Paris, 29 November 2010 – Reduced male fertility may be making it even harder for couples to conceive and be contributing to low birth rates in many countries, reveals a new European Science Foundation (ESF) report launching today. More than 10% of couples worldwide are infertile, contributing to the growing demand for assisted reproduction techniques such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF) for which Robert G. Edwards won the Nobel Prize in Medicine last month. Sperm counts have dropped significantly in the last 50 years in developed countries. Today, at least one in ...

For Immediate Release – November 29, 2010 (Toronto) – Neuroscientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have developed a protein peptide that may be a novel type of highly targeted treatment for depression with a low side-effect profile. Depression affects one in ten Canadians at some time in their lives and is a leading cause of disability worldwide. The study published in this month's Nature Medicine found that coupling between two dopamine receptors was significantly elevated in the brains of people who had been diagnosed with major depression. ...

The Department of Computer Engineering, Sejong University in Korea and ETH Zurich in Switzerland have recently introduced a novel and simple framework for rendering subsurface scattering on surfaces represented by points. This is useful for realistically rendering a cloud of points representing translucent materials such as the human skin. This significant study is reported in Vol. 53, No. 5 of SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences. The point-based graphics method for rendering surfaces has gained much attention as an alternative to polygon-based graphic methods because ...

The Great Tit is a common garden bird of many countries in Europe and Asia. Great Tits are generally thought of as fairly inquisitive but it has long been known individuals vary considerably in their willingness to explore new surroundings. Some birds – known as "fast" or "proactive" – are quick explorers and are comparatively aggressive, whereas "slow" or "reactive" birds are more cautious. The differences are at least in part genetically determined and as a result scientists in Holland, with whom the Vienna group has been collaborating closely, have been able to use ...

In a first-of-its-kind study to measure the impact of the highest recommended specialist staffing levels in an intensive care unit, researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine found that increased staffing by specially trained physicians and other health care professionals can enhance patient survival and enable patients to breathe sooner without assistance. The results of the study have been released online ahead of print in the journal Critical Care Medicine. The researchers analyzed the files of patients in the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) ...

Fires in homes and offices could be tackled more efficiently using technology that predicts how a blaze will spread. A new technique is able to feed data taken from sensors located in burning buildings into computer models so that rescue services can predict how fires will spread. The technology could save firefighters valuable time by giving several minutes of warning on how a fire will develop, helping them to contain the blaze and minimise its impact. Simple sensors – incorporated into smoke alarms, room temperature sensors or CCTV cameras – can measure the temperature ...

In an attempt to help children with autism learn the building blocks of creativity, researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) tapped a toy box staple for help – legos. By building lego structures in new and unique ways, children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) learned to use creativity, an important skill that they had seen as very challenging prior to the study. "In every day life we need to be able to respond to new situations," said Deborah A. Napolitano, Ph.D., BCBA-D., the study's principal investigator and assistant professor of Pediatrics ...

WASHINGTON — The number of people infected with HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to far outstrip available resources for treatment by the end of the decade, forcing African nations to make difficult choices about how to allocate inadequate supplies of lifesaving antiretroviral therapy (ART), says a new report by the Institute of Medicine. It calls for a renewed emphasis on reducing the rate of new infections, promoting more efficient models of care, and encouraging shared responsibility between African nations and the U.S. for treatment and prevention efforts, ...

Playing online can mean more than killing time, thanks to a new game developed by a team of bioinformaticians at McGill University. Now, players can contribute in a fun way to genetic research. "There are some calculations that the human brain does more efficiently than any computer can, such as recognizing a face," explained lead researcher Dr. Jérôme Waldispuhl of the School of Computer Science. "Recognizing and sorting the patterns in the human genetic code falls in that category. Our new online game enables players to have fun while contributing to genetic research ...

One person correctly remembers four of eight items just seen but is fuzzy on details. Another person recalls only two of the items but with amazingly precise clarity. So what ability translates to higher IQ? According to a University of Oregon study, the answer is very clear: More items stored in short-term memory is linked to greater fluid intelligence, as measured in IQ tests. The resolution of those memories, while important in many situations, shows no relationship with fluid intelligence. The notion that numbers of items is vitally important to short-term memory ...

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 29 – Breast cancers that arise sporadically, rather than through inheritance of certain genes, likely start with defects of DNA repair mechanisms that allow environmentally triggered mutations to accumulate, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. The findings, reported this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that potent chemotherapy drugs that target DNA in later-stage cancers ...

PHILADELPHIA - Mimicking the reflective iridescence of a butterfly's wing, investigators at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a color-changing patch that could be worn on soldiers' helmets and uniforms to indicate the strength of exposure to blasts from explosives in the field. Future studies aim to calibrate the color change to the intensity of exposure to provide an immediate read on the potential harm to the brain and the subsequent need for medical intervention. The findings are described ...

As employees become increasingly anxious about job security and financial worries during an economic recession, satisfaction with the job they have, commitment to their company and engagement with their work are all affected detrimentally. This trend could be self-fulfilling in that disengaged employees could have a negative impact on a company's products or services and lead to its decline which would inevitably see the company failing. Researchers in business and management have now formulated a model of how such employee engagement can change during an economic downturn. ...

