Study co-ordinator Jens Juul Holst from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, said the results suggested that treatment with the hormone had a significant impact on improving the way the body breaks down sugar.

BBC: Diabetes hormone treatment hope

"One can point at almost any random star and say there are planets orbiting that star, " said astronomer Uffe Grae Jorgensen, of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, a member of Dr. Cassan's team.

WSJ: Galaxy Hosts 100 Billion Planets, in New Estimate

Dr Gilbert, who works at Copenhagen University, in Denmark, is one of the leaders of a team that has just published its findings in Science.

ECONOMIST: The first Americans

The Copenhagen Consensus, a project led by Bjorn Lomborg, a professor at the University of Aarhus, in Denmark, and publicised by this newspaper, made something of a splash a few months ago by ranking climate change at the bottom of a list of pressing global problems (see articles).

ECONOMIST: The debate over global warming is getting rancorous