Yeltsin's like russian bred, Clinton says
MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Clinton paid tribute to Boris Yeltsin's
ability to bounce back under pressure Tuesday - or at least that's
what he seemed to be doing when he compared the Kremlin leader to a
loaf of heavy Russian bread. Clinton was greeted at the start of his
two-day Kremlin summit with a traditional Russian offering of bread
and salt. Squeezing the solid black loaf with his hand, Clinton
watched it spring quickly back into shape. "It's amazing. Just like
you," he said, turning to the Russian president, who is sunk in his
country's worst but by no means first crisis in years. A beaming
Yeltsin promptly ordered the loaf to be served up at lunch. ###
X-Sender: bfleisch@pop.seas.upenn.edu
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 21:27:40 -0600
To: bfleisch@seas.upenn.edu
From: sproing
Subject: Trehalose
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=6002757-736
12:04 PM ET 11/17/97
FEATURE-Drugmaker learns desert survival lessons
By Jonathan Birt
LONDON (Reuters) - The survival secrets of a plant found in
the American desert could open up radical new ways of storing
and administering drugs.
Researchers at a British company believe the Resurrection
plant, which can spring back to life after up to 100 years in
intense desert heat, offers clues to keeping unstable vaccines
without refrigerators and turning large hard-to-swallow pills
into tiny fragments to sprinkle on drinks or even inhale.
Quadrant Healthcare Plc's Dutch research and development
director, Jaap Kampinga, carries a desiccated specimen of the
plant around with him in a small bag, ready to spring on
potential corporate partners and unsuspecting journalists.
``When there is no rain it dries out and when it gets wet it
goes back to being a normal plant,'' he told Reuters. ``This
plant has found a way of stabilizing its biomolecules -- it has
to be able to store its biomolecules for months at very high
temperatures.''
Scientists discovered that just before drying out completely
the Resurrection plant produces a kind of natural sugar called
trehalose, the same sugar found in dried yeast bought in
supermarkets. The sugar preserves key molecules in the plant and
stops them from reacting with the outside world and
deteriorating.
CHOSEN BY NATURE AS BEST PRESERVATIVE
``Trehalose has been chosen by nature as the best
preservative,'' Kampinga said.
Quadrant believes it can use trehalose to store drug
molecules, stopping them from degrading. On a fairly simple
level, this could avoid the need to keep unstable vaccines and
children's therapeutic syrups in refrigerators and give tablets
a longer shelf life in the pharmacy.
More importantly, the technique might be used to develop
pill forms of biotechnology drugs, which use naturally occurring
and highly unstable proteins and peptides to trigger natural
defenses in the body.
Because of their instability, most biotech drugs are given
by injection, which makes developing drugs for mild conditions
unrealistic. People usually prefer to take a dozen aspirins
rather than undergo one injection to combat a headache.
Another potential advantage of trehalose is that it can be
milled into tiny fragments.
``What makes Quadrant unique is that we can get controlled
release from very small particles,'' Kampinga said. He said this
enabled drugs injected under the skin for gradual release, such
as cancer treatments, to be stored in much smaller quantities,
reducing pain and discomfort.
Quadrant also hopes to be able to turn drugs into particles
so fine the tongue cannot detect them, allowing them to be
sprinkled onto drinks. This would be attractive for children and
especially for the elderly, who may take several pills every day
and have trouble swallowing.
Also being worked on is the idea of creating even finer
particles that could be sent straight to the lung via inhalers.
As well as treating conditions like lung cancer and cystic
fibrosis directly, the lung is seen as a very effective way of
getting drugs into the blood stream fast.
GETTING DRUGS QUICKLY INTO BLOODSTREAM
``Anybody who smokes a cigarette knows how quickly you can
get nicotine into the bloodstream,'' Kampinga said.
Sweden's Astra and Britain's Glaxo Wellcome, world leaders
in respiratory drugs, are working on respiratory projects with
Quadrant and in September RP Scherer in the United States
invested $6 million in the Cambridge-based company as part of a
collaboration on oral drugs.
Development director Kevin Bilyard, who joined Quadrant last
November from Zeneca Group Plc,, has recently returned from a
trip to the United States. He said three further big-league
partners could be on board in a year's time, when the company
hopes to have floated on the UK stock market.
``They believe this technology is unique and offers them
some advantages over more established technologies,'' he said.
As well as working with other companies, Quadrant is
developing its own pipeline of generic drugs using trehalose.
These include a version of Novartis AG's organ transplant
rejection drug Neoral, where patients have to take a large
capsule every day for the rest of their lives.
