Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) conducted a site visit of an investigator at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), whose studies of sex workers have been the target of a recent inquiry by Congress. Although there is no hard evidence that the inquiry and the site visit are linked, the events have shaken researchers at UCSF and some at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The controversy centers on work by AIDS researcher Tooru Nemoto, whose projects include preventing HIV infection in Asian sex workers and in men who are planning or have had a sex change operation. HHS officials inquired about how UCSF was managing Nemoto's grants from the department in early January. In late March, four officials from NIH and another HHS agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) spent 2 days at UCSF asking about procedures and going "all over San Francisco" to hear scientific talks by Nemoto, says UCSF grants manager Joan Kaiser. She says that UCSF officials "haven't heard back" but assume the grants were in compliance. UCSF officials thought no more of it until they learned last week about a 13 March e-mail memo from a House of Representatives staffer. Roland Foster of the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources chaired by Mark Souder (R-IN), raised concerns about two NIH-funded studies of sex workers--one of them Nemoto's. The memo argues that by attempting to protect the health of sex workers, the studies "seek to legitimize the commercial sexual exploitation of women." Foster's memo asks for the names of study section members who approved the grants and the scores they gave. Foster says he played "no role" in the UCSF site visit but is "interested in what may be found." Copyright © 2003 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 3708 - Posted: 06.24.2010

A gene that stops different species of fruit flies from interbreeding is evolving faster than other genes, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Cambridge in England. The findings may help scientists understand how new species evolve from existing ones. The offspring of matings between different species are often sterile, like mules, or don't form viable animals at all. This incompatibility is important for evolution, as new species form when they are genetically cut off from their close relatives. Over 60 years ago, geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky proposed that matings between closely related species would cause harmful or lethal genetic effects in the offspring, preventing interbreeding and driving the two species apart. Daniel Barbash, a postgraduate researcher at UC Davis, together with postgraduate researchers Dominic Siino and Aaron Tarone at UC Davis and John Roote, a genetics researcher at Cambridge University, studied a gene called Hybrid male rescue (Hmr) in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and three close relatives.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 3707 - Posted: 04.19.2003

It’s just a sugar pill. It has no active medicinal content, and yet sometimes patients get well after taking it. In scientific communities it’s known as a placebo. Its power has puzzled scientists and baffled pharmaceutical industries for a long time. The improvements that patients experience from taking placebos is known as the placebo effect. Placebos are commonly used in clinical tests of new drugs. Andrew Leuchter, professor of psychiatry at the University of California Los Angeles’s Neuropsychiatry Institute, says that when doctors test a new medical treatment or when pharmaceutical companies develop a new medication, “they always end up comparing it to a placebo, so they can see if this new medication that they’re developing is better than no treatment.” The placebo effect is so strong that new medications are generally not considered to be effective unless they are proven to work better than placebos. Although scientists are not sure about how the placebo works, recent studies have illustrated that it’s power is hard to deny. Leucher and his colleagues witnessed and studied the placebo effect in patients being treated for major depression. In a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the researchers explain that by using a technique called quantitative electro encephalography or QEEG, they measured and studied patient’s brain activity and showed for the first time that the placebo effect is not just in the mind but that it’s a real change, a real “physical phenomenon” in the brain. © ScienCentral, 2000-2003.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Depression
Link ID: 3706 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Cannabis extract is to be trialled in a new South West study into Parkinson's Disease. The Peninsula Medical School is carrying out the study, which starts in May and will involve 24 patients from Cornwall and Devon. The study will be based at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth and will look at whether the drug can help reduce the side effects of some existing medication. Participants will be using a cannabis derivative called Cannador, which will be in capsule form. Parkinson's is one of the most common neurological diseases in older people. It is a progressive, degenerative, neurological condition for which there is currently no cure. Sufferers find increasing difficulty in moving their arms and legs. (C) BBC

Keyword: Parkinsons; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 3705 - Posted: 04.18.2003

