STEM CELLS IN OVARIES MAY GIVE WOMEN MORE EGGS.

Contrary to the belief that women are born with a finite number of eggs, there may in fact be a way to replenish the supply, a new study suggests.

Researchers have isolated stem cells from adult human ovaries that appear to be capable of producing eggs.

The new findings follow a number of recent studies that have suggested such stem cells exist in adult mice, and can give rise to healthy offspring in animals that have had their fertility destroyed by chemotherapy. However, these studies have been controversial, because they go against years of research suggesting otherwise, experts say.

In the new study, the researchers devised a more rigorous way to isolate these cells, and for the first time, suggested their existence in people.

If true, the findings could have implications for women's fertility treatments. Currently, women who choose to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) for infertility must endure hormone injections so doctors can retrieve eggs for fertilization, said study researcher Jonathan Tilly, director of the Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. But if researchers could isolate egg-producing stem cells from ovaries, it might be possible to conduct that whole process outside the body, Tilly said.

"That whole program of IVF… becomes a non-necessity," Tilly said.

The study is published online Feb. 26 in the journal Nature Medicine.

Egg Stem Cells
In the new study, Tilly and colleagues isolated egg-producing stem cells from human ovary tissue by targeting a protein found on the surface of only these cells. In dishes, the cells grew into cells that had properties of human eggs. For instance, they had half the genetic material of other cells in the body.

Next, to show the stem cells could produce eggs, the researchers placed a gene into the stem cells that made them glow green, placed the stem cells into human ovarian tissue (taken during a biopsy), and grafted this tissue into mice. One to two weeks later, this tissue contained egg cells glowing green, showing they had formed from the stem cells, the researchers said.

The researchers don't yet know if these egg cells could be fertilized to produce children. The United States does not allow human eggs to be fertilized for research purposes. The researchers also don't know whether these egg-producing stem cells are active throughout a woman's life, or only when they receive a particular signal, Tilly said, although the researchers have a follow-up study planned to address this question.

Still a Controversy

"It's very novel and it's very exciting," said Dr. Sandra Carson, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, at Brown University's Women & Infants Hospital, who was not involved in the study.

"It certainly makes sense that there would be those stem cells still there," said Carson, noting men have stem cells that produce sperm throughout life.

However, other researchers say the new paper does not resolve the controversy of whether egg-producing cells exist in adult ovaries.

"I would like to see better characterization of this very small pool of cells that may be present in the ovary," said Dr. Marco Conti, professor and director of the Center for Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Conti noted that some properties of the egg-producing cells described in this study do not match descriptions from previous studies.

And the paper still does not address whether these cells have any role in adult humans.

"There is no real functional evidence that this pool of cells indeed contributes to [egg formation] in the adult," Conti said.

But if these cells do in fact work in the way the researchers suspect, it might be possible to grow and mature them in an environment that resembles an ovary, Carson said.

In addition, unlike human eggs, these stem cells can be frozen without damage, Tilly said, so it may be possible to store them for future use.

Tilly is a co-founder of OvaScience, Inc, which has licensed the commercial potential of these findings for development of new fertility-enhancing procedures.

The number of egg-producing stem cells appear to be quite minute. In mice, they make up about 0.014 percent of all cells in the ovary, Tilly said.

Discovery.

Mystery virus kills thousands of lambs.

The worst affected counties are Norfolk, Suffolk, East Sussex and Kent, but the virus has spread all along the south coast to Cornwall

Thousands of lambs have been killed by a new virus that is threatening the survival of many British farms.

The Schmallenberg virus causes lambs to be born dead or with serious deformities such as fused limbs and twisted necks, which mean they cannot survive.

Scientists are urgently trying to find out how the disease, which also affects cattle, spreads and how to fight it, as the number of farms affected increases by the day.

So far, 74 farms across southern and eastern England have been hit by the virus, which arrived in this country in January.

A thousand farms in Europe have reported cases since the first signs of the virus were seen in the German town of Schmallenberg last summer.

The National Farmers Union has called it a potential “catastrophe” and warned farmers to be vigilant. “This is a ticking time bomb,” said Alastair Mackintosh, of the NFU. “We don’t yet know the extent of the disease. We only find out the damage when sheep and cows give birth, and by then it’s too late.”

It is unclear exactly how the disease arrived in Britain, but the leading theory is that midges carried the virus across the Channel or North Sea in the autumn. However, scientists cannot yet rule out transmission of the disease from animal to animal.

Infected ewes do not show any symptoms of the virus until they give birth, with horrific results. Farmers have described delivering the deformed and stillborn animals as heartbreaking.

