The Portofino at Lavasa

a href=”http://therotundaramblings.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/picture-12.png”>Happiness is like the common cold — it’s catching!
-Anonymous
 
Portofino (Ligurian: Portofin) is a small Italian fishing village, comune and tourist resort located in the province of Genoa on the Italian Riviera. The town crowded round its small harbour is considered to be among the most beautiful Mediterranean ports. The residents of Portofin would never [...]

Placenta Previa after ART?

Researchers at St Olav’s University Hospital in Trondheim, Norway, have discovered a link between assisted reproduction and an increased risk of placenta previa – a dangerous complication of pregnancy where the placenta covers all or part of the cervix. The condition normally affects around three in 1000 births, but with a single IVF or ICSI [...]

Glow-in-the-dark Cats can help with Gene Therapy

Last week South Korean scientists reported that they had successfully cloned cats whose genes had been altered so that they ‘glow-in-the-dark’ under UV light. It is hoped that the ability to alter genes in this way may help scientists discover how to make more complicated gene changes, allowing them to artificially create animals with human [...]

LaVaSa – A Walk In The Clouds

read a poster about Lavasa sometime in the past which read:”Enter a world of extraordinary scale & reach”. Welcome to Lavasa, an idea so colossal, so visionary & fantabulous that I am convinced this will be a feather-in-the-cap of free India. I met Mr Nathan Andrews at an RCI dinner a month ago & [...]

Human egg makes accidental debut on camera

A doctor about to perform a partial hysterectomy on a patient has inadvertently caught the moment of ovulation on camera. The pictures have been published in the New Scientist magazine, and will also be reproduced in Fertility and Sterility.
Observing ovulation in humans is very difficult, and previous images have been very fuzzy.  Jacques Donnez, of [...]

Stem-Cell Tourism condemned

The increasing problem of ’stem-cell tourism’ – patients travelling to developing countries seeking costly and unproven stem cell treatments – have prompted leading experts to join in an international effort to establish standards for the development of stem cell treatments. The 30-member committee, comprised of scientists and ethicists from 13 nations, was to release a [...]

You Are What Your Mother Eats

Women who eat cereal for breakfast have an increased chance of having sons instead of daughters, a British study has found. Research by the Universities of Exeter and Oxford have uncovered strong links between higher energy intake among mothers around the time of conception and the birth of boys. “The consumption of breakfast cereals was [...]

Cancer Returns

Cancer patients who have been successfully treated for their disease face the prospect of its return if stored ovarian (or testicular) tissue is transplanted back into their bodies without adequate checks, according to researchers at two university hospitals in Israel. Writing in Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal, Human Reproduction, the researchers say that hundreds of [...]

Acupuncture – A Hoax?

Last week, there was yet another piece of research trumpeting the benefits of acupuncture; in this case, needling was said to relieve hot flushes in breast cancer patients by up to 50 per cent. The new study, unveiled at a conference in Berlin, follows similar claims that the ancient treatment can benefit those with arthritis, [...]

Posthumous Sperm-Battle

A legal fight by a UK woman to have a child using sperm taken from her husband after his death is underway. The case highlights the need for regulatory clarity on the issue, which first came to prominence in 1995 when Diane Blood won the right to conceive using sperm from her comatose spouse.
Doctors were [...]