By Gretchen Reynolds, New York Times

Scientists, like mothers, have long suspected that midnight snacking is inadvisable. But until a few years ago, there was little in the way of science behind those suspicions. Now, a new study shows that mice prevented from eating at all hours avoided obesity and metabolic problems — even if their diet was sometimes unhealthful.

Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego and elsewhere began experimenting with the eating patterns of laboratory mice in a previous study. On that occasion, some mice consumed high-fat food whenever they wanted; others had the same diet but could eat only during an eight-hour window. None exercised. The mice that ate at all hours soon grew chubby and unwell, with symptoms of diabetes. But the mice on the eight-hour schedule gained little weight and developed no metabolic problems. Those results were published in 2012.

For the new study, which appeared in the journal Cell Metabolism in December, Salk scientists fed groups of adult males one of four diets: high-fat, high-fructose, high-fat and high-sucrose, and regular mouse kibble. Some of the mice in each dietary group were allowed to eat whenever they wanted throughout their waking hours; others were restricted to feeding periods of nine, 12 or 15 hours. The caloric intake for all the mice was the same.

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By Gretchen Reynolds, New York Times

Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed a lengthy personality questionnaire about whether he or she tended to be cautious or a risk taker.

The researchers had asked their volunteers to wear their normal ski gear and schuss or ride down the slopes at their preferred speed. Although they hadn’t informed the volunteers, their primary aim was to determine whether wearing a helmet increased people’s willingness to take risks, in which case helmets could actually decrease safety on the slopes.

What they found was reassuring.

To many of us who hit the slopes with, in my case, literal regularity — I’m an ungainly novice snowboarder — the value of wearing a helmet can seem self-evident. It protects your head from severe injury. During the Big Air finals at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., this past weekend, for instance, Halldor Helgason, a 23-year-old Icelandic snowboarder, over-rotated on a triple back flip, landed headfirst on the snow and was briefly knocked unconscious. But like the other competitors he was wearing a helmet, and didn’t fracture his skull.

Indeed, studies have concluded that helmets reduce the risk of a serious head injury by as much as 60 percent. But a surprising number of safety experts and snowsport enthusiasts remain unconvinced that helmets reduce overall injury risk.

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• The Ritz-Carlton Lake Tahoe is one of 18 hotels in California to receive AAA’s five diamond rating

• The Swiss gas station on Emerald Bay Road in South Lake Tahoe is going on the auction block Feb. 11 because the owner Sarbjit Kang has refused to pay his bills.

• Bar of America in Truckee has reopened after an extensive remodel.

• Coyote Grill in Round Hill is hosting a charity chili night for Clean Tahoe on Jan. 22 from 5pm-closing. All you can eat chili is $3, with a portion of proceeds benefitting the nonprofit.

• Dave Teter, 48, of Cameron Park, has been reappointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to the California Commission on Emergency Medical Services, where he has served since 2010.

By Associated Press

CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Lindsey Vonn provisionally won a super-G on Monday to break Annemarie Moser-Proell’s 35-year-old record of 62 World Cup victories.

For win No. 63, the American clocked 1 minute 27.03 seconds down the Olympia delle Tofane course to finish 0.85 ahead of Anna Fenninger of Austria.

Tina Weirather of Liechtenstein was third, 0.92 back.

Vonn’s boyfriend, Tiger Woods, surprised her in the finish area, where the pair shared an emotional embrace.

Vonn exclaimed: “No way!” when she saw him.

“I didn’t think this could get any better than yesterday with my entire family here but now with Tiger here this is unbelievable,” Vonn said. “I said, ‘I can’t believe you came.’ And he said, ‘I told you.'”

By Denny Walsh and Sam Stanton, Sacramento Bee

Eric McDavid was running late for his interview Wednesday, unavoidably delayed when a detective asked to chat with him after he stopped at the Placer County Sheriff’s Office to register as an arsonist.

After nine years in federal custody, McDavid, 37, had been out of prison just six days and was still adjusting to life on the outside.

Later that day, he sat in his parents’ home, a large rustic cabin tucked among tall pines overlooking a ridge outside Foresthill in the Placer foothills. Balding and gaunt, he sat on a leather couch, beside his mother and girlfriend, as the morning sun streamed in through large picture windows and logs burning in the fireplace warmed the room.

“It’s surreal,” McDavid said. “It took at least the first few days. I was waking up in the middle of the night just trying to figure out if it’s real still. I mean, how many times at night I’d wake up like, ‘This is real. I’m not dreaming.’”

Until earlier this month, McDavid was scheduled to remain in prison another eight years – until Feb. 10, 2023 – following his 2007 conviction for conspiring to blow up and burn the Nimbus Dam, a U.S. Forest Service genetics lab and cellphone towers.

But in a twist described as unprecedented by the judge overseeing the case, McDavid won his release on Jan. 8 after agreeing to plead guilty to a lesser charge: a single count of conspiracy to attack a government facility that, had he made the same deal nine years earlier, would have cost him, at most, five years in prison. That guilty plea, which came with a promise by McDavid not to appeal or sue the government, resulted in his immediate release. His previous conviction and sentence were wiped out by an order of the court.

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Hemi

Hemi is a very sweet 3-year-old Chihuahua who is outgoing and playful. He is very affectionate, loves to give kisses, and likes children. He did quite well with the Daisy Girl Scout troop on Saturday.

Hemi is neutered, microchipped, tested for heart worm, and vaccinated. He is at the El Dorado County Animal Services shelter in Meyers, along with many other dogs and cats who are waiting for their new homes. Go to the Tahoe animal shelter’s Facebook page to see photos and descriptions of all pets at the shelter.

