Silver Scorpio - International News | Spot News | Top News | Flash News | Live News
London, May 12 (ANI): Brits gobble up 1,340 loaves of bread each in a lifetime.
Last year, UK saw sandwich consumption hit an all time high of 10 billion amongst workers who eat lunch at their desks.
Tuna Mayo, cheese, pickle and egg are the most popular fillings, as per a poll by DeCarb – a natural carbohydrate blocker.
“Many sandwiches pack as many calories as a Big Mac,” The Daily Star quoted Nutrition expert Mary Strugar as saying. (ANI)
Low density swarms of locusts are on the move in northern and central Victoria.
The locusts, helped by northerly winds, have been spotted in scattered sites across the region.
The Victorian plague locust commissioner, Gordon Berg, says the warm and wet weather is ideal for the pests.
He warns some crop damage is possible.
“For farmers in particular we’d recommend them monitoring the situation and looking for any signs of egg laying, because if they do lay eggs, the eggs will stay in the ground now during the winter and perhaps hatch in spring,” Mr Berg said.
“So we’d be wanting to know where egg laying is occurring.”
The Department of Primary Industries says people should report any sightings of significant locust numbers.
Washington, Sept 16 (ANI): Scientists from Virginia Commonwealth University have identified a gene that may contribute to male infertility.
The research team hopes that the new findings would lead to new approaches to male contraception.
Sperm are produced in the testicles through a three-step process called spermatogenesis.
During the final stage, known as spermiogenesis, a lot of changes take place, including the packaging of DNA into the sperm head and the formation of the sperm tail, which propels the sperm cell toward the egg.
The study conducted using mouse model showed that mice lacking a protein called meiosis expressed gene 1, or MEIG1, were sterile as a result of impaired spermiogenesis – the process that encompasses changes in the sperm head and the formation of the tail.
The team also found that MEIG1 associates with the Parkin co-regulated gene protein, or PACRG protein, and that testicular PACRG protein is reduced in MEIG1-deficient mice.
PACRG is thought to play a key role in assembly of the sperm tail, and the reproductive phenotype of PACRG -deficient mice mirrors that of the MEIG1-mutant mice.
“We discovered that MEIG1 is essential for male fertility. Moreover, our findings reveal a critical role for the MEIG1/PACRG partnership in the function of a structure that is unique to sperm, the manchette. The absence of a normal manchette in mice lacking MEIG1 totally disrupts the maturation process of sperm,” said Dr Jerome F. Strauss III, dean in the VCU School of Medicine.
“In addition to having an impact on fertility, the discovery identifies a new target for drug discovery for a much needed reversible male method of contraception,” he added.
The study is published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)
Melbourne, September 10 (ANI): A new research has found that Australian lacewings build tougher silk than silkworms.
Scientists at CSIRO Entomology have learnt that silk made by the common Australian green lacewing can be stretched up to six times further than silkworm silk.
Moreover, its unusual structure makes it potentially much easier to manufacture artificially.
The common Australian green lacewing (Mallada signata) produces silk to create tiny stiff stalks to hold each of its eggs on.
The insect pushes out a liquid drop of silk dope before stretching it out to the point at which it stiffens and then placing the egg safely on top.
Researchers found that the lacewing silk was different from the silk created by other insects and had had its own evolutionary pathway.
Unlike the plank-like structure of other silks from spiders or silkworms, lacewing silk contains two fibrous proteins structured like a concertina door, giving it extra toughness and elasticity.
According to Dr Tara Sutherland, who was part research team, the lacewing silk protein is also shorter and less repetitive, making it easier to reproduce artificially by fermentation in bacteria.
“Silks are made under benign conditions. They’re made at room temperature, from an aqueous system and from readily replaced building blocks, so it’s a very environmentally friendly process, in contrast to the synthetic equivalents,” ABC Science quoted Sutherland as saying.
She added: “The material has a lot of strength and it’s very, very light so it’s quite remarkable. It’s also very tough.”
