What works? – A new study is weighing the success of surgical bypass and banding against intensive lifestyle changes to fight type 2 diabetes and obesity
By Karen Weintraub – Globe Correspondent / August 23, 2010

Colleen Williams is thrilled with the results of her weight loss surgery. Since April, she’s lost 25 pounds and is back in a size 10 for the first time since . . . well, at least since the birth of her daughter 22 years ago. And she just feels better about herself.

ulie Bernard is equally pleased with the diet and exercise program she started around the same time. Like Williams, Bernard was worried that her extra pounds plus diabetes would doom her to ill-health as she ages.

“I went into the program hoping to feel better,’’ said Bernard, 49, of Duxbury, who has lost 16 pounds so far.

Both women are participating in a pilot study by the Joslin Diabetes Center and Brigham and Women’s Hospital designed to help patients with diabetes improve their health while reducing medications. Roughly half the 100 people in the SLIMMT2D study will get surgery — either gastric bypass like Williams, or a stomach banding procedure — and half will start with the 12-week “Why WAIT?’’ program at Joslin that was created in 2005 to treat obese patients with diabetes, and which Bernard completed at the end of June.

Hub enrolls coeds in bid to squash bedbugs
By Christine McConville – August 25, 2010

City officials bracing for the annual swarm of college kids are trying to get six legs up on wiping out their potential roommates: bloodsucking bedbugs.

Warning stickers and spray paint failed in years past to discourage migrating coeds from Dumpster diving for furniture and unwittingly spreading the blood-sucking parasites. So city Inspectional Service crews are now on a search-and-destroy mission for couches, beds and other comforts of home left curbside.

As returning and newcomer college students flock to city apartments in the coming weeks, Inspectional Services Department spokeswoman Lisa Timberlake said crews also will be out in force distributing educational pamphlets on pesky bedbugs and how to stop them in their tracks.

‘Abortion’ Googled more in conservative areas
By Renee Nadeau Algarin/Boston Herald – August 25, 2010

A study by two Children’s Hospital doctors has found that Google searches on “abortion” rise in areas with more conservative abortion policies or where the procedure is less available.

Dr. Ben Reis and Dr. John Brownstein of Children’s Hospital Boston Infomatics Program reviewed the abortion rates and policies in 50 states and 37 countries and compared the information against the number of Internet searches for the word “abortion.”

They found more searches in states and countries with more restrictive policies or less access to abortion and lower abortion rates.

‘Proof’ adds up to strong showing by Independent Drama Society
By Jenna Scherer / Boston Herald Theater Review – August 25, 2010

Never doubt the allure of a half-crazed, half-genius mathematician. We are just across the river from MIT, after all. It is, at least superficially, the appeal of David Auburn’s “Proof,” a play about theorems, family and madness that all plays out on one very tortured Chicago front porch.

But in this Tony- and Pulitzer-winning play, machinations both narrative and numerical are beside the point. What it is first and foremost is a character study of its protagonist, Catherine. It’s one of the great female parts of the last decade, one previously filled by the likes of Mary-Louise Parker, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Gwyneth Paltrow.

In the Independent Drama Society’s production at the Factory Theatre it’s filled by Kate Daly, a Framingham State student and newcomer to the Boston theater scene. Lucky for us, she’s giving one of the best performances you’ll see on a local stage this year.

[The Factory Theatre is at 791 Tremont Street. - ed]

Cross between a blackout and a brownout in parts of Mission Hill, Fenway, Roxbury last night
By adamg/Universal Hub – 8/25/10 – 7:43 am

OK, this was pretty special
By adamg/Universal Hub – 8/24/10 – 2:05 pm

1609 – Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.  More anniversaries.