It is also developing a version of herpes treatment
acyclovir, sold by Glaxo Wellcome as Zovirax, and of two drugs
targeted mainly at the elderly -- diltiazem for hypertension and
ketoprofen for arthritis.
One element of Quadrant's technology is the ability to dry
blood platelets used in transfusions. Although at early stages,
Quadrant believes platelets that currently last only five days
could be dried, stored for long periods and reconstituted for
transfusion.
The technique could have major implications in accidents or
on the battlefield, where fresh blood supplies are almost
impossible to maintain.
^REUTERS@
03:22 AM ET 01/20/98
McDonald's Israel adopts Burger King-like cooking
JERUSALEM, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Call it a Whopper of a move
for McDonald's Corp and its Big Mac.
In an apparent bow to public tastes and the cooking method
long used by arch-rival Burger King, McDonald's in Israel is
junking its flat griddles and starting to broil its hamburgers
over a flame.
``We're moving to charcoal broiling. It's a world first,''
Omri Padan, managing director of McDonald's Israel, said on
Tuesday.
Burger King Israel chief Kobi Hayoun, in a televised
confrontation with Padan, said McDonald's had finally recognised
that customers preferred the taste of fast food at the Home of
the Whopper.
Padan said McDonald's restaurants elsewhere in the world
would not be adopting the Israeli changes.
``McDonald's world headquarters are happy with their hot
griddles and the reason we decided to look for another cooking
method in Israel is because of the special characteristics of
kosher meat,'' he said.
Under Jewish dietary law, salt is used in the koshering of
meat and Padan said charcoal-broiling improved its taste.
All the meat used by McDonald's and Burger King in Israel is
kosher but not all of the restaurants adhere to Jewish dietary
law because they mix dairy products with meat by serving
cheeseburgers.
10:31 AM ET 01/20/98
Technology transforms abortion, 25 years after Roe
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twenty-five years ago, abortion in
America generally meant an agonizing wait, a search for a doctor
and an illegal, painful and dangerous operation.
Now, home pregnancy tests have eliminated the long wait,
abortion clinics have made the search for a doctor easier and
new techniques have eased the pain and danger. But new fertility
technologies and sophisticated prenatal tests have raised more
questions for women considering abortion.
Before the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed a
woman's right to choose abortion, a woman had a nail-biting wait
until she missed a period, then had to make a doctor's
appointment, get a blood test and wait until the ``rabbit died''
-- a term stemming from early pregnancy tests that relied on a
hormone that killed rabbits.
``I spent the ... weeks until I could be tested telling
myself I wasn't really pregnant,'' writer Mary Conley said in a
description of her abortion.
Until recently, abortion involved dilating the cervix, or
opening of the uterus and either vacuuming or scraping out the
contents without anesthesia. The later in pregnancy this is
done, the more dangerous and painful it is. Women who waited to
have their pregnancy test often had to make an immediate
decision on an abortion.
A quarter-century later, a woman can find out within a week
or two of unprotected sex whether she is pregnant, using a home
pregnancy test available without prescription. If she is
pregnant, she can choose abortion or decide to continue the
pregnancy.
Dr. Jerry Edwards, a Planned Parenthood doctor in Houston,
made headlines late last year with a new approach to abortion
that can end a pregnancy less than two weeks after conception.
With this technique, a woman can take a pregnancy test as
soon as eight days after unprotected sex. Ultrasound confirms a
positive result and 10 minutes with a hand-held syringe can
remove a fertilized egg.
``It's very safe. We haven't had any serious
complications,'' Edwards, who has done the procedure on about
3,500 women, said in an interview.
There are also nonsurgical abortion methods.
A year ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) described
how short, high-dose regimens of standard oral contraceptive
pills could be used as ``morning-after'' pills.
Taken within a week of unprotected sex, they can prevent
ovulation or the implantation of a fertilized egg, which some
experts argue is not aborting a pregnancy but preventing one.
Some doctors also tell women they can take a handful of
regular oral contraceptives all at once to induce menstruation
and end an early pregnancy, although this is not officially
sanctioned and not a guaranteed means to abort.
Then there are abortion drugs, such as RU-486 or
mifepristone, and methotrexate, a cancer drug that kills a
developing fetus. Some clinics give methotrexate as an abortion
drug even though this use is not recommended by the FDA.
Anti-abortion groups lobbied hard against RU-486, which is
available in Europe, and is now licensed for use in clinical
trials in the United States.