Call 530.573.7925 for directions, hours, and other information on adopting a pet. For spay-neuter assistance for South Tahoe residents, go online.

— Karen Kuentz

By Kathryn Reed

TRUCKEE – Gated communities with manicured golf courses and spas – home to people who may have multiple addresses. A couple miles away much lower end housing inhabited with people living check-to-check.

While this dichotomy of the haves and barely hanging ons seems to becoming the norm throughout the Lake Tahoe Basin, the stark contrasts were pointed out in a presentation last week at the Truckee Donner Chamber of Commerce meeting.

“Living in Tahoe is the tale of two cities,” Alison Schwedner, director of the Community Collaborative of Tahoe-Truckee told the group gathered at Truckee Tahoe Airport. “It’s important to balance the two. We need to create an environment where families can live and thrive.”

Her group of 45 agencies is trying to address the needs of community members in the North Lake Tahoe-Truckee areas.

“Data shows a lot of families are struggling,” Schwedner said as she went over stats from the just released Community Report Card.

Kings Beach opened an affordable housing complex in 2014. Photo/LTN

She talked of how people line up at the Family Resource Center because it’s warm and they may not have heat at home or be able to afford it. Project MANA provides food to half the people who live in Kings Beach. The waiting list for the more than 400 affordable housing units in the region is more than two years. Tahoe Truckee Unified School District provides 1,000 free breakfasts each day; 37 percent of the students receive a free or reduced lunch.

Getting help is a problem for many because of the state line and three counties – Nevada, Placer and El Dorado. Donner Creek Mobile Home Park is in Placer and Nevada counties. That means neighbors could be seeking help from different agencies. And sometimes that help is not right in town, and without a personal vehicle the aid may be out of reach.

Two contributing factors to what is keeping people down are low wages and the high cost of living. With most jobs being tourist oriented, they are minimum wage or about $11 an hour at most.

In 2011, the ACCRA Cost of Living Index put Truckee at ninth most expensive place to live in the United States.

Schwedner said it costs more to live in Truckee than the California and national averages. This means housing, food and everything combined costs more in Truckee.

“A lot of people technically live in poverty, but they don’t qualify for federal aid,” Schwedner said.

This in turn means people are turning to nonprofits for assistance.

Housing can be an issue. Schwedner showed a picture of affordable housing in Kings Beach that could be described as squalor. Then she showed the facility that opened last year – new, clean and a place people are proud to call home.

Tahoe Forest Hospital did a recent Community Needs Assessment that found while most people are healthy, with heart disease-obesity-tobacco use all being on the low side; there is an abnormally high use of alcohol in the area.

“We tend to be binge drinkers. We drink more than the state and country,” Schwedner said.

A question on the survey asked if people had a drink in the last 30 days. The hospital found that 81.1 percent of the people said yes. This compares to the state average of 55.5 percent and national average of 54.5 percent.

Mental illness is also something nonprofits are seeing as an issue and something the collaborative wants to address.

By Tom Hanks, New York Times

In 1974, I graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, an underachieving student with lousy SAT scores. Allowed to send my results to three colleges, I chose M.I.T. and Villanova, knowing such fine schools would never accept a student like me but hoping they’d toss some car stickers my way for taking a shot. I couldn’t afford tuition for college anyway. I sent my final set of stats to Chabot, a community college in nearby Hayward, which, because it accepted everyone and was free, would be my alma mater.

For thousands of commuting students, Chabot was our Columbia, Annapolis, even our Sorbonne, offering courses in physics, stenography, auto mechanics, certified public accounting, foreign languages, journalism — name the art or science, the subject or trade, and it was probably in the catalog. The college had a nursing program that churned out graduates, sports teams that funneled athletes to big-time programs, and parking for a few thousand cars — all free but for the effort and the cost of used textbooks.

Classmates included veterans back from Vietnam, women of every marital and maternal status returning to school, middle-aged men wanting to improve their employment prospects and paychecks. We could get our general education requirements out of the way at Chabot — credits we could transfer to a university — which made those two years an invaluable head start. I was able to go on to the State University in Sacramento (at $95 a semester, just barely affordable) and study no other subject but my major, theater arts. (After a year there I moved on, enrolling in a little thing called the School of Hard Knocks, a.k.a. Life.)

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• 968 Park Hotel in South Lake Tahoe will be featured in an episode of Travel Channel’s “Hotel Showdown” on Jan. 27 at 9pm.

• The Kiwanis Sunrisers Club’s 33rd annual Beach Party and Crab Feed is Jan. 30 at 6pm at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe. Tickets are $38 each – 530.541.5900.

• University of Nevada Cooperative Extension’s 4-H Youth Development Program is looking for adults to mentor youth. For more info, contact Samantha Shoupe at 775.336.0270 or shoupes@unce.unr.edu.

• Here are the El Dorado-Tahoe and Sierra roadwork schedules for the week.

• Sugar Bowl turns 75 this year. Check out this video:

By Kyle Roerink, Las Vegas Sun

In his third and most ambitious State of the State speech, Gov. Brian Sandoval unveiled a litany of education initiatives and tax reforms he wants the Legislature to tackle in the upcoming session.

He set the stage for a session that will harbor intense debates about Nevada’s outdated revenue structure and bottom-tier education system.

Speaking for nearly an hour, he devoted more than 30 minutes to education reform, highlighting a plan to invest $882 million in education funding in the next two years. He outlined the plan as the beginning of a “new Nevada” and the foundation for education reform.

He didn’t hesitate to say that Nevada’s high school graduation rate and preschool enrollment were among the worst in the country.

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