The World Health Organization released its 2015 updated essential medicines list and for the first time included the progesterone contraceptive vaginal ring (CVR), a contraceptive safe and effective for lactating women in the postpartum period.
The progesterone CVR, developed by the Population Council, is an intravaginal ring that provides women who breastfeed at least four times a day with a contraceptive option as early as four weeks after giving birth. It can be used for up to a year for improved birth spacing.
The central United States has undergone a dramatic increase in seismicity over the past 6 years. From 1973-2008, there was an average of 24 earthquakes of magnitude 3 and larger per year. From 2009-2014, the rate steadily increased, averaging 193 per year and peaking in 2014 with 688 earthquakes. So far in 2015, there have been 430 earthquakes of that size in the central U.S. region through the end of May.
There are many questions and misconceptions about what’s happening. How does the observed increase relate to oil and gas production activities? Does this connect to fracking—more formally known as hydraulic fracturing? What exactly is fracking? What are induced earthquakes?
When a plant is attacked by herbivores, this triggers a number of physiological responses in the plant and calcium ions are important messengers for the processing of wound signals in plant cells. They regulate signal transduction and indirectly control plant defense mechanisms.
Now, scientists have succeeded in visualizing the immediate wound or herbivory responses in plants. They used Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress) plants that produce a special protein which breaks down after the binding of calcium ions and emits free energy in the form of light. The amount of light corresponds to the calcium concentrations in the cells of the respective leaf areas.
Chemical reactions powered your transformation from a single cell into a colony of trillions of cells, and they allow you to harvest energy from the environment and transform it into yet more cells. They maintain the delicate balance in which all the components of your body function. In fact, they are that balance. They even drive your thoughts and emotions.-->
It is believed by the social sciences that all people have bias - and a "bias blind spot," meaning that they are less likely to detect bias in themselves than others.
If so, how blind are we to our own actual degree of bias, and how many of us think we are less biased than others?
A new paper outlines a tool to detect gaps, a kind of implicit association test but for bias blind spots rather than making you feel racist, and it reveals that believing that you are less biased than your peers has detrimental consequences on judgments and behaviors, such as accurately judging whether advice is useful.
In many animal species, the chromosomes differ between the sexes - the male has a Y chromosome. This contains genes which result in the development of male characters and reproductive organs. If there is no Y chromosome, the organism will be a female.
But in birds and some other animals, it is the other way round and females have their own sex chromosome, the W chromosome.
The ESO's Very Large Telescope has revealed what appears to be an aging star giving birth to a butterfly-like planetary nebula.
These observations of the red giant star L2 Puppis, from the ZIMPOL mode of the newly installed SPHERE instrument, also clearly showed a close stellar companion.
The aviation industry is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2011 aviation contributed around 3% of Australia’s emissions. Despite improvements in efficiency, global aviation emissions are expected to grow 70% by 2020 from 2005. While the industry is seeking new renewable fuel sources, growing biofuels takes up valuable land and water that could be otherwise used to grow food.
But what if you could grow biofuels on land nobody wants, using just seawater and sunlight, and produce food at the same time?-->
Honest behavior is much like sticking to a diet - you have to be ready for temptation and consider the long-term consequences.
A recent paper says it is the first study to test how the two separate factors of identifying an ethical conflict and preemptively exercising self-control interact in shaping ethical decision-making.
In a series of experiments that included common ethical dilemmas, such as calling in sick to work and negotiating a home sale, the researchers found that two factors together promoted ethical behavior: Participants who identified a potential ethical dilemma as connected to other similar incidents and who also anticipated the temptation to act unethically were more likely to behave honestly than participants who did not.
Women aged 50-69 years who attend mammography screening reduce their risk of dying from breast cancer by 40 percent compared to women who are not screened - according to a major international review of the latest evidence on breast cancer screening. Overall, women who are invited to attend mammography screening have a 23 percent risk reduction in breast cancer death (owing to some attending and some not), compared with women not invited by routine screening programs.
In the UK, this relative risk translates to around eight deaths prevented per 1,000 women regularly attending screening, and five deaths prevented per 1,000 women invited to screening.
Cancer has overtaken cardiovascular disease, which includes heart disease and stroke, as the UK's No 1 killer--but only among men, reveals research published online in the journal Heart.
Cardiovascular disease is still the most common cause of death among women, and kills more young women than breast cancer, the figures show.
The researchers used the latest nationally available data (2012-13) for each of the four UK countries and the Cardiovascular Disease Statistics 2014 report compiled for the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to quantify the prevalence of cardiovascular disease, and find out how it's treated, how much it costs, and how many deaths it causes.
The answer is a combination of an amazing new telescope, a very smart student and an unexpected fusion of two areas of science.-->
The public has a bit of a cultural schism about elections. Everyone says they want more diversity of candidates but an actual primary race is a sign of weakness. In the United States of America, Democrats are trumpeting the fact that they picked their candidate for 2016 back in 2013 and ridiculing Republicans because they have a dozen contenders. And we are told that if polls are too accurate, people will not bother to vote, but if they are not accurately predicting the winner of an election that has not occurred, it is a failure.
Though women are the majority in the life sciences and men might need outreach programs to counteract potential bias against them in the social sciences, in math-intensive fields like physics women still lag.
Sociologists believe that it may be due to misperception; that you either have math ability or you don't. Counter that misperception and you the problem is solved.
Many aquatic species have a reputation for negligent parenting. Having cast their gametes to the currents, they abandon their offspring to their fate. However, hands-on parenting is taken to a whole new dimension in the Syngnathidae fish family.
Instead of leaving the responsibility to the females, seahorse and pipefish males take the pledge to care for their young even before the eggs are fertilized. The females depart soon after placing their eggs directly into the male's brood pouch, leaving the soon-to-be fathers to incubate the developing embryos.
Until now, de novo genetic mutations, alterations in a gene found for the first time in one family member, were believed to be mainly the result of new mutations in the sperm or eggs (germline) of one of the parents and passed on to their child.
Researchers from The Netherlands have now succeeded in determining that at least 6.5% of de novo mutations occur during the development of the child (post-zygotic) rather than from the germline of a parent.