Laughing gas is becoming a popular recreational drug, say doctors, who warn of potential health risks from its use. A survey in New Zealand found one in eight students at a university had used nitrous oxide recreationally. Cannisters of nitrous oxide are used in some domestic appliances - for example cream dispensing containers - and can be bought easily at hardware stores. Inhaling the gas can produce hallucinations and disorientation - and overuse has been linked to long-term health problems. The survey, published in the medical journal The Lancet, involved 1,782 first-year students at the University of Auckland. More than half of the students said they were aware that nitrous oxide could be used recreationally. Approximately 12% said they had used it recreationally at some point, and 3% - 39 students - said they were regular users. (C) BBC

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 3704 - Posted: 04.18.2003

La Jolla, Calif.—A cellular receptor that balances the accumulation of fat and fat burning in the body may be a new target for anti-obesity and cholesterol-fighting drugs, according to a Salk Institute study. The study, published in the April 18 issue of Cell, identified the function of this key receptor for the first time. The receptor, called PPARd, was found to regulate how fat is used and could point the way to new treatments for obesity as well as its associated lethal medical complications: type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and atherosclerosis. Professor Ronald M. Evans, the March of Dimes Chair in Developmental and Molecular Biology at the Salk Institute and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and his team found that stimulating PPARd -- short for peroxisome proliferators-activated receptor -- depleted fat deposits in mice, while mice deficient in PPARd were prone to obesity.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 3703 - Posted: 06.24.2010

— Exposure to continuous white noise sabotages the development of the auditory region of the brain, which may ultimately impair hearing and language acquisition, according to researchers from the University of California, San Francisco. According to the scientists, the young rats used in their study were exposed to constant white noise that is relevant to the increasing, random noise encountered by humans in today's environment. They theorize that their findings could aid in explaining the increase in language-impairment developmental disorders over the last few decades. The researchers, which included Howard Hughes Medical Institute medical student fellow Edward Chang and otolaryngology professor Michael Merzenich at the University of California at San Francisco, published their findings in the April 18, 2003, issue of the journal Science. ©2003 Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 3702 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Injections appear to treat mouse multiple sclerosis. HELEN R. PILCHER Injections of cultured adult brain stem cells seem to have helped mice with a form of multiple sclerosis to recover from paralysis. Researchers hope that similar therapies may one day treat human sufferers of the disease. Cells injected into the bloodstream found their way to the animals' brains, where they repaired damaged and inflamed areas. Four out of 15 mice with paralysed back legs moved normally after treatment1. "It's a great recovery," says team member Angelo Vescovi of the Stem Cell Research Institute at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Italy. The other 11 mice retained only minor tail paralysis. © Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2003

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Stem Cells
Link ID: 3701 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ITHACA, N.Y. -- A five-year study has found that lead is harmful to children at concentrations in the blood that are typically considered safe. Reporting in the latest issue (April 17) of The New England Journal of Medicine , two Cornell University scientists say that children suffer intellectual impairment at a blood-lead concentration below the level of 10 micrograms per deciliter (mcg/dl) -- about 100 parts per billion -- currently considered acceptable by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "We also found that the amount of impairment attributed to lead was most pronounced at lower levels," says Richard Canfield, lead author of the journal paper and a senior researcher in Cornell's Division of Nutritional Sciences. The study followed 172 children in the Rochester, N.Y., area whose blood lead was assessed at 6, 12, 18, 24, 36, 48 and 60 months and who were tested for IQ at both 3 and 5 years of age. The study was conducted by researchers at Cornell, the Cincinnati Children's Hospital, the University of Rochester, the National Institutes of Health and the University of Washington.

