Australian pregnant after pioneering ovarian transplant - had been rendered infertile by ovarian cancer treatment -

Australian pregnant after pioneering ovarian transplant - had been rendered infertile by ovarian cancer treatment -  



The patient, known as Vali, had been rendered infertile by ovarian cancer treatment but was able to grow new eggs from healthy ovarian tissue grafted onto her abdominal wall.
She is now almost 26 weeks' pregnant with twins after two eggs were collected, fertilised and implanted using a standard IVF technique.
Doctors said the new technique could revolutionise fertility treatment by allowing women to preserve their fertility by storing samples of ovarian tissue.
More than 20 people worldwide have undergone ovarian tissue transplants, but the latest operation is the first to successfully transplant the tissue into a different area of the body.
The transplant used Vali's own ovarian tissue, a sample of which was taken from her cancer-free ovary and frozen before her treatment.

Because she no longer had any ovaries following her treatment, doctors at Melbourne IVF and the Royal Melbourne Hospital grafted it onto the left and right sides of the front wall of her abdomen.
Hormone treatments were used to produce follicles and two eggs from the tissue, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Doctors at the hospital said they would now create an emergency centre which stores ovarian tissue from young women about to undergo medical treatments which could make them infertile.
It has already collected tissue from 300 women who it says could now have the option of becoming pregnant.
Prof Kate Stern, Vali's fertility specialist, said: "We have proven that ovarian tissue can still work and function normally outside the pelvis, which is its normal environment.
"For patients who have severe pelvic disease where we can't put the tissue back, we can now offer these patients the realistic chance of getting pregnant."

Read more -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10281865/Australian-woman-pregnant-after-pioneering-ovarian-transplant.html

NASCAR's Max Papis Says Slap from Mike Skeen's Girlfriend Dislocated His Jaw -

NASCAR's Max Papis Says Slap from Mike Skeen's Girlfriend Dislocated His Jaw - 



Heated confrontations are nothing new in the world of NASCAR, as emotions often run high on the track, but Max Papis found himself on the receiving end of a slap from an unexpected assailant following the Camping World Truck Series race in Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada on Sunday. Papis says he was slapped by fellow driver Mike Skeen's girlfriend, according to Marty Smith of ESPN.com.

The woman who slapped Papis has been identified as Kelly Heaphy, per Lee Spencer of Fox Sports.

Papis and Skeen were battling for third place late in the race, but they ultimately wrecked, which resulted in Papis finishing sixth and Skeen finishing 13th. Ordinarily, Papis and Skeen might have gotten into a shouting match or even a physical altercation after the race, but Heaphy took matters into her own hands.

As seen in this video courtesy of Queers4Gears on Twitter, she walked up to Papis following the race and absolutely walloped him on his left cheek.

Read more -

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1758747-nascars-max-papis-says-slap-from-mike-skeens-girlfriend-dislocated-his-jaw

London's 'Walkie Scorchie' skyscraper melted Jaguar parked on street... -

London's 'Walkie Scorchie' skyscraper melted Jaguar parked on street... - 



THE WALKIE Talkie skyscraper in the City has caused extensive damage to a Jaguar parked on a nearby street – as other drivers come forward to say it has also melted parts of their vehicles.

As revealed in City A.M. last week, the building’s unusual shape is reflecting an ultra bright light onto Eastcheap, with those unlucky enough to park below finding the beam is causing serious damage.

Martin Lindsay, director of a tiling company, said he was distraught to see the warped panels along the side of his high-spec Jaguar XJ.

He said: “They’re going to have to think of something. I’m gutted. How can they let this continue?”

He parked his Jaguar at 12.45pm on Thursday afternoon but when City A.M. visited an hour later there was a smell of burning plastic and some panels were beyond repair.

The building – dubbed the Walkie Scorchie after it began reflecting the ray of light that has left passers-by shielding their eyes – has also badly damaged a van parked nearby.

Eddie Cannon, a heating and air conditioning engineer, said his Vauxhall Vevaro had suffered similar damage on Wednesday: "The van looks a total mess – every bit of plastic on the left hand side and everything on the dashboard has melted, including a bottle of Lucozade that looks like it has been baked."

