drugs

A new database and software, called ChIP Enrichment Analysis, or ChEA, is set to revolutionize how researchers identify drug targets and biomarkers, developers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York reported in today's issue of Bioinformatics.

The team says that until ChEA was developed, no centralized database integrated results from, for instance, ChIP-seq and ChIP-chip experiments (these are used to identify how "transcription factor" proteins might regulate all genes in humans and mice). Now this new computational method should help streamline how scientists analyze these gene expression experiments.

"Our program allows researchers to … Read more

It is not easy being Paris Hilton. You have to spend so much of your time focused on the "being Paris Hilton" part that it leaves very little time for much else. Like considering the state of the nation. Or remembering what pictures you tweeted a month ago.

My fingers flicker with sympathy because Hilton seems to have got herself into a slight pickle. A slight pickle that might be less slight than her much-loved sex video.

An SUV in which she was accompanied by her boyfriend was stopped Friday in Las Vegas when police reportedly detected the … Read more

We've written about microneedles before. For the past few years, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have been working on a patch of tiny needles that can deliver drugs painlessly and easily.

But the molecules of many drugs are too large to be delivered transdermally (through the skin), which is how conventional patches work, and would not fit through these newer microneedles.

Researchers at Purdue University, however, have developed a new type of pump that should exert enough force to squeeze drugs through microneedle patches, thereby reducing the need (at least in some instances) for injection via those … Read more

Quirky social-news site Reddit always seemed an unusual acquisition for Manhattan media giant Conde Nast, and it's never been more evident: asked by Conde Nast overlords to stop running advertisements on behalf of advocates of California's Proposition 19, which supports the legalization of marijuana, Reddit decided they'd do it anyway.

Because Conde Nast said its main concern was obtaining revenue from those controversial advocacy groups, Reddit's solution was that they would simply run the ads for free.

"This was a decision made at the highest levels of Conde Nast," an announcement from Reddit read. &… Read more

It is hard--living in Northern California--to bump into someone under the age of 82 who doesn't smoke pot.

It seems as if it is, in all but lawyer's paperwork, legal.

It seems, though, that making advertisements to encourage the completion of that paperwork is causing something of a smoky atmosphere to develop between lobbying groups and Facebook.

According to the Huffington Post, Facebook first approved ads created by lobbying organization Just Say Now and the Libertarian Party, then removed them.

In the case of Just Say Now, Facebook reportedly said it didn't allow pictures of drugs in … Read more

An emerging technology called Lab-on-Bead could cut years off drug development time, according to new research to be published in the September/October issue of the Journal of Molecular Recognition.

Lab-on-Bead is a diagnostics tool that essentially decorates tiny beads--so small that roughly 1,000 of them could fit across a human hair--with pins designed to join the DNA bar codes of drugs to matching diseases. This process enables researchers to match drugs to diseases in a single step, speeding up drug discovery by up to 10,000 times, the team reports.

"There are an infinite number of possibilities … Read more

Let's face it: maps make scientists drool. And increasingly easy-to-use yet complex maps of anything from the spread of diseases to cloud formations kept all the geo geeks giddy at the Association of American Geographers' annual meeting in D.C. last week. One of those maps could reveal new clues about when and where drug addicts are at their most (and least) vulnerable.

When it comes to drug addiction, the tendency is to think in terms of a disease of the brain, says National Institute on Drug Abuse researcher David Epstein, whose presentation at the annual meeting included a … Read more

Salacious charges in a federal case against Henry T. Nicholas III, co-founder and former CEO of chip giant Broadcom, have been dropped, bringing the scandal-packed case to a close.

On Thursday, a judge threw out the remaining charges against Nicholas, granting a request by the prosecutor to dismiss drug-trafficking counts, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. This comes after the judge dismissed criminal charges connected to stock-option backdating against Nicholas and co-founder Henry Samueli.

Nicholas was indicted in 2008 on charges that he had provided cocaine and Ecstasy to friends and business associates. One of the more … Read more

I am sure there are many of you who inhale marijuana for purely medicinal purposes. Your pains might be physical. They might be psychological. But you feel as though your world is going to pot, so you turn to pot.

Now, an enterprising man called John Lee has decided to bring a little online rigor to your smoking vigor.

Sonoma, Calif.-based Lee has created PlainView Systems, a remarkably non-hippie name for a venture that, according to CNNMoney.com, he describes as the Amazon of pot.

That would be Amazon.com, rather than the never-ending river.

A visit to the … Read more