Apart from the traditional textile uses, the biocompatibility of the natural fibre allows this kind of silk to be used in high-tech medical applications such as providing the scaffolding for growing new human cells on.
The research will be published in the Journal of Structural Biology. (ANI)
Washington, August 30 (ANI): A team of scientists has silenced nine genes in a multicellular organism, which allowed them to discover molecular secrets of how certain plant tissues know which end is their growing tip, also referred to as polarized growth.
The research was carried out by biologist Magdalena Bezanilla and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, US.
The biologists conducted these experiments in a moss, but the findings illuminate processes in two tissues-root hairs and pollen tubes-found in all seed plants.
Root hairs are extremely fine individual cells that grow out of a plant’s root, greatly increasing its surface area to collect water, essential minerals and nutrients.
Pollen tubes travel down the flower to fertilize the plant’s egg.
Scientists have “a very limited knowledge” at the molecular level of how such cells determine the direction they’re growing, according to Bezanilla.
Knowing how to interrupt pollen tube formation in plants such as corn and soybeans, for example, could help prevent genetically engineered crops from interbreeding with wild populations.
Aiding root hair growth could boost drought-resistance to other economically important plants.he researchers focused on two proteins, actin and formin.
Actin, in this case a kind of scaffold-builder needed to form root hairs and pollen tubes, forms filamentous polymers and is important for many cellular processes in species ranging from yeast to man. ormins, like actin, are found in many species and help to control actin polymer formation. Formins are critical for actin-based cellular processes.
Tools in a biologist’s kit can now remove the function of specific proteins-usually one or two at a time-to silence a gene, but in this study, the researchers succeeded in silencing a remarkable nine genes at one time.
Bezanilla and colleagues systematically silenced the many actin-regulating formins and determined which members of this protein family are needed to generate cells for proper tip growth.ther tools in the researchers’ kit are methods for re-introducing the silenced genes, either normal or modified versions.
By “swapping parts” from closely related formin proteins and measuring tip growing activity for each combination, her research group eventually concluded that only one intact subclass of formins drives normal growth and controls how the plant recognizes its growing tip.
“If you take away any part of the formin, tip growth stops,” said Bezanilla.
Interestingly, the researchers also discovered that this particular subclass of formins is the fastest yet known in any organism. (ANI)
London, Aug 29 (ANI): Inching closer to curing diseases like Parkinson’s using cells generated from a patient’s own body, researchers have successfully reprogrammed human nerve cells back to an embryo-like state by using just a single gene.
It is known that embryonic stem cells are pluripotent – they can develop into any of the body’s cell types.
But such cells are not available in large numbers, as they can only be harvested from a donated egg or embryo, and, for ethical reasons, most countries have laws restricting their use.
In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka and his colleagues at Kyoto University in Japan successfully made mouse cells pluripotent by reprogramming skin cells into a state like embryo cells.
They did so by using retroviruses to insert four genes – known as “factors” – into the cells’ DNA.
They repeated the trick a year later with human cells.
However, using genes and retroviruses in this way increases the risk of the cell becoming cancerous, not just because tinkering with DNA has that effect, but also because two of the four factors are known to cause cancer.
In a bid to make these promising cells in a safe way, Hans Scholer’s team at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster, Germany, has been working to achieve pluripotency using fewer factors.
Last year, they did this with the two factors that do not cause cancer, and now they have simplified the recipe further, doing it with just one.
“Remarkably, it turns out that three of these four essential factors are already expressed in human neural stem cells – although not in skin cells – so we only needed to add one factor, OCT4,” New Scientist quoted Boris Greber, a member of the team, as saying.
He said that the cells from neural tissue are much easier to reprogram than skin cells, and are less prone to mutations.
It is much harder to get a sample of neural stem cells than skin cells, as it can be done via extracting the cells from the dental pulp of teeth, said Greber.
Inserting even one gene into the chromosome of a cell still permanently modifies its DNA, which is why the new method will remain a lab tool instead of being allowed in the clinic.
