Articles by Harvey Black

A mosquito-killing fungus shows promise as an effective dengue-control agent.

University of Wisconsin-Madison finds questionable data in several studies; co-authors defend work

results in flies that snooze much less than wildtype

Courtesy of Paul Alan Cox and Patricia StewartThe Samoan mamala tree, Homalanthus nutans, from which the promising anti-AIDS drug Prostratin was isolated.The University of California, Berkeley, and the tiny, two-island Pacific Ocean nation of Samoa will share equally in royalties from an anti-AIDS drug called prostratin, in an agreement that could be a model for the development and commercialization of drugs resulting from ethnobotany efforts. Prostratin is extracted from the bark of the mamala

Agreement hailed as a model for ethnobotany projects

Perhaps a nose-full of virus can fight cocaine addiction. Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., report that a bacteriophage with anticocaine antibodies can be used to block or sequester cocaine in the brain.1 Chemist Kim Janda and colleagues injected the antibody-displaying phages nasally, finding that treated rats moved less and showed reduced rearing and sniffing when injected with cocaine.Other attempts to block cocaine have used antibodies in the blood stream, bu

Graduate student enrollment in science, engineering peaks, but foreign students buck trend

US Air Force workshop designed to improve accuracy of films and encourage science careers

© James Newhouse, Maqsudul AlamProteins possibly used for oxygen sensing in primitive organisms appear to be hemoglobin ancestors. Microbiologist Maqsudul Alam at the University of Hawaii and collaborators at the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas found a "protoglobin," a hemoglobin progenitor, in Aeropyrum pernix, an aerobic organism that lives in near-boiling salt water. They also found the protoglobin in Methanosarcina acetivorans, an anaerobe found in lake-bo

Courtesy of Almut MeckeRemoving the positive charge on nanoparticles can improve their chemotherapeutic efficiency, say investigators at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Research presented in March at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society in Montreal showed that without the positive charge, the drug-carrying nanoparticles are less likely to be taken up by normal cells and more likely to be taken up by cancer cells.1 "That way we can direct them to tumor cells and decrease the

If you're looking for the source of mother love, you might consider the orbitofrontal cortex. A new study1 finds that this part of the brain, just above the eyes, is active when new mothers view pictures of infants; the activity increases, as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging, when the women see pictures of their newborns. "This is evidence that positive emotional aspects of maternal attachment are reliably associated with this region of the brain," says lead author Jack Nitschke

While President George W. Bush waxes enthusiastically about astronauts further exploring space, the reality is that a major obstacle to an astronaut's health remains: bone loss in zero gravity.Despite an exercise program designed to counter bone loss, astronauts on the International Space Station showed as much degradation as did their counterparts one decade ago on the Soviet space station Mir,1 says a NASA-funded study.2 "Despite the passage of [time], this problem has not really been ameliora

Courtesy of Allen ChartierDavid Crews' lab resembles an exotic pet store; there's not a mouse or rat in sight. This professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas, Austin, studies animals such as the inches-long whiptail lizard."I'm interested in the evolution of brain mechanisms involved in social and sexual behaviors," Crews says. "You have to have ancestral species." The lizard, Cnemidophorus uniparens, reproduces parthenogenetically, though it evolved from the still extant C. in

US NSB report warns that nation's labs shouldn't count on foreign-born researchers

ImageSource Photography It seems that the adolescent brain may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of nicotine and alcohol. At a recent conference where researchers discussed published and unpublished work, studies showed that alcohol's impact on a variety of brain activities appears more severe in adolescent rats. Similarly, though results don't always agree, the adolescent brain also appears to be extremely sensitive to the effects of nicotine. Adolescent drinking in the United States