IVF Does Not Increase Cancer Risk

Women getting fertility treatments can be reassured that in vitro fertilization (IVF) does not increase their risk of breast and gynecological cancers, according to a US study of Israeli women.
“The findings were fairly reassuring. Nothing was significantly elevated,” said lead author Louise Brinton, chief of the Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch at the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland, Reuters reported.
Ovulation-stimulating drugs or puncturing of the ovaries to retrieve eggs can be part of IVF treatments and procedures that researchers have suspected may increase women’s risk of cancer.
Previous studies have linked IVF early in life to heightened risks of breast cancer and borderline ovarian tumors.
But other studies have found little connection between fertility treatments and cancer.
The association has been difficult to untangle, experts say, in part because it’s hard to know whether unmeasured factors not realized to IVF may affect the risk of cancer in women who have trouble conceiving.
So far, there have not been a lot of women who developed cancer after fertility treatment included in studies.
Brinton and her colleagues examined the medical records of 67,608 women who underwent IVF treatments between 1994 and 2011 and 19,795 women who sought treatment but never received IVF.

Solar-Powered Lasers Provide Asteroid Protection

Russia’s meteor event and an ominously close fly by from Asteroid 2012 DA14 in one day have captured most people’s attention.
According to Dvice, combine that with new reports of a fireball over California spotted the same evening and you’ve pretty much got a consensus we should start thinking more seriously about how to stop “the big one” that could be headed our way. Fortunately, two California scientists are on the case with a solar-power based proposal.
Their concept is called Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids and Exploration. DE-STAR for short. It’s an orbiting system that channels solar power into a phased array of laser beams that blasts the offending space rocks or at a minimum pushes them in another direction.
UC Santa Barbara physicist Philip Lubin and Gary Hughes, a researcher at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo have been working on the idea for almost a year and are basing their solar energy ‘harvesting’ idea on technology that already exists and technology they know will exist in the near future. Their analysis also involved complex modeling of scalability.

Iranian Nanotech Progress Astonishing

Iran’s highly efficient and skillful human resources are behind the country’s astonishing progress in nanotechnology.
Dr. Seyyed Mehdi Rezayat, the head of the Human Resources Development Workgroup of the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council, praised Iranians while addressing the opening ceremony of the second round of nanotechnology training course to strengthen human resources.
Dr. Rezayat pointed to the fact that about 5,000 nanotechnology university students are studying at the higher levels of education in Iran, Fars News Agency reported.
At present, there are 4,412 university students at the MSc level and more than 1,200 students at the PhD level studying nanotechnology in the country. There are also approximately 1,000 PhD undergraduates in nanotechnology and more than 2,500 nanotechnology experts who are members of the scientific boards of various Iranian universities.
“The number of nanotechnology experts in Iran is very significant compared with other countries,” he said.
According to the official, the number of nanotechnology-related patents and ISI papers presented by Iranian researchers had been 25 and 3,500 respectively in 2012.
“In creditable scientific publications, we rank eighth at present. It is a good time to approach the next chains in the development of technology and production,” he said, adding that nanotech patents have a share of about 45 percent of all patents in the country and have the potential of registering further growth.
With regard to the need for industrialization of nanotechnology, Dr. Rezayat said 355 companies are active in the field of nanotechnology.
“At present, about 22 incubators are active in the field of nanotechnology, which constitutes about 16 percent of all incubators in the country. Moreover, there are about 133 nanotechnology-based products and equipment in the market, which have acquired the necessary certificates,” he said.

Coffee in Pregnancy Tied to Smaller Newborns

Coffee or other caffeinated beverages a woman drinks during her pregnancy might up the odds for a low birth weight newborn or an extended pregnancy, a new study says.
The researchers included data on nearly 60,000 Norwegian women, HealthDay reported.
“As the risk for having a low birth weight baby was associated with caffeine consumption, pregnant women might be counseled to reduce their caffeine intake during pregnancy as much as possible,” said lead researcher Dr. Verena Sengpiel, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the Sahlgrenska Academy of Sahlgrenska University in Goteborg, Sweden.
She believes the findings should also spur a reevaluation of current recommendations from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which advises that a pregnant woman’s caffeine intake not exceed two cups of coffee per day.
However, because the study was observational in nature, it cannot establish a cause-and-effect relationship between caffeine and low birth weight, Sengpiel stressed.
“We cannot say from our data whether caffeine is the specific substance responsible for the fetus being at greater risk of (becoming a) low birth weight infant, nor did we study if these babies actually had special health problems during the neonatal period,” Sengpiel said.
In the study, Sengpiel’s team accounted for all sources of caffeine, including coffee, tea, sodas and food including cocoa (such as is found in desserts and chocolate), for almost 60,000 pregnancies tracked by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
They found that while caffeine was not linked to premature birth, caffeine from all sources was tied to a higher risk for reduced birth weight.

Thinning Ice Changing Ecosystem in Arctic

In the Arctic Ocean, algae are manna from heaven. Clumps of the aquatic life drop from the sea ice to the ocean floor below, occasionally feeding otherworldly creatures that live there, like sea cucumbers and brittle stars.
According to LiveScience, during 2012’s record ice melt in the Arctic, when the ice cover over the ocean shrank to the lowest levels ever seen, researchers explored the region’s seas with remotely operated vehicles. They discovered the thinning ice was speeding up algal growth.
Not only were more algae clinging to the underside of the thinning ice, but chunks of algae up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) in size littered the seafloor, covering 10 percent of the muddy bottom.
“We had cameras showing that, partially, the seafloor was green with ice algae deposits,” Antje Boetius, a biological oceanographer at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany and lead author of the study, said in an email interview.
The vigorous algae growth could change the amount of carbon stored in the Arctic because the clumps trap carbon after falling to the seafloor. The additional food for sea creatures this algae provide could also shift the Arctic’s biodiversity in unknown ways, the researchers said.