However, the researchers are hoping that it will help them improve methods for producing embryonic stem cells.
“Ideally, we will be able to find a chemical that does the same job of expressing the factor without the need for a gene,” said Greber.
Earlier this year, researchers in California managed just that when they reprogrammed mouse fibroblasts using a cocktail of proteins.
That technique did not involve inserting genes, and, thus, shouldn’t raise the cancer risk. But that was far less efficient.
“Without stable intervention using viruses, the frequency of reprogramming goes down and you have to wait a long time. We don’t have the perfect method yet,” said Greber.
The study has been published in the journal Nature. (ANI)
London, Aug 26 (ANI): Researchers at Oregon Health and Science University’s Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) have developed a new technique that could banish a host of crippling inherited diseases forever.
The landmark research raises the prospect of wiping out diseases passed on from mothers to their children through mutated DNA in cell mitochondria.
“We believe this discovery in nonhuman primates can rapidly be translated into human therapies aimed at preventing inherited disorders passed from mothers to their children through the mitochondrial DNA, such as certain forms of cancer, diabetes, infertility, myopathies and neurodegenerative diseases,” said Shoukhrat Mitalipov, from Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU).
Mitochondria are structures that are found in all cells that provide energy for cell growth and metabolism, which is why they are often called the cell’s “power plant.”
The structures produce energy to power each individual cell. Mitochondria also carry their own genetic material.
When an egg cell is fertilized by a sperm cell during reproduction, the embryo almost exclusively inherits the maternal mitochondria present in the egg. This means that any disease-causing genetic mutations that a mother carries in her mitochondrial DNA can be passed on to her offspring.
OHSU researchers’ method transfers the mother’s chromosomes to a donated egg that has had its chromosomes removed, but which has healthy mitochondria, thereby preventing the disease from being passed on to one’s offspring.
During the research, scientists collected groups of unfertilized eggs from two female rhesus macaque monkeys (monkeys A and B). They then removed the chromosomes, which contain the genes found in the cell nucleus, from the eggs of monkey B, and then transplanted the nuclear genes from the eggs of monkey A into the eggs of monkey B.
Then the eggs from monkey B, which now contained their own mitochondria but monkey A’s nuclear genes, were fertilized. The fertilized eggs developed into embryos that were implanted in surrogate monkeys.
The initial implantation of two embryos resulted in the birth of healthy twin monkeys. These monkeys are the world’s first animals derived by spindle transfer.
Follow-up testing showed that there was little to no trace of cross-animal mitochondrial transfer using this procedure. This shows that the researchers were successful in isolating nuclear genetic material from mitochondrial genetic material during the transfer process.
“In theory, this research has demonstrated that it is possible to use this therapy in mothers carrying mitochondrial DNA diseases so that we can prevent those diseases from being passed on to their offspring,” Mitalipov said.
“We believe that with the proper governmental approvals, our work can rapidly be translated into clinical trials for humans, and, eventually, approved therapies,” Mitalipov added.
The research has been published in the Aug. 26 advance online edition of the journal Nature. (ANI)
Melbourne, August 9 (ANI): A woman has opened southeast Queensland’s first hair lice salon to help schoolchildren get rid of the parasite.
The problem she faced delousing her five children when they all went to school apparently inspired Judy Butters.
The salon at Deception Bay, north of Brisbane is making good business after just over two months of operation, since half of all Queensland schoolchildren are estimated to have head lice.
And it’s not just children who visit, even nurses from aged care facilities come with the problem.
“They catch them from the patients at the home,” the Courier Mail quoted Butters as saying.
She does not think the job is disgusting.
She said: “It’s very common. It’s not disgusting.”
The salon provides a qualified hairdresser too, who provides haircutting services after the delousing treatment.
The owner added: “A lot of hairdressers won’t touch heads with lice. I had that experience with my daughter. She was just humiliated and told to leave because the hairdresser found one egg.”
