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New IVF
procedure could triple success rate  THOUSANDS of infertile couples could benefit from a new in vitro fertilisation
(IVF) procedure that can dramatically improve the success rate of having a baby through artificial reproduction.Further “prospective” studies comparing the technique to existing methods of embryo selection are still needed before the procedure is recommended as standard. — Thinkstockphotos The moth that made mobile phone companies sit up and listen
Prof Yash
Pal THIS UNIVERSE |
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New IVF
procedure could triple success rate THOUSANDS of infertile couples could benefit from a new in vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedure that can dramatically improve the success rate of having a baby through artificial reproduction. Scientists believe they can double or even triple the proportion of healthy babies born as a result of fertility treatment with a relatively simple technique that takes a series of time-lapse photographs of the developing IVF embryos. On average only about 24 per cent of IVF embryos implanted into women in the UK lead to live births, but the researchers believe this could be increased to 78 per cent using the new technique for selecting the best embryos. “I believe it is the most exciting breakthrough we’ve had in probably 30 years,” said Professor Simon Fishel, managing director of the CARE Fertility Group, where the technique was developed. “Every IVF practice in the world is unintentionally and unwittingly putting back into the womb unviable embryos that don’t make babies,” Professor Fishel said. “We hope to see a paradigm shift in terms of IVF. It’s a game changer for everybody to have such an uplift in live birth rates. This is the beginning of something revelatory,” he said Each year, licensed clinics in Britain carry out about 60,000 IVF treatments but most of them end in failure, causing immense emotional upset to couples, many of whom have paid between £5,000 and £10,000 for each treatment cycle. The new procedure, which costs £750, identifies the best embryos to be implanted into the womb based on the time it has taken to develop between two key stages in the early life-cycle of the embryo. Thousands of time-lapse pictures are taken during the first few days of an IVF embryo’s life and these are used to identify the time between the first appearance of the fluid-filled cavity, called the blastula, and the final moment before the embryo “hatches” from its protective shell. Scientists have discovered that when this period lasts longer than about six hours, the IVF embryo is likely to be carrying an abnormal number of chromosomes, called aneuploidy, which will lead to a failure of the pregnancy. A preliminary study, published in the journal Reproductive Medicine Online and based on a retrospective analysis of 88 IVF embryos of 69 couples, found that the time-lapse technique could have improved the success rate of life births in this particular group of patients from 39 per cent to 61 per cent. Even better success rates can be expected once the procedure is refined and applied to the wider population of infertile couples seeking IVF treatment, Professor Fishel said. “Our work has shown that we can easily classify embryos into low or high risk of being chromosomally abnormal. This is important because in itself this is the largest single cause of IVF failure and miscarriage,” he said. “The beauty of this technology is that the information is provided by a non-invasive process. So far we have seen a 56 per cent uplift compared to conventional technology, giving our patients the equivalent to a 78 per cent live-birth rate,” he added. Normally, IVF embryos in an incubator are checked manually each day by embryologists but the time-lapse cameras are able to do this automatically by taking pictures every 10 minutes without interfering with embryo development, said Alison Campbell, embryology director at Care Fertility in Nottingham, who developed the computer algorithm controlling the analysis. “With time-lapse we have the ability to view more than 5,000 images over the same time period to observe and measure more closely each stage of division and growth. As a result of continuous monitoring we have demonstrated that delays at defined points indicate abnormal development,” Ms Campbell said. Martin Johnson, a fertility expert and editor of the journal where the work is published, said further “prospective” studies comparing the technique to existing methods of embryo selection are still needed before the procedure is recommended as standard treatment. “There are caveats with this research…and for these reasons we have to be cautious,” he said. Sue Avery, director of Birmingham Women’s Fertility Centre, said: “Unfortunately, the study does not compare this exciting new approach with standard practise in embryology in which embryologists already look for the best embryos to place in the womb. Until the new technique is compared to current practise we cannot know whether different embryos are being chosen.” — The Independent
