Istanbul, 2 July 2012: While many small studies have shown a relationship between infertility and psychological distress, reporting a high prevalence of anxiety, mood disorders and depressive symptoms, few have studied the psychological effect of childlessness on a large population basis. Now, based on the largest cohort of women with fertility problems compiled to date, Danish investigators have shown that women who remained childless after their first investigation for infertility had more hospitalisations for psychiatric disorders than women who had at least one child ...

Istanbul, 2 July 2012: The state funding of fertility treatment through public reimbursement policies has a direct influence on national birth rates. Lower levels of reimbursement are correlated with higher unmet needs for treatment, while more generous reimbursement policies increase access to treatment and may even make a measurable contribution to national birth rates. The findings come from a study reported here today at the annual meeting of ESHRE (European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology). The results, says health economist Dr Mark Connolly from the ...

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J., July 2, 2012 – Savient Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SVNT) today announced a new publication showing that adult patients with refractory chronic gout (RCG) treated bi-weekly with KRYSTEXXA® (pegloticase) experienced statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in health-related quality of life (HRQOL), pain and physical function. The article confirms that chronic gout, especially refractory chronic gout, is associated with decline in HRQOL and physical functioning compared to patients without chronic gout. The results were published ...

Prostate cancer patients with cardiovascular disease were 52 per cent more likely to regret their treatment choices than men without problems with their heart or veins, according to a study published in the July issue of the urology journal BJUI International. Research led by Harvard Medical School, USA, looked at 795 men with recurrent cancer in the Comprehensive Observational Multicenter Prostate Adenocarcinoma (COMPARE) registry. "Treatment regret can have an adverse impact on a patient's overall outlook and has been associated with a poorer global quality of life" ...

Becoming an Avon cosmetics Sales Representative is helping some poor South African women escape poverty as well as inspiring many with self-confidence and hope. South Africa's growing band of 'Avon Ladies' are benefiting from economic empowerment, a sustainable income, raised social status and greater personal confidence, according to new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The research team conducted two large surveys - one with 300 black Avon Representatives working in South Africa and one with 77 of their consumers - as well as interviews ...

London, (July 02, 2012). Is social media censorship a means to quell a modern uprising? Some politicians and law enforcers during the political turbulence of 2011 thought so but recent research suggests that uncensored citizens experience less violence and longer periods of peace between outbursts than communities subject to censorship. These new findings appear in the Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, published by SAGE. A consensus is forming around Internet censorship in the wake of last year's uprisings, extending from the Arab Spring to the UK, according to Antonio ...

A major collaboration between US research centers has highlighted three factors that could ultimately determine whether an outbreak of influenza becomes a serious epidemic that threatens national health. The research suggests that the numbers in current response plans could be out by a factor of two or more depending on the characteristics of the particular pandemic influenza. Researchers from Argonne, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, have used sensitivity analysis to uncover the most important disease characteristics ...

Producing strong, lightweight and complex parts for car manufacturing and the aerospace industry is set to become cheaper and more accurate thanks to a new technique developed by engineers from the University of Exeter. The research team has developed a new method for making three-dimensional aluminium composite parts by mixing a combination of relatively inexpensive powders. Combining these elements causes a reaction which results in the production of particles that are 600 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Around 100 nanometres in size, the reaction uniformly ...

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany have discovered that tiny vanadium pentoxide nanoparticles can inhibit the growth of barnacles, bacteria, and algae on surfaces in contact with water, such as ship hulls, sea buoys, or offshore platforms. Their experiments showed that steel plates to which a coating containing dispersed vanadium pentoxide particles had been applied could be exposed to seawater for weeks without the formation of deposits of barnacles, bacteria, and algae. In comparison, plates that were coated only with the ship's normal ...

A consortium of nine research centres has obtained the melon genome, a horticultural specie with high economic value around the world. It is the first time that a Spanish initiative that unites private and state-run centres has obtained the complete genome of a higher organism, in this case a plant, which produces flowers and seeds. Also, it has been done by applying massive sequencing technologies. Besides the complete melon genome, scientists have obtained the particular genomes of seven melon varieties. The study is published in the magazine Proceedings of the National ...

The industry is interested in establishing a biorefinery sector in Denmark that can replace oil-based products with biofriendly materials, chemicals, energy and fuel. But this requires a larger biomass production than we are currently achieving. Scientists from University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University have published an extensive report that shows how we can increase the production of biomass by more than 200% in an environmentally friendly way. The report called "The ten-million-tonne plan" shows how we can increase the Danish production of biomass from agriculture ...

Experts at The University of Nottingham are the first to create a stable version of a 'trophy molecule' that has eluded scientists for decades. In research published in the prestigious journal Science, the team of chemists at Nottingham has shown that they can prepare a terminal uranium nitride compound which is stable at room temperature and can be stored in jars in crystallized or powder form. Previous attempts to prepare uranium-nitrogen triple bonds have required temperatures as low as 5 Kelvin (-268 °C) — roughly the equivalent temperature of interstellar space ...

