was, Albert told her that he didn’t want other women to copy the fashion, causing the deaths of more birds. “Eddie, feathers don’t come from birds,” she told him. When he asked her where she thought feathers came from, she responded, “Dahlink. Pillows! Feathers come from pee-lowz!”

“She swears that she was not teasing me!” Albert later said.

9. MR. HANEY WAS BASED ON ELVIS PRESLEY’S MANAGER.

Actor Pat Buttram, who played Mr. Haney, met Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, on the set of the movie Roustabout, where Buttram played the owner of a carnival. He got the part of Mr. Haney just a year later—and later stated that he used Parker as inspiration for the Green Acres swindler.

10. WE NEVER FOUND OUT WHERE HOOTERVILLE WAS LOCATED.

Much like The Simpsons’s Springfield, viewers never found out for sure where Hooterville was located. Though Sommers once referenced time spent on a farm in Greendale, New York, Mr. Haney stated the town was located about 300 miles from Chicago. And the accents on the show are all over the place.

11. THE SHOW WAS FULL OF LITTLE INSIDE JOKES.

During one episode, Lisa explains to Oliver that he needs to accept her lack of cooking skills. “When you married me, you knew that I couldn’t cook, I couldn’t sew, and I couldn’t keep house. All I could do was talk Hungarian and do imitations of Zsa Zsa Gabor.” Zsa Zsa, of course, was Eva Gabor’s real-life sister.

There are also many references to The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction, both of which were also produced and/or written by Green Acres‘s executive producer Paul Henning. In the episode below, Hootervillians discuss putting on a local production of The Beverly Hillbillies. Lisa ends up playing Granny Clampett while Oliver stars as Jethro.

12. IT WAS CANCELED AS PART OF THE “RURAL PURGE” OF THE EARLY 1970s.

When Green Acres got the axe in 1971, it wasn’t the only show to go. That was the year that CBS got rid of “everything with a tree,” according to Buttram. The so-called “rural purge” also saw the demises of The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Hee Haw, The Andy Griffith Show, and Lassie.

13. ARNOLD THE PIG WAS NOT EATEN AT THE SHOW’S WRAP PARTY.

After the show wrapped, the actors were often asked what happened to Arnold the pig. On one such occasion, Tom Lester, the actor who played Eb Dawson, responded that Arnold was cooked and eaten at the luau-themed wrap party. Don’t worry—he wasn’t.

14. THERE WAS A REUNION SHOW IN 1990.

Return to Green Acres saw Oliver and Lisa—you guessed it—returning to Green Acres after spending 20 years back in New York. Mr. Haney is up to one of his underhanded schemes as usual, and the residents of Hooterville need the Douglases to save the town.

15. THE SHOW EXPERIENCED A REVIVAL IN THE 1990s.

In the 1990s, Nick at Nite brought Green Acres back, advertising it with the tagline, “It’s not stupid … it’s surrealism!” Apparently they weren’t the only ones who thought so. “A professor once told me students see it as surrealistic,” Albert told People Magazine. “He said, ‘The comedy is like Pickwick Papers or Gulliver’s Travels or Voltaire. It’s so far out that it becomes truth, deep truth.'”

And there could be more Green Acres on the way. The book was written for a Broadway production as of 2012, and a movie was in the works at the same time. Not much has happened since, at least not publicly, but you never know when those projects will pop up again.