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The moth that made mobile phone companies sit up and listen THE greater wax moth has the best hearing of any animal in the world — a discovery which has the potential to revolutionise microphone technology in everything from mobile phones to hearing aids. Researchers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow have discovered that the insect, which is found across the UK, is capable of hearing sound frequencies of up to 3,00,000 hertz (300kHz) — more than 100 times higher than the whiniest human voice and fifteen times the maximum frequency that can be heard by the sharpest-eared teenagers. Furthermore, with a lower hearing-register of just 20Hz, the insect — nicknamed the “honeycomb moth” due to its larvae’s penchant for the yellow stuff — also has the widest range of any creature in the animal kingdom. To put this in context, normal human speech is between a few hundred and 3,000Hz. A typical person’s hearing peaks at about 20kHz at around 18, dropping to about 10kHz by middle age. Even dolphins, who are known to be comfortable with high pitches, stop hearing at 160kHz. Dr James Windmill, who led the research project, believes that the moth has evolved to sense such high frequencies as protection from its main predator, the bat. Bats communicate using similar sounds to moths, with some species able to sense frequencies as high as 212 kHz. “It means the moth can hear the bat a long time before the bat can hear the moth, so the moths can stop calling each other and hide,” said Dr Windmill, pointing out that as a nocturnal insect the moth is a prime target for bats. The discovery of the moth’s hearing prowess has potentially huge implications for the development of microphone technology, Dr Windmill added. “I am very interested to see how the moth’s ear works generally to help make better, and smaller, microphones.” he said. “These could be put in a wide range of devices such as mobile phones and hearing aids,”Dr Windmill is also working to adapt the moth’s “echolocation” technology. This enables the very poor-sighted insect to navigate by bouncing sounds off nearby surfaces and using the reflected noises to determine the distance and direction of objects. “This could be used to enable robots to communicate and find their way around. You could put them in situations like testing oil platforms and nuclear installations that would be dangerous to humans,” Dr Windmill said. — The Independent
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THIS UNIVERSE Man landed on the moon using the Apollo rocket in 1969, and now India has sent Chandrayan using PSLV. Did both the rockets travel on nearly the same path? Was the path a circular one? You would recall that the Chandrayan vehicle made several elliptical excursions moon-wards before it was close enough to be given a lateral thrust to enter the moon orbit. The number of excursions depends on the mission planning and does not necessarily reflect on the quality of the launch mission. I do not off-hand remember the number of excursions the Apollo mission made, but I can definitely state the travel path of that historical moon shot could not have been very different from what we did for the Chandrayah mission. Moon distance and direction from Cape Caneveral cannot be very different from those from Sri Harikota. Whenever we switch on any rotating electric machine, why does it always rotate in anticlockwise direction? I really cannot think of a physical reason. Must be a convention started by some major electrical manufacturer. Is Earth Hour observed globally beneficial for our planet or is it merely a practice to encourage people to go green? I think it is to make us think that we need to care for the earth more than we do. Even the big earth can be hurt. It is good for us to be made aware of this.
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Trends
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: In a scene right out of Star Trek, a Texas company is developing a 3-D food printer for astronauts to create custom meals on the fly. With support from NASA, the firm, Systems and Materials Research Corp of Austin, intends to design, build and test a food printer that can work in space. “This project is to demonstrate we can create and change the nutrition of the food and be able to print it in a low-gravity environment,” the company’s research director and lead chemist, David Irvin, said. Three-dimensional printers create solid objects by depositing droplets of material one layer at a time. Kepler space telescope’s planet-hunting days may be over CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: NASA’s first telescope dispatched to hunt for earth-like planets that may support life elsewhere in the universe has lost use of its positioning system, threatening its mission, officials said on Wednesday. Launched in 2009, the Kepler space telescope needs at least three of its four wheels operating to hunt for planets. It lost that ability this week when a second steadying spinning wheel stopped working. The telescope lost use of its first wheel last year. Meteoroid impact triggers bright flash on the moon CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: An automated telescope monitoring the moon has captured images of an 40-kg rock slamming into the lunar surface, creating a bright flash of light, NASA scientists said. The explosion on March 17 was the biggest seen since NASA began watching the moon for meteoroid impacts about eight years ago. So far, more than 300 strikes have been recorded. —
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