Dr. Irv Binik investigates pain during intercourse For some women sex can be uncomfortable. For others it can be downright painful. Dr. Irv Binik, a Psychology professor at McGill and director of the Royal Victoria Sex and Couples Therapy Service is trying to ease the pain. He has been studying the problem of sex-associated pain in women, paying particular attention to two recurrent acute conditions, pain during or after intercourse (dyspareunia) and involuntary spasms of the vagina (vaginismus). "At the hospital I saw an unusually large number of women all complaining of pain during intercourse," says Dr. Binik of how he got involved in such research. But it was one particular patient who really alerted him to the problem. She had come to him in pain and was exasperated by the suggestion that she should consult yet another gynecologist. Dr. Binik remembers the encounter: "I said, she's absolutely right. Why am I sending her to a gynecologist? I am a psychologist, I'm supposed to know about pain." Dr. Binik soon found out that women who experience pain during intercourse have very few options. "I basically learned that there was almost no research, almost no clinical intervention. People assumed it was a physical problem or a sexual problem. Nobody focused on the pain." So with the help of some devoted graduate students and an open-minded McGill gynecologist (Dr. Samir Khalifé), Dr. Binik set out to delve more deeply into the topic.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2297 - Posted: 07.13.2002

Copyright © 2002 AP Online By CHRISTOPHER WILLS, Associated Press - More and more smokers are trying to kick the habit rather than pay higher cigarette taxes in states from New York to Hawaii, anti-smoking groups say. "Do the tax increases make more people want to quit? You better believe it," said Helene Zarember, who runs a smoking cessation group at Beth-Israel Medical Center in New York. Her group, usually eight or nine members, has jumped to 19 since higher city and state taxes drove the price for a pack of cigarettes to more than $7, the highest in the nation. A similar program at the city's Metropolitan Hospital Center saw referrals during the first 12 days of July jump 62 percent from a year ago. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2296 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Copyright © 2002 AP Online By STEVE BAILEY, Associated Press LEXINGTON, Ky. - A drug used to quit smoking and treat depression helps obese people lose weight and keep it off, researchers report. The drug, bupropion SR, is sold as Wellbutrin for depression and Zyban for nicotine addiction. In a yearlong study, it was shown to help reduce weight and keep it off when combined with diet and exercise, said Dr. James Anderson, professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky's College of Medicine. About 51 million Americans are obese and another 61 million are overweight, according to the American Obesity Association. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Keyword: Depression; Obesity
Link ID: 2295 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Bruce Bower In a discovery that upends the study of human origins, scientists have unearthed remains of what they say is the earliest known member of the human evolutionary family. Investigators led by anthropologist Michel Brunet of the University of Poitiers in France estimate that the creature, officially dubbed Sahelanthropus tchadensis, lived between 7 million and 6 million years ago. The researchers call their find Toumaï, which means "hope of life" in the language of an African group that resides near the fossil site. The nearly complete skull, two lower-jaw fragments, and three isolated teeth attributed to this previously unknown hominid hold a pair of major surprises. First, a small braincase like that of living chimpanzees connects to a face and teeth resembling those of bigger-brained hominids dating to 1.75 million years ago, perhaps even early Homo specimens. No one had predicted that elements of later skulls—in particular, a short, relatively flat face, pronounced brow ridge, and small canine teeth—coexisted with a chimp-size brain in early hominids. From Science News, Vol. 162, No. 2, July 13, 2002, p. 19. Copyright ©2002 Science Service. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 2294 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GARY TAUBES If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it. They spend 30 years ridiculing Robert Atkins, author of the phenomenally-best-selling ''Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'' and ''Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,'' accusing the Manhattan doctor of quackery and fraud, only to discover that the unrepentant Atkins was right all along. Or maybe it's this: they find that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America. Or, just possibly this: they find out both of the above are true. When Atkins first published his ''Diet Revolution'' in 1972, Americans were just coming to terms with the proposition that fat -- particularly the saturated fat of meat and dairy products -- was the primary nutritional evil in the American diet. Atkins managed to sell millions of copies of a book promising that we would lose weight eating steak, eggs and butter to our heart's desire, because it was the carbohydrates, the pasta, rice, bagels and sugar, that caused obesity and even heart disease. Fat, he said, was harmless. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 2293 - Posted: 07.08.2002

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN BARCELONA, Spain, — The vast majority of young gay and bisexual men in the United States who were found to have the AIDS virus in a new study were unaware of their infection, according to findings reported as the 14th International AIDS Conference opened here today. The rates of unawareness among minority gay men ages 15 to 29 in the study were staggeringly high. Among those found to have H.I.V., the AIDS virus, 90 percent of blacks, 70 percent of Hispanics and 60 percent of whites said they did not know they were infected. Most of these infected men perceived themselves to be at low risk of being infected, despite having engaged in frequent high-risk sex like unprotected anal intercourse, said Duncan MacKellar, an epidemiologist from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which conducted the study. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2292 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By CARLA BARANAUCKAS Dr. W. Maxwell Cowan, an internationally known neurobiologist and a retired vice president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, died June 30 at his home in Rockville, Md. He was 70. The cause was prostate cancer, said the Robert A. Pumphrey Funeral Home in Bethesda, Md. As the chief scientific officer of the Hughes Institute, Dr. Cowan played a central role in determining how millions of dollars for biomedical research was directed from 1987 to 2000. The institute, which was founded by Howard Hughes and has an endowment of about $11 billion, employs about 350 university scientists known as Hughes investigators and finances their research. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 2291 - Posted: 07.08.2002