"When I got in the van it was a really strange light - like it was illuminated and they were filming. I want to know what effect it's having on people walking down the road."

Joint developers Land Securities and Canary Wharf said they are investigating, adding: “As a precautionary measure, the City of London has agreed to suspend three parking bays in the area which may be affected.”

Read more -

http://www.cityam.com/article/1378091289/exclusive-walkie-scorchie-melted-my-jag

Test 'reveals Facebook, Twitter and Google snoop on emails' -

Test 'reveals Facebook, Twitter and Google snoop on emails' - 



Facebook, Twitter and Google have been caught snooping on messages sent across their networks, new research claims, prompting campaigners to express concerns over privacy.
The findings emerged from  an experiment conducted following revelations by US security contractor Edward Snowden about government snooping on internet accounts.
Cyber-security company High-Tech Bridge set out to test the confidentiality of 50 of the biggest internet companies by using their systems to send a unique web address in private messages. 
Experts at its Geneva HQ then waited to see which companies clicked on the website. 
During the ten-day operation, six of the 50 companies tested were found to have opened the link. 
Among the six were Facebook, Twitter, Google and discussion forum Formspring.
High-Tech Bridge chief executive Ilia Kolochenko said: ‘We found they were clicking on links that should  be known only to the sender and recipient. 
'If the links are being opened, we cannot be sure that the contents of messages are not also being read. 
'All the social network sites would like to know as much as possible about our hobbies and shopping habits because the information has a commercial value.
‘The fact that only a few companies were trapped does not mean others are not monitoring their customers. They may simply be using different techniques which are more difficult to detect.’


Read more: -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2407949/Test-reveals-Facebook-Twitter-Google-snoop-emails-Study-net-giants-spurs-new-privacy-concerns.html

The image John Kerry WON'T want you to see: him pictured dining with Assad and his wife before war broke out in Syria -

The image John Kerry WON'T want you to see: him pictured dining with Assad and his wife before war broke out in Syria - 



This astonishing photograph shows U.S Secretary of State John Kerry having a cosy and intimate dinner with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Kerry - who compared Assad to Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein yesterday - is pictured around a small table with his wife and the Assads in 2009.
Assad and Kerry - who was then a senator for Massachusetts - lean in towards each other and appear deep in conversation as their wives look on. 
A waiter is pictured at their side with a tray of green drinks - which are believed to be lemon and crushed mint.


Read -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2408805/The-image-John-Kerry-WONT-want-U-S-Secretary-State-pictured-dining-Assad-wife-Damascus-restaurant-war-broke-Syria.html

Drug agents reportedly have access to bigger phone database than NSA's -

Drug agents reportedly have access to bigger phone database than NSA's - 



Federal and local drug officials reportedly have subpoena access to an AT&T database of phone calls whose size dwarfs any collection of data done by the National Security Agency.
The New York Times reports Monday that a counternarcotics program known as The Hemisphere Project involves the government paying AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units made up of both Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents and local detectives. The AT&T employees then supply law enforcement officials with all the phone data going back to 1987. 
By contrast, the NSA stores data for nearly all calls in the United States, including the phone numbers involved, the time the call was made, and the duration of the call, for a period of five years.
The program, which was started in 2007, covers every call that passes through an AT&T switch, not just calls made by AT&T customers, according to training slides seen by The Times that bear the logo of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. 
The slides were given to the paper by a Washington activist named Drew Hendricks, who said that he had received the slides, which were marked "Law enforcement sensitive," after making a series of public information inquiries to West Coast police agencies. 
The Obama administration has acknowledged that AT&T employees have been embedded in government drug units in at least three states, but says that the phone data is stored solely by AT&T, not by the government, and raises no privacy concerns. The data is retrieved through the use of so-called "administrative subpoenas" issued by the DEA, as opposed to a grand jury or judge.
A Justice Department spokesman told The Times "subpoenaing drug dealers’ phone records is a bread-and-butter tactic in the course of criminal investigations," and the Hemisphere program "simply streamlines the process of serving the subpoena to the phone company so law enforcement can quickly keep up with drug dealers when they switch phone numbers to try to avoid detection."
However, Jameel Jaffer, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that the Hemisphere Project raised "profound privacy concerns," adding "I’d speculate that one reason for the secrecy of the program is that it would be very hard to justify it to the public or the courts."