The treatment involves an “all-natural” lice product, followed by combing to remove the parasites and their eggs, for which Judy charges anything between 27 dollars for short hair to 57 dollars for very long hair. (ANI)
Washington, July 14 (ANI): For the first time, scientists have used a new technique to grow immature human egg cells into nearly mature egg in laboratory-an accomplishment that could prove beneficial to cancer patients who have lost their ability to reproduce.
The researchers from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine are the first to grow a woman’s immature egg cells, contained in a tiny sac called a follicle, into a healthy and nearly mature egg in the laboratory.
This is the first step towards the development of a new technique, which, if successful in the next steps, may eventually provide a new fertility option for women whose cancer treatments destroy their ability to reproduce.he nearly mature follicles grown for 30 days in the lab had been plucked from ovarian tissue of cancer patients, before they began chemotherapy and radiation treatments that would destroy their fertility.
“By being able to take an immature ovarian follicle and grow it to produce a good quality egg, we’re closer to that holy grail, which is to get an egg directly from ovarian tissue that can be fertilized for a cancer patient,” said Teresa Woodruff, chief of fertility preservation at the Feinberg School.
She added: “This represents the basic science breakthrough necessary to better accomplish our goals of fertility preservation in cancer patients in the future.
In the next step, the researchers will try to induce the egg’s final division, called meiosis, so it sheds half of its DNA in order to be fertilized.
The ultimate goal is to freeze the immature follicles, and then thaw and mature them in a culture to the point where they are ready to be fertilized.
“This is a very significant achievement because the early stage of the human ovarian follicle is really hard to grow in vitro. They’re very fragile and delicate,” said Min Xu, a co-author of the study.
As the immature egg grew inside the follicle, it produced hormones just as it would inside a woman’s body.
However, if follicles could be removed from the tissue and grown in the laboratory successfully, then a new fertility preservation technique might become available for women who could not safely have an ovarian transplant.
The new advance was achieved by suspending the human ovarian follicle in two different kinds of three-dimensional gels.
Woodruff said that the discovery would enable researchers to understand how nurse cells (granulosa cells), the cells that support and surround the maturing egg, communicate with the egg.
And the information will help scientists understand how eggs grow and develop properly.
The study has been published in the journal Human Reproduction. (ANI)
London, July 14 (ANI): A new study has suggested that craters embedded on pedestals that tower above the Martian landscape like giant egg cups could be used to trace the planet’s climate.
‘Pedestal’ craters were gouged out by impacts, like other craters, but stand out because they sit atop plateaus that loom an average of 50 metres above the Martian surface.
It’s not clear exactly how the pedestals formed.
According to a report in New Scientist, a comprehensive catalogue of the objects is lending weight to the idea that the pedestals may conceal ice-rich soil from previous eras, when the planet’s spin axis tilted at a different angle than it does today.
Seth Kadish of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and colleagues identified 2696 pedestal craters in the planet’s mid- and low-latitudes from images taken primarily by the thermal imager aboard NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft.
The craters seem to be concentrated at the mid-latitudes, with very few found at the planet’s equator.
About 3 per cent of them have depressions around their bases that resemble areas in Antarctica where permafrost ice vaporizes, creating pits in the soil left behind.
The team said that strengthens the hypothesis that the pedestals were created from soil that was enriched in ice during a period when the Martian poles pointed more towards the sun and its mid-latitudes were colder.
Because Mars does not have a massive satellite that stabilises it, like Earth’s moon, the tilt of its axis is thought to change regularly on scales of tens of thousands of years.
When the planet is tilted most drastically on its side, the planet’s poles receive a lot of sunshine. Any water locked in ice there is thought to vaporize and move towards the equator, where it falls as snow.
Tens of metres of snow are thought to be deposited on the planet’s mid-latitudes during these episodes.
Pedestal craters may preserve regions with this ancient snow.
The researchers suspect the impact of the meteorite that created each pedestal crater could somehow ‘armour’ the ground in the area, producing a top layer that protected ice from sublimating into gas during warmer periods.
The unprotected ice surrounding the armoured area, however, would eventually disappear when the planet’s tilt changed and the area warmed.
