New Butterfly Pavilion to open Saturday at Claremont's Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden

New Butterfly Pavilion to open Saturday at Claremont's Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden: "

When students from L.A.'s West Adams Preparatory High School received an early morning preview of the new Butterfly Pavilion at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont on Wednesday, most of the butterflies were napping. “It’s a double-edged sword,” said Rancho Santa Ana research associate Robert Allen, a.k.a. Bug Bob. “When it’s cool, you can get close to the butterflies. When it’s hot, they fly all over the place.”

No matter. The students oohed and aahed as they watched classmates cup a pipevine swallowtail caterpillar in their bare hands and allowed friendly California dogface butterflies (the state butterfly) and chalcedon checkerspots to rest on their fingertips and noses.

All of the butterflies and plants inside the pavilion are native to Southern California. “A number of the butterflies were collected here,” Allen said. “If they escape, they’ll be fine.”

Eventually, hundreds of butterflies will be installed inside the temporary walk-through enclosure, which opens to the public Saturday.

The pavilion is modest in size but promises to be a great resource for gardeners who want to cultivate a butterfly garden at home. Plants are clearly labeled, so visitors can write down names -- Salvia spathacea here, Aster chilensis there -- and then plant the same things in their own gardens.

A nearby pavilion will have educational displays and will host a workshop, “Habitat Gardening: Creating a Sustainable Butterfly Garden,” from 9 a.m. to noon. Saturday. Cost: $39.

The Butterfly Pavilion will be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily through Aug. 1. Admission is $2 on top of regular Rancho Santa Ana admission of $4 to $8. The garden is at 1500 N. College Ave., Claremont; (909) 625-8767; www.rsabg.org.

-- Lisa Boone

Photos, from top: A California dogface butterfly rests inside the new Butterfly Pavilion at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont; Bug Bob cradles a white-lined sphinx moth caterpillar; Rosemary Barillas, 17, left, and Ivan Mateo, 17, get a close look at a chalcedon checkerspot; students lean in to smell the pipevine swallowtail caterpillar, which uses a foul scent to ward off predators.

Credits: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times

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A trip to Starbucks could reduce your risk of diabetes

Go ahead have a cup!
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A trip to Starbucks could reduce your risk of diabetes: "

That cup of joe may be doing more than keeping you awake – it also may be reducing your risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

That’s the conclusion of a recent Japanese study involving a strain of mice that are known to become diabetic.

Studies of people have found a correlation between coffee consumption and a reduced risk of diabetes. To find out if there was a direct link between coffee and diabetes, the Japanese researchers let mice drink diluted black coffee instead of water. Those coffee drinkers were compared witha similar group of mice that got plain old H20.

After five weeks, both groups of mice had consumed the same amount of food and weighed essentially the same. However, the coffee-drinking mice had less fat under the skin and in their abdomens. In addition, their insulin did a better job of reducing the concentration of glucose in their blood.

To find out which component of coffee was responsible for these effects, the researchers did another experiment comparing plain water with caffeinated water. Once again, the caffeine-drinking mice wound up with less fat than the control mice despite eating the same amount of food and weighing about the same overall. The caffeine group also had a lower concentration of blood glucose.

The findings “suggest that coffee consumption may help to prevent type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome,” the researchers wrote in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Caffeine appears to play an important role, but it can’t be the only factor, considering that other studies have linked decaf coffee to a reduced risk of diabetes. The researchers said they are continuing to search for other coffee compounds that are anti-diabetic.

-- Karen Kaplan

Photo: Drinking this could help reduce your risk of Type 2 diabetes, researchers say. Credit: Damon Winter / Los Angeles Times

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Mormon Church to be fined by state political commission over Proposition 8

Mormon Church to be fined by state political commission over Proposition 8: "

The state Fair Political Practices Commission is expected to fine the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for not properly reporting about $37,000 worth of contributions to pass California's ban on same-sex marriages.

The commission will fine the Salt Lake City-based church $5,538 for failing to report the numerous contributions. The fine comes in response to a complaint filed in November 2008 by Fred Karger, a gay-rights activist and co-founder of Californians Against Hate, who accused the Mormon Church of failing to report the value of the work it did to support Proposition 8.

"The investigation revealed that the church unintentionally failed to file daily reports detailing approximately $37,000 in non-monetary contributions," a statement on the church's website read. "The amount of contributions not reported represented the cost of staff time spent by church employees on activities to help the Yes on 8 committee during the final two weeks of the election."

The church said it cooperated in the investigation and expected the matter to be resolved this week.

Roman Porter, executive director of the political practices commission, said a determination to adopt that proposed fine will be considered Thursday when the commission meets.

-- Ruben Vives

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Lesbian parents raise well-adjusted teens, study finds

Lesbian parents raise well-adjusted teens, study finds: "

Some people might be surprised by the latest research on children of lesbian parents, published in the journal Pediatrics. But perhaps they should give it more thought.

This was the objective of researchers at the University of California and the University of Amsterdam:

To document the psychological adjustment of adolescents who were conceived through donor insemination by lesbian mothers who enrolled before these offspring were born in the largest, longest running, prospective, longitudinal study of same-sex–parented families.

This was the conclusion:

The [National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study] adolescents are well-adjusted, demonstrating more competencies and fewer behavioral problems than their peers in the normative American population.

Here's a WebMD story with author Nanette Gartrelle explaining the positive results. "These are not accidental children," she points out. And that's just for starters.

Read the full lesbian parenting study here.

-- Tami Dennis

Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

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