University of California in San Francisco

When Montgomery and I published our article, we thought we had disproven another theory of placebo effects - the theory that placebo effects are produced by the release of endorphins in the brain. In 1978 researchers at the University of California in San Francisco discovered that when placebos reduce pain, they may stimulate the release of endorphins.18 Endorphins, the existence of which had only been discovered a few years earlier, are opioids that are produced naturally by the brain. Just like the opiates that are derived from opium - morphine and codeine, for example - endorphins reduce the sensation of pain. The University of California researchers reasoned that if placebos can mimic the effects of opiate drugs, maybe they do so by stimulating the release of the brain s endogenous opioids. 

In 1989, still another after-image of Edgewood appeared. Enoch Noch Callaway, a distinguished professor of psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF), unexpectedly called me at home. Fie had done some of the earliest research with atropine at Edgewood Arsenal in the early 1950s. Although unaware of this at the time, I had called him on impulse one morning in 1967 from Karl Pribram s lab, to ask a question about his latest article in the American Journal of Psychiatry. 

EXTENSIONS AND COMMENTARY I can t remember the exact names of the companies that went with the oil additives. STP was, I believe, it s own thing, and originally stood for Scientifically Treated Petroleum. And F-310 was, I believe, a Chevron Oil product. F-320 was, of course, the product of the wild and happy chemists at the Pharmaceutical Chemistry Department at the University of California in San Francisco, playing with what they fondly called funny drugs. And when the 2,4,6-orientation became an obvious positional isomer, the Pennzoil Oil Company s additive, Z-7, was a natural to have its name volunteered to the cause. There was one additional isomer possible, with the methyl in the 2-position and the methoxyl groups at the 4- and 6-positions. This followed the more conventional aldehyde made from 3,5-dimethoxytoluene via the Vilsmeier process, with POCl3 and N-methylformanilide. This material (2,4-dimethoxy-6-methylbenzaldehyde with mp 64-65 °C from cyclohexane or from MeOH) is completely distinct from the isomer used above (2,6-dimethoxy-4-methy lbenzaldehyde with a mp of 92-93 °C from MeOH). The amphetamine from this isomer is 2,4-dimethoxy-6-methylamphetamine, and had been christened by the chemistry crowd as Z-7.1. 

Recently very important contributions on the fate of analgesics have been made by the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics of the University of California in San Francisco. Among their important papers is the study, by Elliott, Tolbert, Adler, and Anderson (99), of morphine labeled with in the iV-methyl group. 

Biotin Dependency. A rare inherited disease called biotin dependency is known. In people with the disease, the body s use of biotin, the B vitamin necessary for certain metabolic processes, is somehow disrupted. Symptoms include loss of hair, lethargy, coma, and susceptibility to infections. The only treatment is daily doses of biotin. In 1981, medical researchers at the University of California in San Francisco reported successfully (1) diagnosing a biotin deficiency of an unborn baby by examining the amniotic fluid (the fluid was extracted from the womb by a procedure called amniocentesis, then cells from the fluid were grown in various nutrients and compared with normal cells) and (2) giving the mother massive doses of biotin, enough of which passed through the placenta so that the baby was born healthy. 

Associate Professor in Residence University of California at San Francisco San Francisco VAMC 190 4150 Clement Street San Francisco, CA 94121... 

Thiess, A.M., Frentzel-Beyme, R. Perrrring, E. (1979) Mortality study of vinylidene chloride exposed persons. In Heir, C. Kilian, D.J., eds. Proceedings of the SthMedichem Congress, San Francisco CA, September 1977, San Francisco, CA, University of California at San Francisco, pp. 270-278... 

Was this youT answer Leonard Hayflickofthe University of California at San Francisco, says people are like cars because they age reliably even though there s nothing in the blueprints that shows a process for doing it. In other words, there is no death gene, no mechanism that kills us off after a... 

W. Sue Shafer, University of California at San Francisco In this judicial climate, how can the major universities, state or private, reverse the trends that you talk about—of losing the participation of underrepresented minorities at their institutions ... 

Sandra M. Waugh University of California at San Francisco Graduate Group in Biophysics San Francisco, CA 94143-2240 USA... 

As a recreational substance, alcohol is second only to caffeine in worldwide use and second only to tobacco in health costs from abuse. In recent years, the American public has received a mixed message on alcohol s health benefits and deficits. Wine is said to help protect moderate drinkers from heart disease, but at the same time, alcoholism is responsible for more substance-related deaths than all other psychoactive drugs combined, with the exception of tobacco. Although there are few pharmacotherapies for alcoholism and alcohol abuse, a multimillion dollar project has been funded at the University of California at San Francisco by Gallo Wine and the state of... 

Miller, S University of California-SF San Francisco, CA Cause and effect of dimer asymmetry in mercuric reductase. NIGMS... 

Nikolai B. Ulyanov studied mathematics in Moscow State University and worked on computational modeling of DNA bending as part of his Ph.D. project in the group of Dr. Victor Zhurkin in the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Ramaswamy Sarma studying NMR spectroscopy of DNA at the State University of New York at Albany. Currently he is Associate Adjunct Professor at the University of California at San Francisco. His research interests focus on the structure and dynamics of nucleic acids, studied by computational methods and NMR. 

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