Such technology may make the procedures easier, but if often
forces stickier choices on women.
Routine tests such as amniocentesis, chorionic villi
sampling and ultrasound can tell a woman if her fetus is likely
to have Down syndrome, which causes physical abnormalities and
mental retardation, or other problems.
Abortion is offered as a routine choice in such cases.
Blood tests for some of these syndromes may make it even
easier to test for them, and may force choices on more and more
women, earlier in their pregnancies.
Ironically, abortion also becomes an issue in fertility
treatment. Women who take fertility drugs often produce several
eggs, and these can all mature and be fertilized at once.
The McCaughey septuplets, born in November 1997 in Iowa,
were a case in point. Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey were advised to
abort some of the fetuses to give the remaining ones a better
chance.
They declined, on moral and religious grounds, and doctors
say the live births of all seven infants was a miracle. Mandy
Allwood, a British woman pregnant with eight fetuses, was not so
lucky and lost all of hers amid huge publicity in 1996.
The same thing can happen with in-vitro fertilization when
babies are conceived in a test-tube and implanted in the uterus.
Several embryos are often implanted, with a risk of a multiple
pregnancy that can put all the babies in danger.
^REUTERS@
02:06 PM ET 01/20/98
Cloned calves roaming Texas range for research
By Leslie Gevirtz
BOSTON (Reuters) - U.S. researchers announced Tuesday they
had created a small herd of cloned calves -- a step in the
eventual commercial production of animals for human therapy as
well as nourishment.
The scientists, Dr. James Robl and Dr. Steven Stice of the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said three calves -- all
males -- were born last week at a Texas ranch operated by
Ultimate Genetics and five more were on the way.
Robl said his technique was a significant advance on the
method developed by PPL Therapeutics and Scotland's Roslin
Institute to make Dolly, the cloned sheep whose birth was
announced last year and Polly, a clone who also carries human
genes.
``Cow cloning is more significant from a commercial
standpoint and we've also developed a simpler procedure than
what was used in the sheep,'' said Robl, who grew up milking
cows in Kansas and harbors a cattleman's disdain for sheep.
That the three Holsteins already born and the rest expected
to be delivered before month's end are all males ``was luck,''
Robl said. ``There wasn't any particular reason to choose the
male. It's a test system, not a production system.''
``We were trying to prove a principle,'' Stice said. ``It
will be easy to produce females.''
Their technique involves taking eggs from slaughtered cows,
inserting genetically-altered cell nuclei containing a
''marker'' gene and culturing the eggs.
Those eggs are then shipped to the Franklin, Texas, ranch
where they are ``implanted in just regular, ordinary cows,''
Robl explained.
The calves produced so far do not contain a therapeutic gene
-- one that does something. The marker gene just lets scientists
know the hit-and-miss technique of tinkering with the animal's
genes did indeed work.
The technique should shave two years off the time necessary
to begin producing milk containing proteins used to treat a
variety of human ailments, Robl said.
Under a five-year, $10 million contract with Genzyme
Transgenics, Robl's and Stice's Worcester, Massachusetts-based
Advanced Cell Technology Inc. is to produce a herd of
genetically identical cattle they hope will produce milk
containing human serum albumin protein.
Human serum albumin is used to maintain fluid balance and is
regularly given to patients who have lost a lot of blood.
Currently made from pooled human plasma, about 440 tons of
plasma-derived albumin are used annually worldwide with annual
sales of about $1.5 billion.
The researchers expect an individual cloned transgenic dairy
cow could produce about 80 kgs of human albumin annually.
The two researchers have also finished preliminary work on
developing dopamine cells in cows and transplanting them into
rats bred to develop Parkinson's disease.
Parkinson's is the second most common neurodegenerative
disorder after Alzheimer's disease. It afflicts about one
percent of people over the age of 50.
The pair declined to discuss their progress in that area
saying they wanted their work to be published in a scientific
journal first.
Robl said other human ailments likely to benefit from the
proteins produced by cloned transgenic cows include diabetes and
Huntington's disease.
^REUTERS@
*** Canadians make legal buck out of marijuana
Marijuana cultivation is turning a legal profit for two Canadian
developers of a board game about the illegal practice. The pair from
Victoria, British Columbia, have created "The Cultivation Game,"
which pokes fun at the multimillion-dollar marijuana industry in the
west coast Canadian province. "It represents a large part of the
British Columbia economy," said Harreson Waymen, 45, a health care
worker who designed the game. Wayman's partner, John Taylor, a
retired carpenter, devised the idea after hearing about numerous
problems with cultivating of the crop. It took the pair a year and
about C$50,000 ($35,000) to get the product to market.
