Number preferences in lotteries

We explore people's preferences for numbers in large proprietary data sets from two different lottery games. We find that choice is far from uniform, and exhibits some familiar and some new tendencies and biases. Players favor personally meaningful and situationally available numbers, and are attracted towards numbers in the center of the choice form. Frequent players avoid winning numbers from recent draws, whereas infrequent players chase these. Combinations of numbers are formed with an eye for aesthetics, and players tend to spread their numbers relatively evenly across the possible range

Recent drug development for diabetes and obesity

Summary The development of new drugs is a long, slow and expensive process. It starts with the thorough understanding of the cellular processes affected by disease. In the case of diabetes this involves the metabolism of glucose and fatty acids

Effect of β-Lactam Antibiotics on the Resistance of the Digestive Tract of Mice to Colonization

Four broad-spectrum antibiotics — azlocillin, mezlocillin, cefuroxime, and moxalactam-were injected subcutaneously into mice twice a day. The animals were divided into treatment groups for each antibiotic and then into subgroups, each subgroup receiving a different dose of antibiotic. The effect of treatment on the resistance of the digestive tract to colonization and the effect of treatment on endogenous gram-negative and intestinal streptococcal flora were studied: resistance to colonization decreased during treatment with ∼0.9 mg of antibiotic per mouse per day. During treatment with this dose or a higher dose, Escherichia coli or a strain of Enterobacter resistant to the antibiotic being used grew to significantly higher numbers per gram of feces than in the control groups. The resistance of the digestive tract to colonization in mice decreases during systemic treatment with all four antibiotics at or above certain dose levels, a result also likely to occur in humans