That would leave behind the modern-day, ice-laden pedestals that can be more than 100 metres thick.
“These pedestals represent almost like a cookie-cutter section of past icy, dust-rich layers,” Kadish said. (ANI)
Washington, July 8 (ANI): Swiss scientists have found that male seahorses have a strong preference for large females when it comes to selecting a mating partner.
According to Beat Mattle and Tony Wilson from the Zoological Museum at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, by being choosy and preferring large females, they are likely to have more and bigger eggs, as well as bigger offspring,
Seahorses have a unique mode of reproduction: male pregnancy. Male seahorses provide all post-fertilization parental care, yet despite the high levels of paternal investment, they have long been thought to have conventional sex roles, with females choosing mating partners and males competing for their attention.
However, clutch, egg and offspring size all increase with female body size in seahorses, suggesting that males may obtain fecundity benefits by mating with large-bodied females.
The researchers investigated the mating behaviour of the pot-bellied seahorse (Hippocampus abdominalis), concentrating on the importance of partner body size in mate selection.
A total of 10 female and 16 male sexually mature seahorses, obtained from a captive breeding facility in Tasmania, took part in the experiment.
Individuals of both sexes were presented with potential mating partners of different sizes. Mating preferences were quantified in terms of time spent courting each potential partner.
The researchers found striking differences in courtship behaviour between male and female seahorses, with choosy males and indiscriminate females.
Male seahorses were highly active and showed a clear preference for larger partners. In contrast, females were significantly less active and showed ambiguous mating preferences.
“The strong male preferences for large females demonstrated here suggest that sexual selection may act strongly on female body size in wild populations of H. abdominalis, consistent with predictions on the importance of female body size for reproductive output in this species,” the authors said.
The study has been published online in Springer’s journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. (ANI)
London, July 7 (ANI): Scientists have identified a species of spider that builds models of itself that it uses as decoys to distract predators, which may be the first example of an animal building a life-size replica of its own body.
Many animals try to divert the attentions of predators by becoming masters of disguise.
Some try to avoid being seen altogether by using camouflage to blend in against a background, such as the peppered moth evolving motley wings that blend into tree bark, or stick insects that look like sticks.
Others evolve more conspicuous ornaments designed to distract a predator, such as butterflies that grow large eyespots or lizards that quickly move colourful tails, which they detach from their bodies if grabbed.
But, animals do not tend to actually build life-like replica models of themselves to act as decoys.
According to a report by BBC News, that is exactly what a species of orb spider called Cyclosa mulmeinensis does, biologists Ling Tseng and I-Min Tso of Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan, have discovered.
This and other related spiders in the same genus decorate their webs with material such as detritus, plant parts, prey remains or egg sacs.
Because such detritus is often of a similar colour to the spider, researchers suspected it might help camouflage the arachnid.
Cyclosa mulmeinensis, which lives on Orchid Island off the southeast coast of Taiwan, decorates its web with both the remains of dead insect prey and egg sacs.
Intriguingly, the spiders make prey pellets and egg sacs that were the same size as its own body.
The researchers also found that these decorations appeared to wasps to be the same colour, and reflect light in the same way, as the spider’s body.
In short, the spider made decorations that were of the same size, shape and appearance as itself.
“Our results show that this vulnerable spider protects itself from predator attacks by constructing decoys that increase the conspicuousness of the web, and resemble its own appearance in size and colour,” according to the researchers.
“When both spiders and web decorations are present on the same web, they look like a string of nearly identical oval objects to the predators,” said Tso.
“I don’t know of any animal that actively builds a decoy of itself. Our study seems to be the first to empirically demonstrate the function of animal-made decoys,” he added. (ANI)
London, July 6 (ANI): A Colorado State University expert has debunked the myth that there are only two sexes.
Gerald Callahan, an associate professor of immunology and the public understanding of science at Colorado State University, writes in ‘Between XX and XY: Intersexuality and the myth of two sexes’ that the stereotypical view of two sexes – me Tarzan, you Jane – limits people’s understanding and appreciation of their own biology.