11:37 AM ET 01/19/98
Cuba prostitutes defy clean-up before pope visit
By Andrew Cawthorne
HAVANA (Reuters) - Leaning back provocatively against a
poster of Pope John Paul II, Julia openly plies her trade on a
lazy, sun-bathed afternoon in Havana's old quarter.
She and five others, all squeezed into tight jeans and
skimpy tops, have few qualms about selling sex in the shadow of
Havana cathedral -- just a week before the pope will worship
there with members of the Cuban Roman Catholic Church.
``Why can't a girl go with a man, or 20 men in one night if
she wants to?'' said Julia, who describes herself as ``a little
bit'' Catholic and plans to attend a papal mass in Havana's
Revolution Square. ``No-one is going to tell me what I can or
can't do with my body, not the pope nor the government.''
Two days before the pontiff arrives in this Caribbean
island, Julia and hundreds of other prostitutes are defying
efforts by Cuban President Fidel Castro's communist
administration to clear them off the streets.
Police, say the prostitutes and residents, have stepped up
round-ups in recent weeks and also heightened their presence on
Havana's streets, noticeably thinning out the numbers of hookers
at work. But the tactics have so far failed to clear the
streets, and plenty of women were still working the traditional
areas over the weekend.
``There are so many of us that we just keep coming back.
They can't get rid of us all,'' said Leticia, 17, who has been
working the streets for a year but hopes one day to earn her
living as a singer.
Typically, the prostitutes say, a police bus will roll up
around midnight at a known pick-up point, sending the women
running for cover into nearby alleys and houses. Those caught
are taken to police stations to be lectured, fined, held in
custody or, in the case of prostitutes from the provinces, put
on a bus back home.
Julia was jailed a couple of months ago, but did not appear
too worried about the risk of being rounded up again in the
pre-papal clean-up.
``When they put me away last time, they didn't give me
anything to eat for two days, but at least they let me go
quickly,'' she said. ``This time, if they take me away again, I
suppose I won't be let out until the pope is safely back in
Italy. But I can survive that.''
With more than 3,000 foreign journalists in Cuba
transmittingaround the world, authorities are keen to project
the right image.
The government is irritated by the problem, and by the
attention it gets from foreign media. It points out that
prostitution is far from unique to Cuba.
``We just can't allow prostitutes to be all over the place
when the pope is here,'' said one policeman on Havana's lively
La Rampa strip, who asked not to be named. ``But there'll always
be some, of course. It's not a problem you can just make
disappear.''
Known as the ``bordello of the Caribbean'' prior to
Castro's 959 revolution, the island was a playboy's paradise
whose beaches, women, casinos and swinging night-life attracted
a stream of foreign visitors and celebrities. According to some
estimates, there were 100,000 prostitutes among a population of
six million.
But all that ended abruptly with the toppling of dictator
Fulgencio Batista. Prostitution was prohibited and largely wiped
out in the years after the revolution.
The problem reemerged in the 1990s as Cuba opened up once
more to foreign tourists and its superpower ally, the Soviet
Union collapsed, leaving the islanders increasingly desperate
for ways to make money.
Authorities officially acknowledged the problem around 1995,
formally outlawed it in 1997 legislation, and are determined not
to allow Cuba to become another sex tourism destination. But so
far they have not been able to get the problem under control.
While there are probably far fewer prostitutes now than in
the Batista era, it is still difficult for a male foreign
visitor to wander around Havana's main tourist areas without
being insistently propositioned.
The word ``prostitute'' is seldom used in Cuba and they are
known euphemistically here as ``jineteras'' -- literally
horsewomen.
While a minority of hard-core ``jineteras'' ask an average
of around $40, the majority will have sex in exchange for much
smaller amounts or simply for a free meal, drink or a gift in
the dollar-only establishments to which they otherwise would
have no access.
``What should I do? Earn a few pesos like my parents, or do
this, get some dollars, and have a better life?'' asked another
young prostitute, Renata, on Havana's famous Malecon sea-front,
a favorite rendezvous point.
With the average Cuban worker earning the peso equivalent of
perhaps $20 per month, such an attitude is perhaps not
surprising.
``Whatever the pope might say, I don't believe God will
punish me for this. Rather, he should punish them for forcing me
to do it with the (economic) blockade,'' added Renata, gesturing
to the United States some 90 miles across the water.
02:13 PM ET 01/16/98
Feeling lagged? It's not the eyes that have it...