The Dynamic Brain Atlas could be a giant leap forward for neuroscience BY THOMAS K. GROSE When a doctor looks at a patient's brain scan, some problems are immediately clear. Tumors, for instance, aren't easily hidden. Other subtle abnormalities are harder to detect, however. So for years, doctors have relied on brain atlases — compendiums of scans of normal brains in book form — to make comparisons and spot differences. But book atlases are far from infallible. "The traditional atlas is an extrapolation of the general population," explains Jo Hajnal, a physicist at the MRC Clinical Services Centre at London's Imperial College. "They contain only whatever the preparer thought was useful," he adds. Now computer technology is giving physicians a much more powerful diagnostic tool: brain atlas images customized to each patient. Hajnal is part of a team of researchers at Imperial College and King's College London that has devised a Dynamic Brain Atlas, which runs from a networked laptop. The current prototype can access hundreds of images stored in databases around the world and create a composite image that closely approximates each patient's brain. Copyright © 2002 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 2290 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Georgina Kenyon Tracey Sullivan, 30 of Kew, London always feels terrible in the mornings. She has done ever since she was a teenager. At least she did until she started sleeping every second night. "I think I've cracked it. All this time I think I have been running on a 48 hour clock," she claimed. Chronic tiredness is a common problem, especially among the over-worked in London. But most people believe they need more sleep, not less. "When I tried to sleep properly each night, about six or seven hours, I could never wake up properly. When the alarm went off at 7am, I could hardly drag myself to work each day and I would not wake up totally until late afternoon," said Tracey. (C) BBC

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 2289 - Posted: 07.07.2002

A study of African tribes found that the one with a fish-based diet had lower levels of a hormone which influences appetite. It suggests that people eating a fish-rich diet may find it easier to control their appetite - and perhaps their weight. The tribes came from neighbouring regions, and ate a diet with the same number of calories - but composed of different types of food. One was predominantly fish-based, while the other ate a vegetarian diet. Researchers, from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, looked at the levels of a hormone called leptin in men and women. This hormone is produced by fat cells, and its role, in people with normal weight, is to tell people when they have had enough food. (C) BBC

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 2288 - Posted: 07.07.2002

Scientists have stumbled on a secret weapon against snails and slugs. They have discovered the garden pests are poisoned by caffeine. A strong cup of coffee is enough to send the creatures into a writhing frenzy, followed soon by death. Scientists think caffeine acts as a potent neurotoxin against the pests. The finding may be of use to gardeners and commercial growers. Slugs and snails are notoriously difficult to deter from attacking plants. The chemicals currently used to control them are not permitted as residues on food crops. (C) BBC

Keyword: Neurotoxins
Link ID: 2287 - Posted: 07.07.2002

Workaholics, take note: new research indicates that morning sleep and afternoon naps aid mental and physical learning. Scientists have known for some time that sleep can improve the brain’s acquisition of new facts and skills, but its effect on previously learned knowledge was not known. To that end, two studies published this month in the journals Neuron and Nature Neuroscience suggest that snoozing can reverse "burnout" from information overload and improve motor skill development. In the first study, Sara Mednick of Harvard University and her colleagues investigated the role of sleep in perceptual learning by training subjects to report the direction of colored bars superimposed on other lines on a computer screen. Their performance progressively worsened throughout the day. If the researchers allowed individuals to nap for 30 minutes, however, the deterioration halted; a one-hour snooze enabled performance to bounce back to initial morning levels. © 1996-2002 Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Sleep; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 2286 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By GINA KOLATA IT seems a fairly obvious idea: when science experiments are successful, the results are published in a well-respected journal for all to see and the body of human knowledge expands. But the sad truth about science is that most experiments fail and the hypotheses that seduced researchers turn out not to be true or, at least, the studies provide no evidence that they are true. Are such studies any less important, any less successful? And what happens to them? Generally, if the negative studies are large and the hypotheses well known, they will be published. That happened, for example, with studies of thousands of cellphone users finding no evidence that cellphone radiation predisposes to brain cancer. It also happened with a study published last month finding no evidence that men who had vasectomies are more likely to get prostate cancer. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 2285 - Posted: 07.07.2002

