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The News Review:

- Research capital
- … Contribution to Mayo Clinic Supporting Research Leading to…
- Females More Prone To Brain Damage From Alcohol Abuse
- Nicotine Rush Hinges On Sugar In Neurons
- US Democrats debate via YouTube

Research capital
Newindpress - Newindpress (subscription) - Jul 24, 2007
The Sree Chithra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology heads the list with nearly 24 percent of the total publications from the state, followed by Regional Cancer Centre, Thiruvananthapuram Medical College and surprisingly, the Department of Biochemistry, University of Kerala. Surprising, because the KU Department with relatively meagre infrastructure facilities and funding has done exceptionally well than fully-fledged research institutions such as Regional Research Laboratory, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology and Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute. However, there is hardly any representation of Kerala research in the top medical journals with high-impact factors like the Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine and Nature Medicine. The sole paper from Kerala that appeared in Nature was concerned with a novel polymeric blood compatible material. There is something to cheer about, though. When the publications in the last two decades are compared, there is a 2. 5-fold increase in the number of papers published in the 1997 - 2006 decade.

… Contribution to Mayo Clinic Supporting Research Leading to…
Free with registration - PR Newswire - AccessMyLibrary.com - Jul 24, 2007
MCLSS is a combination data warehouse and search engine that currently stores millions of patients’ clinical and genomic data and identifies subsets of patients with specific genetic features and medical histories. (This patient information is gathered and stored only after Mayo Clinic has received the written consent of patients who wish to participate in this effort. ) Mayo Clinic is the first organization to receive a gift of this nature from the AT&T Foundation in 2007. As part of its collaboration with IBM, Mayo Clinic is capturing consenting patients’ genetic information and medical histories in the MCLSS, where it.

Females More Prone To Brain Damage From Alcohol Abuse
Science Daily - Science Daily (press release) - Jul 24, 2007
The study led by Kristine Wiren, Ph. , associate professor of behavioral neuroscience and medicine, OHSU School of Medicine, and research biologist, PVAMC Research Service, found that female mice are more susceptible to neurotoxic effects of alcohol withdrawal, including significantly increased brain cell death, than male mice. It also found the gender difference exists whether the animals are prone to severe withdrawal due to a genetic predisposition, or resistant to it. Wiren said she was surprised by the results. "We designed the experiment to be able to identify gene expression differences between lines of mice that are genetically selected for severe alcohol withdrawal compared with mice that are resistant to alcohol withdrawal," Wiren said. "I thought there would be a difference between the genders, but I didn’t think it would be the most important thing… The females have all this apoptosis (cell death) going on, and the males instead may have repair going on. "
Such brain damage may underlie debilitating cognitive dysfunction and motor deficits observed in some alcoholics, according to the study. In addition, disruption of inhibitory functions in the prefrontal cortex may contribute to excessive drinking and the self-sustaining nature of alcoholism. "The results suggest that females are more vulnerable to neurotoxic consequences of alcohol withdrawal," Wiren noted. "Everyone should be concerned about chronic alcohol consumption and severe intoxication, but females may be more vulnerable. " This data is "consistent with some controversial human studies that suggest that females do develop more brain damage than male alcoholics. "
Future studies, including one funded by the VA, will examine the role that hormones play in response to alcohol withdrawal, include the possibility that the male hormone androgen exacerbates cell death in males.

Nicotine Rush Hinges On Sugar In Neurons
Science Daily - Science Daily (press release) - Jul 24, 2007
The water molecule may enable the receptor to alter its shape in counterbalance to the bending hinge, said Chen, who explained, "Think of it as a lubricant. "
Previously studied "homologs" of nAChR — proteins that share its structure but not its signaling function — are entirely hydrophobic, Chen said, supporting the theory that the buried water molecule plays a functional role. Chen called the group’s Nature Neuroscience study "one of the few times that you felt that you connected the dots. "
The study also represents a tour de force of protein crystallography. Homologs of nAChR had been studied at the atomic scale, but not the receptor itself. The corresponding authors were Chen and Zuo-Zhong Wang, associate professor of neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Cosma Dellisanti, research associate in molecular and computational biology at USC, was first author… "
The study also represents a tour de force of protein crystallography. Homologs of nAChR had been studied at the atomic scale, but not the receptor itself. The corresponding authors were Chen and Zuo-Zhong Wang, associate professor of neurobiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Cosma Dellisanti, research associate in molecular and computational biology at USC, was first author. The other co-authors were Yun Yao of the Keck School and James Stroud of the University of California, Los Angeles. Funding for the research came from the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the National Institutes of Health. Adapted from materials provided by.

US Democrats debate via YouTube
cbc.ca - Jul 24, 2007
Some of the submitted videos were posted before the debate began, with topics including the Iraq war, health care, Darfur, education, immigration, gay rights and the environment”Will you send your children to public school?” asked one woman. One woman who identified herself as Kim, a 36-year-old breast cancer patient, began her question by taking off her wig. She said she hoped to be a future breast cancer survivor, but her chances weren’t good, because she, like millions of Americans, had gone for years without health insurance that would have allowed her to take preventive medicine. But some questions took on a less serious tone. At the beginning of last week, the most watched video question was someone asking if California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a cyborg. “Eighty-eight per cent of Californians elected Gov… Arnold Schwarzenegger was a cyborg. “Eighty-eight per cent of Californians elected Gov. Schwarzenegger in hopes that a cyborg of his nature could stop a future nuclear war,” the man said. In midweek, the most popular question was if President George W. Bush should be impeached. A woman from Ajax, Ont. , also posed a question, asking how the candidates would improve Canada-U.