He argues that there is a range of sexual characteristics that stretches from the testosterone-inflated Tarzan to the womanly “perfection” of a stereotypical Jane, and all the variations that lie in between.
“In truth, we are all intersex,” New Scientist magazine quoted him as having written in the book.
The standard model of human development is built on 46 chromosomes, including two that determine sex: XX for female, XY for male.
Callahan, however, insists that not everyone ends up 46XX or 46XY.
According to him, variations in sperm or egg, in the mixing of cells from mother and father and in the cell division that follows can all stir the genetic soup into alternative outcomes.
“(The possibilities) are as grand and as varietal as the fragrances of flowers: 45X; 47XXX; 48XXXX; 49XXXXX; 47XYY; 47XXY; 48XXXY; 49XXXXY; and 49XXXYY,” he writes.
While geneticists are familiar with such variations, says Callahan, the general public is still stuck in a black and white, XX/XY world.
Callahan’s book is spent exploring the understanding of intersexuality, from the physicians of ancient Greece to today’s neuroendocrinologists.
He also weaves in the stories of people who live in the stretch between the classic male and female endpoints. (ANI)
London, July 1 (ANI): A new study has suggested that minor weight loss in obese women could boost their chances of getting pregnant.
Professor Bill Ledger, from the University of Sheffield, and colleagues said conducted a three-month study of 40 obese women who were not ovulating.
Many of them suffered from polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS).
The group’s average age was 29 and their body mass index (BMI) was around 40. Health service guidelines do not recommend IVF treatment for women with a BMI of above 30.
The women were given weight loss drugs to help them lose 5 percent of their body weight over a three-month period.
The weight loss of 5 percent was connected with a 19 percent rise in blood flow to the womb.
This increase in flow could assist an egg’s release from the ovaries and help with embryo implantation.
The researchers stated that the increase in blood flow worked like a “switch” to stimulate the ovaries.
Testosterone levels – which are higher in PCOS sufferers – also decreased as the blood flow picked up.
Ledger said that requesting that women lost 5-10 percent of their body weight was a ‘modest target’.
“The message for women with PCOS is don’t think you have to lose half your body weight. This could also encourage moderately overweight women to lose 5-10 percent,” the BBC quoted Ledger as saying.
Women with PCOS, which is one of the most common causes of infertility, tend to put on weight because of their condition and struggle more than other women to lose it through diet and exercise.
The study was presented at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). (ANI)
Washington, July 1 (ANI): Having sex every day improves men’s sperm quality, an Australian study has revealed.
In a study of men with fertility problems, researchers found that daily ejaculation for a week cut the amount of DNA damage seen in sperm samples.
“All that we knew was that intercourse on the day of ovulation offered the highest chance of pregnancy, but we did not know what was the best advice for the period leading up to ovulation or egg retrieval for IVF,” Dr David Greening, an obstetrician and gynaecologist with sub specialist training in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Sydney IVF, Wollongong, Australia, said.
“I thought that frequent ejaculation might be a physiological mechanism to improve sperm DNA damage, while maintaining semen levels within the normal, fertile range,” he added.
To investigate this hypothesis, Greening studied 118 men who had higher than normal sperm DNA damage as indicated by a DNA Fragmentation Index (DFI).
Men who had a more than 15 percent of their sperm damaged were eligible for the trial. At Sydney IVF, sperm DNA damage is defined as less than 15 percent DFI for excellent quality sperm, 15-24 percent DFI for good, 25-29 percent DFI for fair and more than 29 percent DFI for poor quality; but other laboratories can have slightly different ranges.
The men were instructed to ejaculate daily for seven days, and no other treatment or lifestyle changes were suggested. Before they started, levels of DNA damage ranged between 15 percent and 98 percent DFI, with an average 34 percent DFI when measured after three days’ abstinence.
When the men’s sperm was re-assessed on the seventh day, Greening found that 81 percent men had an average 12 percent decrease in their sperm DNA damage, while 19 percent men and an average increase in damage of nearly 10 percent. The average for the whole group dropped to 26 percent DFI.