(Writes through with interviews with researchers)
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jet lag? Winter blahs? Maybe all you
need is a little light -- on the knee, researchers said on
Friday.
A team at Cornell University in White Plains, New York said
they had found, to their surprise, that shining a little light
on the skin could re-set the body's internal clock.
They chose the back of the knee because it was easy to reach
and away from the eyes, which is where many scientists had
believed circadian rhythm was determined. But the finding casts
even more light on how the body knows what time it is, and could
offer easier ways to treat sleep disorders.
Psychologists Scott Campbell and Patricia Murphy set out to
see if they could fiddle with the body's internal rhythms by
shining light on the skin.
For years experts have experimented with treating jet-lag
and seasonal affective disorder (SAD, also known as winter
blues) with light. Victims sit in front of lights simulating the
sun's natural wavelengths, sometimes for hours every day.
But blind people get jet-lag, too.
So Murphy and Campbell set up an experiment in which they
shone light on the backs of their volunteers' knees. The 15
volunteers did not know whether they were exposed to light,
thanks to thick blankets draped over their bodies.
They managed to shift the internal body rhythms of their
volunteers -- measured by temperature -- by up to three hours.
``We were very surprised,'' Campbell said in a telephone
interview.
Writing in the journal Science, Campbell and Murphy said
their findings could offer a way to treat these problems more
conveniently -- perhaps even while the patient is asleep.
''There are 20 million shift workers in the United States and
many of them suffer from sleep disturbances because of their
changing shift schedules,'' he said.
``What these findings may do is make the treatment regimens
a little more acceptable.''
Instead of sitting in front of lights, patients could strap
a portable light source to their bodies and carry on normal
activities -- including sleep. In light therapy ``you get the
biggest bang for your buck buck at times when people are usually
asleep,'' Campbell said.
But another expert, Michael Terman of Columbia University
and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, said this was a
little premature.
``A very basic science result has the potential for being
hyped up into a treatment,'' he said. ``It is not. It is going
to take years of research to demonstrate any clinical
relevance.''
Campbell said his group was now studying light therapy on
people who are sleeping. They also want to try different kinds
of light -- their last experiment was done using light pads
normally used to treat jaundiced newborns.
They were acting on research that shows exposure to light
sets off a complex response inside the bodies of animals and
humans, including secretion of hormones and chemicals.
One possible key could be the hormone melatonin, which is
known to regulate body rhythms. It is secreted as night falls --
or as light dims -- and it can be used to help overcome jet lag
and some sleep disorders.
Terman and Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Dan Oren, who
encouraged Campbell in the experiment, say the eyes, organs like
the pineal gland which secretes melatonin and body chemicals
probably all play a role in setting body clocks.
``Plants, as we know, have chlorophyll and that absorbs
light,'' Oren said. ``In humans...the hemoglobin of our red
blood cells is (similar) in structure to chlorophyll ... at
least the business end, the light-sensitive end.''
Melatonin and hemoglobin may somehow link up and react to
light, Oren suggested. More experiments would tell.
``The study that Campbell and Murphy did is truly an
important study,'' he said. ``Sometimes simple studies can teach
us a lot.''
^REUTERS@
*** Scottish council 'wins' obfuscation award
A group dedicated to clear, lucid English bestowed its annual prize
for meaningless jargon to a Scottish city council. Martin Cutts of
the English Language Commission said Edinburgh City Council had won
the "Golden Rhubarb Trophy" for writing which "almost defies
translation." Cutts, whose independent panel promotes the use of
clear language in government and business, said a council letter on
waste recycling was "a fog of puzzling and pompous English." The
letter to a befuddled resident explained that the council was "fully
committed to waste minimisation [sic] and the recycling of waste and
has...approved, in principle, a revised strategy encompassing the
introduction of material recycling facilities post-refuse collection
and pre-final disposal."
*** Clinton referees fight between his cat, dog
President Clinton has seen his fair share of political fights in
Washington, but perhaps none with the barking and spine-arching of
the one Tuesday between his pets Socks and Buddy. Clinton had just
returned to the White House with his dog Buddy from a surprise
birthday party for a Cabinet member when they walked past Socks the
cat, who was tethered outside the Oval Office. Buddy barked loudly at
Socks, who responded by charging at Buddy. The president, fruitlessly
trying to stop Buddy's barking by grabbing his muzzle, managed to get
the dog to lie down on the grass. But the two male pets traded barks
and squeals as a seemingly helpless president looked on. See
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=6808743-126
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