Trolling the floor
“The Arctic deep sea is normally very nutrient-limited,” Boetius told OurAmazingPlanet. “We believe that we have observed a new phenomenon, which is connected to the sea ice decline, and which may change the way the Arctic ecosystem functions.”
The scientists sailed through thinning ice in late summer 2012 aboard the research icebreaker RV Polarstern. They towed cameras and sensors along the seafloor, sent remotely operated vehicles beneath the ice, and collected water, ice and sediments for additional studies.
Clinging to the ice like vines, the 3-foot-long (1 meter) algae strands share a similarity in color and shape with “Star Wars” character Chewbacca’s dreadlocks. While many kinds of algae grow under the Arctic ice, the clumps of Melosira arctica are particularly heavy compared to its brethren, and so fall to the seafloor instead of wafting in the waves to be consumed by near-surface dwellers.
Boetius said the rapid growth of algae beneath the ice in 2012, quickly followed by a massive deluge of sea scum onto the ocean floor, has never been seen before.
“It was already known that ice algae could grow in the ice and form gigantic accumulations under the ice. But it was believed that this takes very long and that these biomasses will remain in the ice or sink out only at the warming coasts, not in the middle of the basins,” she said.

Hydration Armband Offers Refreshment

Carrying a bottle of refreshing water with you on long runs can be an awkward affair. Kenmark Sports attempted to make hydration-on-the-go a little easier last year with its Armband Water Bottle, but it still looks to be a rather bulky, cumbersome and sloshy option.
Justin Lynch has designed a new runner-specific hydration system called the Hydrosleeve that allows runners to hydrate without breaking stride, while also taking care of the sloshing issue, Indiegogo wrote.
The patent-pending Hydrosleeve hands-free liquid delivery system is made from high quality synthetics, including faux suede, double-loop Lycra, and silicone. A 4.5 x 5.5-inch (114.3 x 139.7 mm) therma-cool lined pouch is incorporated into an adjustable strap that’s secured around the upper arm with micro Velcro.
Inside the pouch you’ll find a BPA-free, removable and reusable TPU bladder that holds up to 7 fluid ounces (0.2 liters) of liquid and is designed to compress down as the wearer hydrates during a run to keep the sloshing of its contents to a minimum.
The bladder has a heavy duty zipp-lock for top-ups and cleaning, and there’s a small pocket in the face of the pouch for storage.
“The pocket is big enough to hold a single car key or 2 small house keys,” Lynch told us. “It can fit lip-gloss, an energy gel shot or an iPod nano. The problem is the more you put in the pocket, the more bulky the sleeve becomes. I designed the sleeve to hold just the right amount of liquid and nothing more. That way it feels small and light on your arm.”
The Hydrosleeve has an empty weight of 8 oz (0.2 kg) and features a pressure valve angled at 15 degrees (which allows liquid to flow out while preventing air from entering the bladder) that can be rotated for left or right arm placement.
Lynch says that the current design should provide enough arm-based refreshment for a 3 to 6 mile run, but the company has plans to make a 10 floz (0.29 liter) Hydrosleeve available at some point in the future. At the moment, though, all efforts are geared toward getting the current model to market.

Fish With Rainbow Eye

These eyes are positively spectral. They belong to a Caribbean trumpetfish, and their many colors are created by the refraction of light.
Rays of light bend as they pass in and out of the fish’s eyes, and different colors of light bend different amounts, NewScientist said.
As a result, white light splinters into bands of different colors, like a rainbow. The colors in the eye follow part of the usual rainbow sequence, from orange to blue.
Like all trumpet fish, Aulostomus maculatus has a long thin body rather like that of an eel. It often swims vertically, disguising itself among vertical corals. But it also camouflages itself by swimming along the lateral lines of larger fish.
The photograph, by Randall Benton, has won third prize in the Nature category of the World Press Photo of the Year awards 2012.

Boomerope Reaches High To Thread Rope

If you’ve ever tried to loop a rope over a high branch, girder or pole without using a ladder, then you’ll know that it can be pretty frustrating.
As with most frustrating tasks, however, someone has invented a gizmo to make it easier. That gizmo is the Boomerope, Gizmag wrote.
The business end of the Boomerope consists of a pair of pincher-like arms, that can be made to close together or separate by pulling on one of two lines that run down an attached boom pole to the user--one line is green and the other is red.
The Boomerope’s control lines clamp onto a user-supplied boom pole.
To use the device, you start by fastening a plastic shuttle to the end of your rope, and then plugging that shuttle into the end of one of the arms--which arm depends on which direction you want the rope to be passed, if it makes a difference.
You then lift the pole and extend it, so that the curved arms cradle the branch (or whatever it is) from below. Next, you pull on the green line to bring the ends of the arms together above the branch--this causes the rope/shuttle to be passed from one arm to the other. You then pull on the red line, which makes the arms separate again. Finally, with the rope now looped over the branch, you lower the apparatus back down, bringing the end of the rope with it.
The Boomerope comes with 25 feet (7.6 meters) of each type of line, and its arms can encircle objects up to ten inches (25 cm) in diameter. Users supply their own pole.
Its designers are currently gauging consumer interest in the product and will be pricing it accordingly once it’s commercialized.

Acupuncture Eases Hay Fever

Hay fever sufferers may find some relief with acupuncture, a new study suggests, though the therapy’s appeal in the “real world” is yet to be seen.