“Although the mean average was 26 percent which is in the ‘fair’ range for sperm quality, this included 18 percent of men whose sperm DNA damage increased as well as those whose DNA damage decreased,” Greening said.
“Amongst the men whose damage decreased, their average dropped by 12 percent to just under 23 percent DFI, which puts them in the ‘good’ range.
Also, more men moved into the ‘good’ range and out of the ‘poor’ or ‘fair’ range. These changes were substantial and statistically highly significant.
“In addition, we found that although frequent ejaculation decreased semen volume and sperm concentrations, it did not compromise sperm motility and, in fact, this rose slightly but significantly.
“Further research is required to see whether the improvement in these men’s sperm quality translates into better pregnancy rates, but other, previous studies have shown the relationship between sperm DNA damage and pregnancy rates,” he added.
Greening said he thought the reason why sperm quality improved with frequent ejaculation was because the sperm had a shorter exposure in the testicular ducts and epididymis to reactive oxygen species – very small molecules, high levels of which can damage cells.
“The remainder of the men who had an increase in DFI might have a different explanation for their sperm DNA damage,” he said.
The study has been presented at the 25th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Amsterdam. (ANI)
Washington, June 30 (ANI): Scientists from University of Oxford, UK claim to have developed a new less invasive genetic test that has found to greatly improve pregnancy rates in older women with failed attempts.
The new test, developed by Dr. Elpida Fragouli, examining chromosomes in human eggs a few hours after fertilisation can identify those that are capable of forming a healthy baby.
She said that her team’s work had already enabled seven ongoing pregnancies in a group of older women with a history of multiple failed IVF attempts.
“Out of 35 patients who had embryo transfers after the test, we achieved a pregnancy rate of 20pct, which is exceptional considering the extremely poor prognosis of the women involved.” she said.
“This represents a doubling of the usual pregnancy rate for women who fall into this category, which is otherwise, at best, under 10pct and, at worst, zero.
“To date, we have two live births from this group, and all the other women who became pregnant have maintained their pregnancies. The study is continuing, and we believe that we will achieve more pregnancies with the help of this technology in the future,” she added.
During the study, the scientists used the Comparative Genomic Hybridisation (CGH) technique to count the chromosomes in each egg.
It examines the fertilised eggs by looking at polar bodies, tiny cells that are a by-product of egg development. The chromosomes of polar bodies provide an indication of whether the corresponding egg is normal or abnormal; if the polar bodies have the wrong number of chromosomes, so does the egg.
The scientists studied 400 fertilised eggs generated by women with a very poor reproductive history and with an average age of 42 who were undergoing IVF because of being unable to conceive or to maintain a pregnancy.
They found that more than half of all the eggs produced by these women had chromosomal abnormalities, and therefore the resulting embryos were also chromosomally abnormal.
Some of the women had a tendency to produce eggs that were extremely abnormal and carried multiple chromosome errors.
This, according the scientists, could explain the poor reproductive history of these women.
“But where we could find fertilised eggs free of chromosomal abnormalities, the resulting embryos were also normal and their transfer to the mother led to pregnancies,” said Dr. Fragouli.
“Results suggest that the use of this technique will improve IVF success rates for poor prognosis patients. It is also likely to achieve a reduction in congenital abnormalities such as Down’s syndrome, as well as a reduction in the frequency of spontaneous miscarriage,” she added.
The findings were presented at 25th annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. (ANI)
Melbourne, June 30 (ANI): Australian researchers have created an egg-free vaccine for swine flu that can be produced from scratch within weeks.
The revolutionary vaccine matches the virus found in the boy, 10, from San Diego who was the first US case of the illness.
Professor Anton Middelberg, of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, claims that the vaccine, which is currently not registered for use in Australia, is different from conventionally produced vaccines because it is made in cell cultures instead of in eggs, reports ABC Online.