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3700 - Posted: 04.17.2003

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have found that the levels of a pituitary hormone that increases testosterone are enhanced after exposure to bright light in the early morning. The findings suggest that light exposure might serve some of the same functions for which people take testosterone and other androgens. One of the study's authors, Daniel Kripke, M.D. UCSD professor of psychiatry, added "the study also supports data that bright light can trigger ovulation in women, which is also controlled by luteinizing hormone (LH), the pituitary hormone we studied." Published in the current issue of the journal Neuroscience Letters (341, 2003, 25-28), the study looked at LH excretion following bright light exposure (1,000 lux) from 5-6 a.m. each morning for five days in 11 healthy men ages 19-30. The same group of men had their LH measured again after exposure to a placebo light (less than 10 lux) from 5-6 a.m. for five days.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 3699 - Posted: 04.17.2003

No clear choices on which fish are best Olivia Wu, Chronicle Staff Writer So you jack up the amount of fish you eat, pump the omega-3s, and make your heart healthier and happier than it's ever been. But at the same time, are you accumulating toxic levels of mercury and making a mess of your brain and nerves? It depends, scientists say. What kind of fish, how large the fish are and your individual tolerance for mercury are all factors in choosing a mercury-safe seafood diet. You can eat fish often -- if you choose carefully. ©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

Keyword: Neurotoxins; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 3698 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Combining the most potent neurotoxin known to man and a protein from the Mediterranean coral tree could deliver a long-lasting treatment for the chronic pain that afflicts millions of people, including cancer patients. The neurotoxin in question is botulinum toxin, perhaps better known as Botox, the treatment that has smoothed out the wrinkles on many a celebrity forehead. But it is also used to treat an increasing range of medical conditions. The neurotoxin, whose effects can last for months, works by blocking the release of the neurotransmitters that relay the "contract now" message from nerves to muscles. The machinery that is knocked out is actually found inside most cells, but the toxin only affects the neurons that control muscles. This is because of a targeting sequence in the toxin that only permits it to bind to muscle cells. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 3697 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN UNITED NATIONS, — Monkeys experimentally infected with a new coronavirus have developed an illness similar to the mysterious human respiratory disease SARS, and it is now almost certain that the coronavirus causes the disease, a World Health Organization official said here today. Dr. David L. Heymann, executive director in charge of communicable diseases for W.H.O., said the agency "is 99 percent sure" that SARS is caused by the new coronavirus based on the monkey experiments in the Netherlands. Experiments on animals are necessary because the lack of an effective treatment for SARS and the relatively high death rate make it unethical to conduct such experiments on humans. Preliminary findings show that the monkeys developed an illness resembling SARS after the coronavirus was put in their nostrils. Some monkeys developed pneumonia, and examination of their lungs under a microscope showed that the coronavirus caused a pattern of lung damage similar to what affected humans have suffered. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Rights
Link ID: 3696 - Posted: 06.24.2010

New research at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine indicates that cloned pigs can have the same degree of variability in physical appearance and behavior as normally bred animals. Two separate studies show that while clones are genetically identical to the original animal, the similarities end there. This dispels the commonly held notion that cloned animals retain the physical and behavioral attributes of the animal from which they were cloned. The research was conducted by Dr. Jorge Piedrahita, professor of molecular biomedical sciences at NC State, and colleagues at Texas A&M University. His study on cloned pig behavior, which appears in Applied Animal Behaviour Science, is the first published research on the behavior of cloned mammals. The study on cloned pig physiology, which appears in Biology of Reproduction, is the first study on clone physiology that included control subjects.

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 3695 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Women who navigate around 3D computer-generated environments for a living - or even for fun - are having their style cramped by ultra-narrow computer displays and graphics software that favours men. Female architects, designers, trainee pilots and even computer gamers should be given much wider computer screens, a team of computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Microsoft's research lab in Redmond, Washington, told a computer usability conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, last week. Wider screens and more realistic 3D animations, they say, will boost women's spatial orientation and 3D map-reading skills to match those of their male counterparts. It may sound like sexual prejudice, but it seems that men's much-debated ability to navigate slightly better than women applies in virtual environments as well as the real world. And on average, says Microsoft computer scientist Mary Czerwinski, men are quicker to create a mental map of an environment and orient themselves within it. © Copyright Reed