Christmas time is the time for mulled wine. And that tastes best at a Christmas market. So that market goers get home safely, the police are increasing their drink driving checks on car drivers right now. Those who are asked to blow into the device in this type of traffic check can be sure that the value the device displays after a short time is correct. This is because the "synthetic breath" - which helps to thoroughly test each newly developed evidential breath analyser in approval procedures at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) - can now be produced even ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. ¬¬¬–Gold nanoparticles, tiny pieces of gold so small that they can't be seen by the naked eye, are used in electronics, healthcare products and as pharmaceuticals to fight cancer. Despite their positive uses, the process to make the nanoparticles requires dangerous and extremely toxic chemicals. While the nanotechnology industry is expected to produce large quantities of nanoparticles in the near future, researchers have been worried about the environmental impact of the global nanotechnological revolution. Now, a study by a University of Missouri research ...

Tel Aviv - In the human brain, mechanical stress -- the amount of pressure applied to a particular area -- requires a delicate balance. Just the right force keeps neurons together and functioning as a system within the body, and proper nerve function is dependent on this tension. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University say that mechanical stress plays an even more important role than medical science previously believed. Their research has the potential to tell us more than ever before about the form and function of neuronal systems, including the human brain. And they've ...

Giving emergency artesunate suppositories to children with suspected severe malaria before referring them for treatment is a cost-effective intervention that can substantially improve the management of childhood malaria in remote African settings, according to a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health [BUSPH] researcher Yesim Tozan, PhD, (link to profile: http://sph.bu.edu/tozan) The study, which appears online Nov. 29 in The Lancet , builds on previous research that found that the administration of one dose of rectal artesunate by a community health ...

Can a road-trip across eastern North America, ancient ice sheets, and DNA samples unlock the ancestral history of jack pine trees? Julie Godbout and colleagues from the Université Laval, Quebec, Canada, certainly hoped that driving across northeastern U.S. and Canada to collect samples from jack pine trees would shed some light on how glaciers may have impacted present-day pine genetics. About 20,000 years ago, ice sheets covered most of the northern terrestrial surface of the continent of North America. For some boreal species this Last Glacial Maximum period may ...

Biomedical engineers at UC Davis have developed a plug-in interface for the microfluidic chips that will form the basis of the next generation of compact medical devices. They hope that the "fit to flow" interface will become as ubiquitous as the USB interface for computer peripherals. UC Davis filed a provisional patent on the invention Nov. 1. A paper describing the devices was published online Nov. 25 by the journal Lab on a Chip. "We think there is a huge need for an interface to bridge microfluidics to electronic devices," said Tingrui Pan, assistant professor ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Scientists can use cylinders as small as teapots to study the mechanisms involved in powerful hurricanes and other swirling natural phenomena. The earth's atmosphere and its molten outer core have one thing in common: Both contain powerful, swirling vortices. While in the atmosphere these vortices include cyclones and hurricanes, in the outer core they are essential for the formation of the earth's magnetic field. These phenomena in earth's interior and its atmosphere are both governed by the same natural mechanisms, according to experimental ...

Researchers have found that the naturally-occurring hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin intensifies men's memories of their mother's affections during childhood. The study was published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers at the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai School of Medicine wanted to determine whether oxytocin, a hormone and neurotransmitter that is known to regulate attachment and social memory in animals, is also involved in human attachment memories. They conducted a randomized, double-blind, ...

San Diego, CA, November 30, 2010 – In the wake of multiple state bans on caffeinated alcoholic beverages (CABs) and an FDA warning to four companies to remove their products from the marketplace, an article published online today in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine delineates the scope of the public health problem and suggests areas of research that might help address it. "Although several manufacturers of caffeinated beer have withdrawn their products from the market, there is no sign that young people have decreased the practice of combining alcohol and energy ...

When crossing a street, we look to the left and right for cars and stay put on the sidewalk if we see a car close enough and traveling fast enough to hit us before we're able to reach the other side. It's an almost automatic decision, as though we instinctively know how to keep ourselves safe. Now neuroscientists have found that other animals are capable of making similar instinctive safety decisions. In a study published online the week of Nov. 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Washington researcher Jeansok Kim demonstrates that ...

If you're trying to end racism, it's not enough to get people to understand that racism is still a problem. You also have to make them feel like they can do something about it, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Tracie L. Stewart of Georgia State University was inspired to conduct the study by work she's done on evaluating a popular diversity training program. She found that the program reduced many white participants' bias in the short term, which was good. "But some white participants ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. - A team of Mayo Clinic researchers has found that patients with broken heart syndrome, also known as apical ballooning syndrome (ABS), have blood vessels that don't react normally to stress. These results offer clues to the cause of this rare syndrome and may help with efforts to identify patients who are more vulnerable to mental stress so that appropriate therapies can be developed. The study is published online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Apical ballooning syndrome affects mainly postmenopausal women, and a few men. The symptoms ...