The lambing season has only just begun, which means that the full impact of the disease will not be felt until the weather warms up and millions more animals are born.

On the Continent, some farms have lost half of their lambs. So far the worst hit in Britain have lost 20 per cent, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Approximately 16 million lambs are born in Britain every year and sell at market for about £100 each. The effect of the disease on farms that are already struggling in the downturn could be severe.

“For any business to lose 20 per cent of your stock would be a huge blow,” said Mr Mackintosh. “For a farmer to lose 20 per cent of your flock is catastrophic. If it was 50 per cent you would be put out of action.

“I was talking to one who has 10,000 sheep. If he loses even five per cent of the animals born this year, that’s a hell of a lot of lambs. I know another who says 10 per cent of his ewes have become barren. He has 6,000 ewes, so that is 600 animals producing nothing.”

The Food Standards Agency has sought to allay any fears about eating lamb, although little is known about the virus so far.

The Agency said: “Any risk to consumers through the food chain is likely to be low. No illness has been reported to date in humans exposed to animals infected with Schmallenberg virus.”

The worst affected counties are Norfolk, Suffolk, East Sussex and Kent, but the virus has spread all along the south coast to Cornwall.

Farmers fear the disease may spread to larger flocks in the north of England, Wales and Scotland. In Europe, Germany, Holland and France have suffered worst, while recent cases have been reported in Italy and Luxembourg.

John, a farmer from East Sussex who wanted to remain anonymous, said he had lost 40 out of 400 lambs so far, at a cost to his business of more than £4,000.

“I’ve had to put more lambs down in the past month than I have done in the past 20 years. Every one is a serious blow to our finances. But it’s an emotional thing too,” he said.

There are also fears that the virus may be seen later this year among cows, which have a longer gestation period.

Five of the British farms have seen cattle affected, with calves aborted at six months of pregnancy.

Cows are thought to be more robust than sheep and therefore more resistant, but Schmallenberg virus could still reduce milk yields and put pressure on a dairy industry that is already suffering, says Mr Mackintosh. “From what I hear, we are likely to see weak calves that take a lot of expense and nursing to get going again. Having to do that will hit a business hard.”

The last confirmed midge-borne virus to hit the British farming industry was bluetongue in 2007, but a series of trade restrictions and a vaccine averted disaster.

This time there is no vaccine, and Defra says a ban on imports would not work, because the disease “is already here”. A spokesman said: “Defra is taking this seriously. We track emerging diseases. There is work going on across Europe and the amount we know is improving rapidly. We are keeping everything under review.”

Its website says “farmers and vets should remain vigilant and report any suspicious cases to AHVLA [the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency] for testing as part of our enhanced surveillance”. However, farmers are not yet legally required to notify authorities of an outbreak, leading some in the industry to fear it may already be much more widespread than figures suggest.

Nigel Miller, the president of the NFU in Scotland said: “The escalation and range of cases is deeply concerning and some experts are now suggesting that the volume of cases being seen is an indication that this is, in fact, the second year of infection.

“If that is the case then it raises the worrying prospect that the virus may have an effective overwintering mechanism.”

The AHVLA identifies Schmallenberg as one of a group of viruses “typically primarily spread by biting insect vectors, such as midges and mosquitoes, although the routes of Schmallenberg virus transmission have not yet been confirmed. The potential for direct transmission (ie direct from one animal to another) is therefore, as yet, unknown.”

It said: “There is unlikely to be a risk to human health from Schmallenberg virus; but this is not yet certain.”

Telegraph.

Рухнул Жилой Дом.

Chris Brown Didn't Want You To Know That He Was At RiRi's Birthday Party

I've already posted one picture of Chris Brown's mouth-breathing face today and we're all going to sleep in a shell made of roach motels after watchingPimp Mama Kris give birth to the Kardashians, so I figured that we've all been put through enough horrifying disgustingness for today and deserve a bouquet of kittens! Because even though the story below is some head shaking shit, it won't be that annoying when you've got a bouquet of young pussies to distract you for a second. Just don't tell me that the kitten in the middle is suffocating.

Outraged parents of America, organize your RiRi CD burning parties, because she's definitely riding on Chris Brown's skinny yard stick dick again. TMZ says that Chris went to RiRi's birthday party at the Hearst Mansion on Monday night and behaved like the ass bag that he is by making everybody sign a confidentiality agreement before he went inside. That party was obviously full of dumb bitches, because most of them signed an agreement stating that they will not tell the media that Chris was at RiRi's party. Once Chris' bodyguards collected all the signed agreements, the spoiled piece of shit went inside and spent most of the night getting on RiRi. Chris' rep says that he was at the party, but he only made the workers and people who took his picture sign the agreements.

