DNA Imaging to Design Better Drugs
...esover traditional techniques. Unequivocal methods like X-raycrystallography and NMR spectroscopy are extremely labor intensive.Crystallography, a field in which Williams specializes, is limited tosmall fragments of DNA, such as 10 to 30 base pairs. The scanning force microscopy assay can be performed on...Digital Speech Analysis Tests Sobriety
...eglottis stays open, the result is unvoiced sounds like "p" and "t." Ifit opens and closes periodically, voiced sounds, like "b," "z" andvowels are produced. The glottal excitation waveform is the puffs of air produced by th...Use Of Surfectant Therapy Widens Gap In Death Rate Of Black And White Newborns
...eived the therapy died. "On the surface, it looked like black babies didn't get as muchsurfactant, and therefore didn't have a reduction in mortality," Hamvassaid. "But, actually, we found the differences in surfactant administrationand the changes in the death rate were purely due to the differences in t...Emory Doctors Discuss "Killing Heat" In This Week's NEJM
... shut-in, the authors say. Conventional practices like opening shelters or giving fans to poor citizens during heat waves are "not enough," they say. "Unfortunately, the most well-intentioned efforts can be hampered by suspicion and fear," the authors say. "Air-conditioners have been turned off by vi...Hopkins Researchers Develop Under-The-Skin Implant For Pain Treatment
...rug addiction. The button-sized polymer works much like the continuous-release birth control implant. It will be inserted under the skin through a tiny incision made under mild, local anesthetic. The polymer contains a highly concentrated powder form of the commonly used narcotic drug hydromorphone. T...Maternal Exposure To Crack Cocaine Produces Stressed Newborns
...ewomb. "Newborns who were exposed to crack looked like normal babies but didn't actlike them," said Beata Napiorkowski, the lead author of the Brown study, whichappears in the July issue of the journal Pediatrics. "Cocaine-exposedinfants were more jittery, had more muscle tension, and were harder to mo...Discovery Hints At Multitude Of New Targets For Drugs
...sewhere. "The optimum would be a compound like a progesterone that would workonly in the uterus to oppose the proliferative action of estrogen,"he said. "But until now, researchers have believed that it wasn't possible.Now, however, this paper shows that we can do exactly the same with theprogest...Alzheimer's disease center seeks patients for new drug studies
...e major symptoms of Alzheimer's. The participants, like those in the propentofylline trial, must be coherent enough to answer researchers' questions. "We are encouraged by the number of new medications being developed for Alzheimer's," said Dr. Myron Weiner, vice chairman for clinical services in psychia...What Makes Tics Tick? Clues Found In Tourette Twins' Caudates
...y the fact that Tourette symptoms respond to drugs like haloperidol that block D2 dopamine receptors. They used a radioactive tracer drug, IBZM (iodobenzamide), that similarly blocks D2 receptors, and a SPECT* (single-photon emission computed tomography) scanner to image dopamine binding in five identica...Study Demonstrates Safety & Effectiveness Of Asthma Drug
...vard Medical School. "When you design a big trial like this, somebody has to be the centraldata bank," said Drazen. "Hershey was our bank and without themwe would have been buried under an avalanche of data." "Each patient's data must be kept separate," said Drazen. "Allof the people involved in the stu...Study Shows Major Savings In Supervising TB Care
... more expensive than a more comprehensive approach like DOT," says Chaisson. Other authors of the study include Richard D. Moore, C. Patrick Chaulk, Robert Griffiths and Solange Cavalcante. The study was supported in part by Marion Merrell Dow Inc....A Surgical Semiconductor Laser With More Precision And Power
...ams produced by most suchlasers. "This sounds like a very useful technology for surgery," says Raymond Lanzafame, director of Rochester GeneralHospital's Laser Center and a practitioner of laser surgery. "The boost in power provided by this technology could makea single semiconductor laser an option ...Rape Victims Find Relief From Posttraumatic Stress Using The Antidepressant Zoloft.
...ted by a larger controlled trial, the use of SSRIs like sertralineshould be considered an option in the treatment of PTSD in rape survivors." SSRIs (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors) represent a relatively newclass of antidepressants which includes fluoxetine (Prozac) and fluvoxomine(Luvox) as wel...UW, Siemens Unveil New Panoramic Ultrasound Imaging Application Using Programmable Technology
...ocessor allows this to happen in real time. "It's like looking into a roomthrough an open doorway rather than through a keyhole," said Dr. Tom Winter,associate professor of radiology and director of ultrasound at the UWMedical Center. "This is an outstanding tool for diagnosis and forcommunicating result...It Matters Where, In America, You Suffer A Heart Attack
... payers often focus on short-term big-ticket costs like those related to the use of cardiac catheterization and angioplasty," Mark said. "This study shows that judging the balance between costs and quality of care requires a longer-term perspective." The percentage of patients who were given a dia...Postmature Infants Not As Easily Calmed As Other Newborns
...minute amount of sugar dissolved inwater, and it's like a sedative, almost immediately calmingfitful, cryi...n opioid pathway. The postmatureinfants react much like infants born to heroin-addicted mothers,but the researchers emphasized that they do not yet have evi...NIAID Stops AIDS Study Prematurely Because Drug 'Cocktail' Boosts Survival
...hanked and congratulated for this study and others like it are the people who participated in the trials," Eron said. "They not only have done something that will improve their own care, but they have volunteered to do something that will clearly improve the care of many patients afterwards. "Treatment w...Duke Study Uses Tiny Temperature Changes To Probe Water-Exclusion At Protein Binding Sites
...determining whether a drug will bind with aprotein like a natural ligand would. In 1996, his team followed up this finding by reporting that the waythe atoms are arranged in a molecule plays a crucial role in determininghow important water reorganization is to ligand binding. If removing water......general population, where infectious lung diseases like tuberculosis kill more than 7 million people every year. "People have always thought that the lungs only attacked infections via the classical immune system--B cells, T cells and other immune cells," says Pete Pedersen, Ph.D., Hopkins professor of bi......iversity of Memphis, "is thatpreventative measures like driver education, curfews and raisingthe drinking ...penalties that occurafter a behavior has occurred, like police enforcement of illegaldriving activities - speeding tickets, DWI) examined in theliterature r...