Business Highlights

The endorsement of Institutional Shareholder Services, or ISS, provides San Ramon-based Chevron and El Segundo-based Unocal with a little more firepower as they meet with investors this week to rally support for their proposed marriage. Unocal's board has already voted in favor of the Chevron offer.

Many of the nation's largest institutional investors, including public pension funds and mutual funds, rely on ISS's opinions to help them decide on how to vote on difficult decisions that come up for shareholder votes. Another large shareholder advisory service, Glass, Lewis & Co, expects to distribute its analysis of Chevron's bid later this week.

A shareholder vote on the Chevron bid is scheduled for an Aug. 10 meeting in Los Angeles.

Unocal Chairman Charles Williamson said he was "extremely pleased" to win ISS's support. A CNOOC spokesman in New York declined to comment.

ISS's blessing of the Chevron's stock-and-cash offer - valued at $63.71 per share Monday - represents another blow to CNOOC and its all-cash bid of $67 per share, or $18.4 billion.

Government investigating Volvos for engine problems

WASHINGTON - Several models of Volvo sedans and station wagons are under investigation because of complaints that the vehicles can lose speed or the engine can stall without warning, the government said Monday.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it had received 136 complaints about the unit that regulates the amount of air into the vehicle's engine.

The agency has heard of several concerns, including a sudden loss of speed and power steering while driving in highway traffic and the stalling of the engine without warning.

NHTSA said an estimated 266,000 Volvos from the 1999 through 2001 model years are covered in the probe. It includes the C70 and C70 convertible, the S60 sports sedan, the S80 luxury sedan, the V70 station wagon and the V70XC crossover vehicle.

The inquiry, which is in its early stage, also involves the S70 sedan from the 1999-2000 model years.

Parkinson's-afflicted mice injected with speed got better

SAN FRANCISCO - Illegal drugs such as Ecstasy and related amphetamines reversed the Parkinson's diseaselike muscle rigidity in mice, researchers reported Monday.

While cautioning such a surprising finding in mice doesn't translate directly to patients, the scientists said the research opens up new areas of exploration for an incurable brain disorder that afflicts 500,000 people in the United States.

"We hope that our study doesn't prompt all the Parkinsonians to go out to the street corners to deal for methamphetamine and Ecstasy," said Marc Caron, a Duke University Medical Center researcher in Durham, N.C., and co-author of the study. Caron and his colleagues created mice through genetic engineering and drugs to be free of the brain chemical dopamine. Without dopamine, the rodents became rigid like Parkinson's patients.

The researchers then injected the mice with about 60 different chemical compounds, that are widely abused like Ecstasy and several others from the amphetamine family.

The mice receiving the speed showed dramatic results.

"These mice were frozen completely," said Duke researcher Raul Gainetdinov, another of the report's authors. "When we treated them and put them in water, they were able to swim."

The study is being published in the Public Library of Science's journal Biology, which is available free online. It was funded by a National Institutes of Health grant.

The paper suggests that amphetamines, especially when used with the one approved treatment that slows the effects of Parkinson's, helped make dopamine in the genetically engineered mice. Parkinson's patients lose brain cells that create dopamine, a chemical vital for motor function.