Our bodies may look symmetric from the outside, but inside, organs such as the heart or the liver are tucked or oriented to the left or right. New research suggests that fluid driven by tiny swirling hairs called cilia may activate certain genes in the growing embryo that lay the groundwork for this asymmetry. Based on experiments with mice, some scientists had speculated that cilia nestled in a dimple at the top of the embryo called the node might push fluid down the left side of the embryo, carrying a signal that somehow triggers certain genes to activate. Other scientists doubted the idea. The new experiments suggest that the cilia-driven flow is indeed important. Researchers led by developmental biologist Hiroshi Hamada at the University of Osaka used a pump to reverse the normal leftward flow of fluid over mouse embryos. This caused two key genes normally activated solely on the left side of the body to be expressed on the right side, the team reports in the 4 July issue of Nature. Copyright © 2002 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Laterality; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 2284 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Hormone links obesity and insulin resistance in mice, but doubts persist about impact on type 2 diabetes research By Eugene Russo Diabetes researchers have long known about the connection between obesity and insulin resistance, but they have yet to identify the hormonal machinery responsible for that connection. In this Hot Paper, published 18 months ago, investigators appeared to have uncovered a major part of that machinery when they discovered the resistin hormone in mice.1 More recent findings, however, have cast doubt on resistin's relevance in human diabetes. Senior author Mitchell Lazar, director of the University of Pennsylvania Diabetes Center, notes two major factors that helped lead his group to discover resistin. First, based on findings related to leptin, the now infamous hormonal fat-regulator, Lazar knew that fat not only serves to store energy, but also helps communicate with other tissues. Leptin, and other fat-secreted molecules, are proof that fat cells make unique signaling molecules that communicate with other parts of the body. 1. C.M. Steppan et al., "The hormone resistin links obesity to diabetes," Nature, 409:307-12, Jan.18, 2001. The Scientist 16[14]:39, Jul. 8, 2002 © Copyright 2002, The Scientist, Inc. All rights reserved.

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 2283 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON - New studies reveal that a learned compensatory response can trigger "drug tolerance," a physiological process central to addiction. Drug tolerance makes people need more and more drug to get the same effect, whether pain relief or a "high." Its newly discovered psychological aspect -- in which a drug-predictive cue primes the body to react "as if" the drug effect is imminent -- might be used to treat addiction more effectively. In short, if drug tolerance can be learned, there is a chance it can be unlearned, reducing or eliminating the tolerance-related cravings and other withdrawal symptoms that can lead addicts to relapse. The findings appear in the July issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes , which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA). This study used rats, but addiction researchers frequently generalize from rats to humans because "rats, like humans, can become dependent on addictive drugs, and display drug tolerance and drug withdrawal symptoms," says co-author Shepard Siegel, Ph.D., of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. © PsycNET 2002 American Psychological Association

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 2282 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Scientists have discovered a reason why having sex could be bad for your health.The research reveals that hormones are the key to mating insects having a shorter life expectancy. The findings may also give clues as to why the same principle appears to hold true for other creatures - including humans. Mealworm beetles, more commonly bought as food for pet reptiles and birds, were used in the research by Dr Jens Rolff and Dr Michael Siva-Jothy at the University of Sheffield. A hormone released after mating adversely affected an enzyme vital to keep the immune system functioning. The beetles were therefore more susceptible to infection, and less likely to live as long. (C) BBC

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2281 - Posted: 07.06.2002

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition Drugs such as Viagra should work for some women - especially if they have a big G spot. This spot, famed for producing spectacular orgasms, turns out to be awash with the enzymes that these drugs act on. The term G spot, coined by Ernest Gräfenberg in 1950, refers to an area a few centimetres up inside the vagina on the side closest to a woman's stomach (see diagram). Buried in the flesh here are the Skene's glands, the female equivalent of the prostate gland. In men, the prostate produces the watery component of semen. In women, Skene's glands are also thought to produce a watery substance that may explain female "ejaculation". The tissue surrounding these glands, which includes the part of the clitoris that reaches up inside the vagina, swells with blood during sexual arousal. And there's some evidence that nerves in the area produce an orgasm different to one produced by clitoral stimulation. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2280 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News — Lizards, it seems, have a fancy for television, when the programming suits their tastes. Australian biologists have found that male Jacky dragons, Amphibolurus muricatus, can get just as riled by videos of aggressive territorial males as by the real thing. In a test to demonstrate that reptiles can perceive video images similar to the way humans can, male Jacky dragons responded to video lizards as if they were the real things. It opens up doors to more research on how reptiles and other animals communicate with one another, as well as how communication evolved among animals. "It's studying lizards, but it's a model system for how behavior evolved," said animal behavior biologist Terry Ord, who recently moved from Macquarie University, in Australia to Indiana University. Ord and his Macquarie University colleagues published their work in the current issue of the journal Animal Behavior. Copyright © 2002 Discovery Communications Inc

Keyword: Aggression; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 2279 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By ADAM LIPTAK FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., — The unsolicited Prozac arrived in a hand-addressed manila envelope. It came from a Walgreens drugstore not far from here, and there was a "Dear Patient" form letter inside. "Enclosed you will find a free one month trial of Prozac Weekly," it said. "Congratulations on being one step to full recovery." The mailing infuriated one recipient, a 59-year-old home caregiver who filed a class-action lawsuit this week in state court here. "They're going after me because I have a problem," said the caregiver, who agreed to an interview in her lawyer's office here on the condition that her name be withheld. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 2278 - Posted: 06.24.2010