There's also a rumor that Chris will sing on RiRi's Birthday Cake (Remix). I think an Ike & Tina cover would be more appropriate, but that's just me.

Chris Brown and RiRi hugging each other at her party after he made her guests sign some stupid shit is the reason why we can roll our eyes. Sometimes you just have to respond to a story with a lukewarm: whatthefuckever. Let's look at cake instead!

Yes, that is RiRi's actual cake. At first I thought it was Mousie from Mi Vida Loca riding a severed uncut dick or a piece of white dog shit. Then I figured out that it was RiRi riding a giant joint. RiR's cake, please meetCakewrecks. Leave it to RiRi to make a delicious joint look like a visual dry heave. The pimple on my nipple looks more like RiRi that that shit on her cake does.

My 6-year-old self could've made a better cake in my sister's half-broken Easy Bake Oven and I was dumber then than I am now (or is it, I was smarter then than I am now?). RiRi's party sounds about as pleasant as sucking on a urinal cake. You've got RiRi and Chris making out in the corner and an ugly cake. Every single ho at the party could probably tell exactly how many tiles were on the ceiling, because that's what they stared at all night since it was the only safe place for their eyes to go.

Dlisted

Happy Valentines Day to Игорь Игорь.

PREHISTORIC FLYING REPTILE HAD MASSIVE TEETH

The enormous pearly white choppers were probably mostly used to scare off others.

• The world's largest toothed pterosaur, Coloborhynchus capito, had teeth measuring up to 4 inches long each.
• The big, curved teeth were probably used to catch fish and also possibly to scare off others.
• Although this pterosaur was large, with an estimated 23-foot wingspan, other pterosaurs, such as the enormous Quetzalcoatlus, grew to even larger sizes.

Paleontologists have identified the world’s largest toothed pterosaur, which probably used its enormous pearly whites to scare off others.

The species, Coloborhynchus capito, is also now the world’s largest known toothed pterosaur, with a wingspan up to around 23 feet. A paper describing the prehistoric flying reptile will be published in the April issue of the journal Cretaceous Research.

The first two teeth of each jaw projected forwards and may have been 3 inches long, and the two teeth behind it would have been a bit longer at 4 inches,” said co-author David Martill, a professor in the University of Portsmouth’s Palaeobiology Research Group, told Discovery News.

Together (the teeth) formed a sort of rosette that interlocked when the jaws were closed,” he added, saying that they might have been used in “threatening displays" and for catching fish.

Martill and colleague David Unwin of the University of Leicester made the discovery after analyzing a fragmentary, yet toothy, fossil housed within the collections of the Natural History Museum, London.

The fossil was unearthed from the Cretaceous Cambridge Greensand of eastern England, revealing that the pterosaur lived around 100 million years ago during what is known as the Albian stage.

During that time, Cambridge was under the sea. But Martill said there might have been a low island to the south where London is now. The climate was tropical then. Based on other fossil finds, the region was teaming with life. Fish, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, crocodiles, turtles, dinosaurs (including prehistoric birds), and different types of pterosaurs all lived in the area.

Unlike dinosaurs, which live on today through birds, pterosaurs have no modern day descendants. They were “a sort of cousin to dinosaurs,” according to Martill, and they bit the earthly dust 65.5 million years ago, when the world’s non-avian dinosaurs also went extinct.

Darren Naish, a palaeozoologist at the University of Southampton, told Discovery News that researchers have been interested in the size extremes of pterosaurs, since these animals were often gigantic and yet could also fly. The new paper, he said, tests claims that toothed pterosaurs grew to huge sizes.

Both he and Martill agree that one of the biggest known pterosaurs was Quetzalcoatlus, with a wingspan that could have extended 32 feet.

While the new toothy pterosaur was big, “it isn’t in the same league as the giant azhdarchids (toothless pterosaurs). So we can now say with confidence that toothed ornithocheirids did evolve very large sizes, but so far as we know they did not reach the super-enormous size of those giant azhdarchids.”

NEWS: Nest Full of Baby Dinosaurs Found

Naish said Coloborhynchus opens up a lot of interesting questions, such as whether or not certain pterosaurs were “trapped by some sort of glass ceiling that prevented them from evolving gigantic size.”

Other scientists look to pterosaurs to learn more about flight dynamics and what kind of structures can efficiently become airborne.

Naish suggested that the new find is surprising because “the fossil they use is a really ugly chunk of an ornithocheird’s snout,” but it provided enough data to make the determinations.

Martill seems to share Naish’s opinion, as he said the new study shows “the importance of old museum collection findings and the importance of even the scrappiest fossils.”

Discovery.