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 3694 - Posted: 06.24.2010

You don't see as much as you think you do By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff, Look up and around you, then back at these words. How much did you see of your surroundings? Pretty much all of it, and in rich detail, right? Wrong. In recent years, a rash of experiments, spurred by new technology, have demonstrated that people often take in far less of the world around them than previously thought. Tests have found that subjects miss even major changes right before their eyes - say, the sudden disappearance of an airplane's jet engine, or a woman's bright scarf. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 3693 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NewScientist.com news service Partial memory blackouts after drinking binges could contribute to future alcoholism, say researchers, because drinkers may fill in the blanks with rosy memories. Experiments involving moderate alcohol intake showed that drinkers who had previously suffered partial memory loss had poorer memories than drinkers who had not. Questionnaires also revealed that the memory loss drinkers also had more optimistic attitudes about the effect alcohol had upon them. These results, and others from the same study, led the scientists at the University of Texas in Austin to conclude that drinkers experiencing "fragmentary blackouts" are more likely to misremember drinking experiences and then fill in the gaps with positive beliefs. And this would increase the likelihood of them drinking heavily in the future, the researchers say. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 3692 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By JANE E. BRODY I pick up my morning newspaper and flip directly to the sports pages because almost every article on Page 1 is about the war. I turn on the radio to get the traffic and weather reports only to hear that American troops have been hit by fire from their own side or that they have killed Iraqi civilians trying to escape the war zone. Throughout New York City and elsewhere, there are subtle reminders — police officers carrying gas masks, soldiers with rifles at airports and toll booths — that any of us at any time could be struck by another terrorist attack equal to the devastation of Sept. 11, or worse. Bankruptcy or insurmountable debt seems to be looming everywhere, resulting in growing unemployment and reductions in services vital to our quality of life. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 3691 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By DENISE GRADY A pill to make you thin: it has long been a dieter's dream. But despite intense, if not desperate interest from the public — 60 million Americans are obese — and eagerness from drug companies to meet the demand, efforts to develop weight-loss drugs have been disappointing. The human body seems to guard its fat stores jealously, and attempts to outsmart the system often fail outright or backfire, causing dangerous side effects. Recently, in what might seem an odd twist, researchers have been studying weight loss in people taking two drugs already on the market, but approved for a completely different use, to treat epilepsy. Both drugs, Zonegran and Topamax, are also used to prevent migraine headaches. Zonegran is made by Elan Pharmaceuticals, and Topamax by Ortho-McNeil, a unit of Johnson & Johnson. The weight-loss potential of both drugs was discovered almost by accident, when people taking them for epilepsy or migraines noticed that they were dropping weight without trying. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity; Epilepsy
Link ID: 3690 - Posted: 06.24.2010

PHILADELPHIA -- Opening a new front in the battle against Alzheimer's disease, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have found that a protein long associated with the disease inflicts grave damage in a previously unimagined way: It seals off mitochondria in affected neurons, resulting in an "energy crisis" and buildup of toxins that causes cells to die. This pathway, the first specific biochemical explanation for pathologies associated with Alzheimer's, is detailed in the April 14 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology. While the normal function of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) remains unknown, senior author Narayan G. Avadhani and his colleagues have determined that a mere 50-amino-acid stretch of the protein wreaks havoc by essentially starving mitochondria and the cells they nourish. "We found that when APP leaves the nucleus, it can be directed both to mitochondria and to the endoplasmic reticulum," said Avadhani, professor of biochemistry and chair of the Department of Animal Biology in Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine. "APP has an acidic, negatively charged region that causes it to jam irreversibly while traversing protein transport channels in the mitochondrial membrane. This hampers, and eventually completely blocks, mitochondria's ability to import other proteins and produce cellular energy."

Keyword: Alzheimers; Apoptosis
Link ID: 3689 - Posted: 04.15.2003