A new approach to testing medical treatment options could ensure that more patients get the most beneficial treatment for them – but still yield valuable research results that stand up to scientific scrutiny. The approach tries to overcome a huge chicken-and-egg problem in medical research: Not enough people volunteer for studies of new treatments partly because researchers can't promise the studies will help them -- but without enough volunteers, researchers can't study new treatment options. But a new "adaptive" way of designing medical studies could help. In a ...

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the University of South Florida, the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, conducted a case control study and found associations between having antibodies to certain types of cutaneous human papillomavirus (HPV) and a kind of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). Their study, the first case-control study to investigate the association between SCC and cutaneous HPV types belonging to five different genera, appeared in a recent ...

Amsterdam, NL, July 2, 2012 – After stroke, patients often suffer from dysphagia, a swallowing disorder that results in greater healthcare costs and higher rates of complications such as dehydration, malnutrition, and pneumonia. In a new study published in the July issue of Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, researchers have found that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which applies weak electrical currents to the affected area of the brain, can enhance the outcome of swallowing therapy for post-stroke dysphagia. "Our pilot study demonstrated that ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — What makes laparoscopic surgery "minimally invasive" — instruments enter the patient through narrow tubes — also makes it visually constraining. As they work on different tasks, surgeons all see the same view. What if each surgeon could control a separate view best suited to the specific task? In a new paper, pediatric surgeon Dr. Francois Luks and his team of co-authors at Brown University and Hasbro Children's Hospital report that in a small in vitro trial, surgeons with their own views performed faster and more accurately. "When ...

Researchers are closer to understanding the biology behind GHB, a transmitter substance in the brain, best known in its synthetic form as the illegal drug fantasy. These findings have just been published in the scientific journal PNAS. In the 1960s, gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) was first discovered as a naturally occurring substance in the brain. Since then it has been manufactured as a drug with a clinical application and has also developed a reputation as the illegal drug fantasy and as a date rape drug. Its physiological function is still unknown. Researchers identify ...

Amsterdam, NL, July 2, 2012 – Growing evidence suggests that Parkinson's disease (PD) often starts with non-motor symptoms that precede diagnosis by several years. In the first study to examine patterns in the quality of life of Parkinson' disease patients prior to diagnosis, researchers have documented declines in physical and mental health, pain, and emotional health beginning several years before the onset of the disease and continuing thereafter. Their results are reported in the latest issue of Journal of Parkinson's Disease. "We observed a decline in physical function ...

(Embargoed) CHAPEL HILL, NC – New research led by a medical geneticist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine points to an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) among individuals whose parents or siblings have been diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The findings were based on a case-control study using population registers in Sweden and Israel, and the degree to which these three disorders share a basis in causation "has important implications for clinicians, researchers and those affected by the disorders," according to a report ...

Research led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists has identified a possible new approach to defeating bacterial infections by targeting an innate immune system component in a bid to invigorate the immune response. In this study, researchers demonstrated that the primary function of one of the innate immune molecules is to suppress inflammation, which in turn dampens the immune response to infections and other threats. Investigators showed the protein works by inhibiting two pathways that control production of specialized molecules that fight infections. ...

After more than 10 years of gathering and analyzing data produced by the U.S. Department of Energy's Tevatron collider, scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations have found their strongest indication to date for the long-sought Higgs particle. Squeezing the last bit of information out of 500 trillion collisions produced by the Tevatron for each experiment since March 2001, the final analysis of the data does not settle the question of whether the Higgs particle exists, but gets closer to an answer. The Tevatron scientists unveiled their latest results on July 2, ...

The use of an electronic medical record (EMR) for reviewing portal images dramatically improves compliance with timeliness and record keeping, according to a study in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology. Portal images are used to verify the positioning of patients during daily radiation treatments to improve the accuracy of the radiation field placement, to reduce exposure to normal tissue and to deliver accurate dose to tumor volumes. "The benefits of the implementation and utilization of an EMR have been well documented. Other studies ...

A report from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Task Force on Treatment of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) recommends the development of clinical practice guidelines for psychiatrists caring for patients who are transgender. The report also encourages the development of position statements regarding the health care and civil rights of people who are gender variant or transitioning gender. The task force report is available online in Springer's journal Archives of Sexual Behavior¹. The task force was charged with reviewing the scientific literature regarding gender ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study reveals a simple strategy that people can use to minimize how angry and aggressive they get when they are provoked by others. When someone makes you angry, try to pretend you're viewing the scene at a distance - in other words, you are an observer rather than a participant in this stressful situation. Then, from that distanced perspective, try to understand your feelings. Researchers call this strategy "self-distancing." In one study, college students who believed a lab partner was berating them for not following directions responded less ...

Now that the summer season is in full swing, many of us will be hosting picnics and barbecues and socializing outside. Chances are, we'll also have some unwanted guests in the form of mosquitoes. Mosquitoes seem to have an uncanny ability to locate us and Zainulabeuddin Syed, a mosquito biologist with the University of Notre Dame's Eck Institute for Global Health, has gone a long way toward to determining how they do it. In short, it's because of the way we smell. Zain studies olfaction in mosquitoes and other insects and he points out that mosquitoes have an extraordinary ...