Read more: -

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/02/drug-agents-reportedly-have-access-to-bigger-phone-database-than-nsa/?test=latestnews

Bigger and healthier: European men grow 11cm in a century -

Bigger and healthier: European men grow 11cm in a century - 



The average height of European men grew by a surprising 11 centimetres from the early 1870s to 1980, reflecting significant improvements in health across the region, according to new research published on Monday.

Contrary to expectations, the study also found that average height accelerated in the period spanning the two World Wars and the Great Depression, when poverty, food rationing and hardship of war might have been expected to limit people's growth.

The swift advance may have been due to people deciding to have fewer children in this period, the researchers said, and smaller family size has previously been found to be linked to increasing average height.

"Increases in human stature are a key indicator of improvements in the average health of populations," said Timothy Hatton, a professor economics at Britain's University of Essex who led the study.

He said the evidence - which shows the average height of a European male growing from 167 cm to 178 cm in a little over a 100 years - suggests an environment of improving health and decreasing disease "is the single most important factor driving the increase in height".

The study, published online in the journal Oxford Economic Papers, analysed data on average men's height at around the age of 21 from the 1870s up to around 1980 in 15 European countries.

The study only looked at men, the researchers said, because extensive historical data on women's heights is hard to come by.

For the most recent decades, the data on men were mainly taken from height-by-age surveys, while for the earlier years the analysis used data for the heights of military conscripts and recruits.

On average, men's height had grown by 11 centimetres (cm) in just over a century, the researchers found, but there were differences from country to country.

In Spain, for example, average male height rose by around 12 cm from just under 163 cm in 1871-1875 to just under 175 cm in 1971-5, while in Sweden, men's average height increased by 10 cm from just over 170 cm to almost 180 cm in the same period.

The researchers found that in many European countries - including Britain and Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and Germany - there was a "distinct quickening" in the pace of advance in the period spanning the two World Wars and the Great Depression.

"This is striking because the period largely predates the wide implementation of major breakthroughs in modern medicine and national health services," they wrote.

Hatton said one possible reason, alongside the decline in infant mortality, for the rapid growth of average male height in this period was that there was a strong downward trend in fertility at the time - and smaller family sizes have previously been found to be linked to increasing height.

Other height-boosting factors included higher per capita incomes, more sanitary housing and living conditions, better education about health and nutrition and better social services and health systems.

Read more -

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/01/health-europe-height-idUSL6N0GV29X20130901?feedType=RSS&feedName=rbssHealthcareNews&rpc=22

Pennsylvania hospital to open country's first inpatient treatment program for Internet addiction -

Pennsylvania hospital to open country's first inpatient treatment program for Internet addiction - 



Ten years ago, Kevin Roberts suffered from an addiction that took over his life.
Roberts, now 44 years old, would sit eight to 12 hours a day in front of the pale blue glow of his computer, playing a videogame. During holidays, he "binged," spending nearly all his waking hours at his keyboard. Finally, a friend who had been through Alcoholics Anonymous told him he displayed all the same characteristics of an addict.
"Like most addicts, I went through a series of self-deception," said Roberts, who documented his struggle with addiction in his book, "Cyber Junkie: Escape the Gaming and Internet Trap."  
The story of Roberts, who came to grips with his addiction through years of therapy and spiritual retreats, is not unique. Treatment facilities have sprung up in recent years, but a psychiatric hospital in central Pennsylvania is now set to become the country's first facility of its kind to offer an inpatient treatment program for people it diagnoses with severe Internet addiction.
The voluntary, 10-day program is set to open on Sept. 9 at the Behavioral Health Services at Bradford Regional Medical Center. The program was organized by experts in the field and cognitive specialists with backgrounds in treating more familiar addictions like drug and alcohol abuse.
"[Internet addiction] is a problem in this country that can be more pervasive than alcoholism," said Dr. Kimberly Young, the psychologist who founded the non-profit program. "The Internet is free, legal and fat free."


Read more: -

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/09/01/pennsylvania-hospital-to-open-country-first-inpatient-treatment-program-for/