According to the expert, the plus point of the technology, developed by US company Protein Sciences Corporation (PSC), is the speed and potency of the vaccine.
Middelberg says while the vaccine contains the same amount of protein as conventionally produced vaccines, it contains virus protein rather than a combination from egg and virus. This implies that a single dose delivers three times as much of the virus protein as a conventional vaccine.
Its other advantage is because the vaccine is only made up of virus protein it opens up a variety of methods of delivery apart from injection.
Middelberg was amazed that the University of Queensland team as they could produce a batch of vaccine within two weeks of receiving the genetic construct of the virus.
“This technology shifts the timeframe [in vaccine production] from months to weeks,” he said.
“The vaccine can be made quickly when a new virus emerges or when it changes, and we can turn manufacturing on and off as needed. So we can choose to make vaccine just for those at risk of severe illness,” he added. (ANI)
Melbourne, June 30 (ANI): Australian researchers have created an egg-free vaccine for swine flu that can be produced from scratch within weeks.
The revolutionary vaccine matches the virus found in the boy, 10, from San Diego who was the first US case of the illness.
Professor Anton Middelberg, of the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, claims that the vaccine, which is currently not registered for use in Australia, is different from conventionally produced vaccines because it is made in cell cultures instead of in eggs, reports ABC Online.
According to the expert, the plus point of the technology, developed by US company Protein Sciences Corporation (PSC), is the speed and potency of the vaccine.
Middelberg says while the vaccine contains the same amount of protein as conventionally produced vaccines, it contains virus protein rather than a combination from egg and virus. This implies that a single dose delivers three times as much of the virus protein as a conventional vaccine.
Its other advantage is because the vaccine is only made up of virus protein it opens up a variety of methods of delivery apart from injection.
Middelberg was amazed that the University of Queensland team as they could produce a batch of vaccine within two weeks of receiving the genetic construct of the virus.
“This technology shifts the timeframe [in vaccine production] from months to weeks,” he said.
“The vaccine can be made quickly when a new virus emerges or when it changes, and we can turn manufacturing on and off as needed. So we can choose to make vaccine just for those at risk of severe illness,” he added.(ANI)
New Delhi, June 29 (ANI): A man is looking to catch the attention of Guinness World Records officials, believing his chicken may have broken a previous record with its large egg.
Zhang Yinde, in Suiling, Heilongjiang province, has been storing the egg in his refrigerator.
The egg is reportedly 6.3 cm wide and 9.2 cm long and 201 grams in weight, which is apparently three times heavier than a regular one, reports the China Daily.
He said: “I found that the previous Guinness record was a 176-gram egg. I think mine will break the record.”
He added: “The egg looks like any other, except that its shell is a bit rough. I decided to ask Guinness for recognition.” (ANI)
London, May 20 (ANI): Three quarters of British kids do not know how to boil an egg, new research has found.
The poll for supermarket chain Morrisons found that almost half of the youngsters in the UK never or rarely help prepare their family’s evening meal.
The survey of 1,000 children and 1,000 parents showed that 37 percent kids preferred watching television or surfing the Internet to culinary pursuits.
During the study, 27 percent parents admitted it was easier to leave their children to amuse themselves rather than enlist them in cooking.
However, around a third of parents said that they wanted to teach their cooking, as they had inherited kitchen skills from their own mothers and fathers.
According to author Annable Karmel, teaching cooking to kids would also help them to develop skills in other areas.
“Cooking is a great way for children to learn about maths, measuring, and understanding time, so it’s worth the effort. What’s more it’s a great way to get fussy eaters to try new foods,” Sky News quoted her as saying.
Karmel suggests that by the age of six, kids should be able to chop vegetables, grate cheese and boil an egg, while 13-year-olds should be cooking fish, chicken and meat and baking potatoes.
By the age of 16, teenagers should have mastered risottos and pasta dishes.
The study showed that kids and parents still hold the ability to cook in high regard, with 80 percent viewing a culinary ability as an important skill. (ANI)
Copyright © 2013 · eleven40 theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in