Researchers involved in ESHRE's polar body screening study (launched in 2009) will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Monday) that results from the study are leading to a new understanding about how such abnormalities are developing, and they believe that the ovarian stimulation a woman receives might be playing a part. Understanding the mechanisms involved could help older women who are trying to have a healthy baby with their own oocytes.
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Australian scientists today announced they have sequenced the genome of the staghorn coral Acropora millepora, a major component of the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs worldwide.
This is the first animal genome project to be carried out entirely in Australia, and is an important milestone in Australian biotechnology and in the study of coral reefs, said the researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF).
The naked mole-rat is native to the deserts of East Africa and has unique physical traits that allow it to survive in harsh environments for many years. It has a lack of pain sensation in its skin and has a low metabolic rate that allows it to live underground with limited oxygen supply.
PISA, ITALY—Radiofrequency Identification (RFID), or microchip technology, has been used for years in animal identification systems and is now being tested for use in plants. Researchers note that microchip techniques have varied applications for plants. The technology can be used to help guide visitors through parks and botanical gardens, to thwart theft of valuable plants, and to aid scientists and growers in monitoring plant health.
Many cell types in higher organisms are capable of implementing directed motion in response to the presence of certain chemical attractants in their vicinity. A team led by Dr. Doris Heinrich of the Faculty of Physics and the Center for NanoScience (CeNS) at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich has developed a novel technique to expose an ensemble of living cells to rapidly varying concentrations of chemoattractants.
The risk to children's health from X-ray radiation is easy to reduce without compromising diagnostic accuracy. Gerhard Alzen and Gabriele Benz-Bohm describe some ways to achieve this in the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108[24]: 407-14]).
The radiation risk is higher for children than for adults, as children's tissues have a higher cell division rate, and cells can be damaged during this process. Children's bodies also have a higher water content and therefore absorb more radiation, which can cause damage to their genes.
"Emotions can affect biological processes, which in turn can influence our decision-making processes," explains Dr. Israel Waismel-Manor of the University of Haifa's School of Political Science
Researchers involved in ESHRE's polar body screening study (launched in 2009) will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology today (Monday) that results from the study are leading to a new understanding about how such abnormalities are developing, and they believe that the ovarian stimulation a woman receives might be playing a part. Understanding the mechanisms involved could help older women who are trying to have a healthy baby with their own oocytes.
The researchers say that this is the first time the effect of maternal height on multiple implantation has been shown. "In natural dizygotic twinning it is not possible to distinguish between multiple ovulation and implantation," said Dr. Lambers "whereas by studying pregnancies in mothers who have undergone DET we know exactly how many embryos were transferred and can therefore draw firm conclusions about the factors that influence the development of twin pregnancies."
WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—Carbon dioxide may be the most name-dropped greenhouse gas, but methane is 20 times more potent. In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculated that 20 percent of the nation's human-related methane emissions were attributable to livestock digestive processes. In Australia, livestock emissions account for 12 percent of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions.
In Sweden almost 40 000 children have now been born after IVF, around 3 500 each year, and IVF children constitute 3% of all newborns. "This represents a large number of children and any adverse outcomes related to IVF are therefore a major public health issue," said Dr. Antonina Sazonova, from Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden, who carried out the research with colleagues from the hospital and from Lund University.
Professor William G. Kearns told the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology that a three-day-old embryo (called a cleavage stage embryo) with an incorrect number of chromosomes (known as "aneuploidy") was capable of undergoing "a dynamic process of genetic normalisation" so that by day five, when it had developed to the blastocyst stage, it had become euploid, with the correct number of chromosomes.
This meant that the calendar method predicted ovulation correctly in only one in four women, whereas the ClearBlue Digital Ovulation test (20 test pack) predicted correctly in 99% of women over the same period.
High epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expression was a good predictor of which lung cancer patients would survive longer when cetuximab (Erbitux) was added to first-line chemotherapy, according to research presented at the 14th World Conference on Lung Cancer in Amsterdam, hosted by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC).