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New York Times Examines Trend Of Posting Childbirth Videos On YouTube
The New York Times on Thursday examined how thousands of women have posted videos on YouTube showing themselves giving birth. According to the Times, the women believe the videos help "demystify" childbirth by candidly presenting the process in a manner that pregnant women and their partners otherwise might not see. Along with YouTube, Web sites like Internet chat rooms and pregnancy blogs are helping to shift dynamics between pregnant women and their care providers, the Times reports. Eileen Ehudin Beard, an adviser for the American College of Nurse-Midwives, said, "The more information you have, the more s you have, the more informed you are, the better questions you ask." However, she added that the videos could have negative effects, particularly if they make women more fearful of childbirth. The childbirth videos are relatively controversial because of their graphic nature, which has challenged some of YouTube"s rules and raised issues of propriety. Victoria Grand, the head of policy for YouTube, said that nudity generally is banned from YouTube but that the site "make[s] exceptions for videos that are educational, documentary or scientific." Most childbirth videos on YouTube are age restricted to ages 18 and older. A majority of them show home births because most U.S. hospitals prohibit patients from recording births due to liability concerns, the Times reports. Although childbirth education classes have shown edited videos of births since the 1970s, the Internet and YouTube could change the way such classes are taught, according to Jeanette Schwartz, president of the International Childbirth Education Association. She noted that most videos currently used in childbirth classes are heavily edited and out of date, adding that the YouTube videos "create a wonderful opportunity to show free, real life, candid videos in a classroom setting." Eugene Declercq, a professor at the Boston University School of Public Health, said, "A hundred and fifty years ago, women viewed birth on a pretty regular basis -- they saw their sisters of neighbors give birth." He said that changed with a trend toward hospital births beginning in the late 19th century. "But now, with YouTube, we"ve come back around and women have this opportunity to view births again," Declercq said (Wollan, New York Times, 6/11).
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Parasites Ready To Jump
Transposons are mobile genetic elements found in the hereditary material of humans and other organisms. They can replicate and the new copies can insert at novel sites in the genome. Because this threatens the whole organism, molecular mechanisms have evolved which can repress transposon activity. Professor Klaus Förstemann of the Gene Center of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich and a team of researchers working with the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster have now uncovered a new type of cellular defence that acts against DNA sequences present in high copy numbers inside the cell, even if they have not integrated into the genome. Small molecules of RNA (a class of nucleic acid closely related to the genetic material DNA) play the central role. "Transposons are genomic parasites, so to speak", says Förstemann. "If they are allowed to proliferate, the genome can become unstable or cancers can develop. We now want to find out whether mammalian cells possess this newly discovered defence mechanism and to elucidate precisely how it works." (EMBO Journal online, 30 July 2009.)
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Although Hispanic women tend to develop breast cancer less than Caucasian women, it is usually more aggressive and advanced when it does develop.
Medical Devices

Automated Tissue Engineering On Demand

Skin from a factory - this has long been the dream of pharmacologists, chemists and doctors. Research has an urgent need for large quantities of "skin models", which can be used to determine if products such as creams and soaps, cleaning agents, medicines and adhesive bandages are compatible with skin, or if they instead will lead to irritation or allergic reactions for the consumer. Such test results are seen as more meaningful than those from animal experiments, and can even make such experiments largely superfluous. But artificial skin is rare. "The production is complex and involves a great deal of manual work. At this time, even the market"s established international companies cannot produce more than 2,000 tiny skinpieces a month. With annual requirements of more than 6.5 million units in the EU area alone, however, the industrial demand far exceeds all currently available production capacities," reports Jç¶rg Saxler. Together with Prof. Heike Mertsching, he is coordinating the "Automated Tissue Engineering on Demand" project within the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Tissue engineering is still in its infancy. "Until now, the offer was limited predominantly to single-layer skin models that consist of a single cell type," explains Mertsching, who heads the Cell Systems Department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB. "Thanks to developments at our institute, the project team has access to a patent-protected skin model that consists of two layers with different cell types. This gives us an almost perfect copy of human skin, and one that provides more information than any system currently available on the market." An interdisciplinary team of Fraunhofer researchers is currently developing the first fully automatic production system for two-layer skin models. "Our engineers and biologists are the only ones who have succeeded in fully automating the entire process chain for manufacturing two-layer skin models," explains Saxler, who is from the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT where he is responsible for technology management and heads the "Life Science Engineering" business unit. In a multi-stage process, first small pieces of skin are sterilized. Then they are cut into small pieces, modified with specific enzymes, and isolated into two cell fractions, which are then propagated separately on cell culture surfaces. The next step in the process combines the two cell types into a two-layer model, with collagen added to the cells that are to form the flexible lower layer, or dermis. This gives the tissue natural elasticity. In a humid incubator kept at body temperature, it takes the cell fractions less than three weeks to grow together and form a finished skin model with a diameter of roughly one centimeter. The technique has already proven its use in practice, but until now it has been too expensive and complicated for mass production. Mertsching explains, "The production is associated with a great deal of manual work, and this reduces the method"s efficiency." The project team, in which engineers, scientists and technicians from four Fraunhofer institutes are cooperating, is currently working at full speed to automate the work steps. The researchers at the IGB and the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology IZI are handling the development of the biological fundamentals and validation of the machine and its sub-modules. Experts from the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing and Automation IPA and the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT are taking care of prototype development, automation and integration of the machine into a complete functional system. "At the beginning, our greatest challenge was to overcome existing barriers, because each discipline had its own very different approach," Saxler remembers. "Meanwhile, the four institutes are working together very smoothly - everyone knows that progress is impossible without input from the others." After working together for one year, the project team has already initiated eight patent procedures. At a collective Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft booth at the 2009 BIO in Atlanta, the researchers are presenting a computer model of the overall system, along with the three fundamental sub-modules. The first module prepares the tissue samples and isolates the two cell types; the second proliferates them. The finished skin models are built up and cultivated in the third, and then packed by a robot. The researchers still have a lot of meticulous work ahead before the machine will be finished. The difference between success and failure often depends on details, such as the quality of the skin pieces, processing times of enzymes, and liquid viscosities. Furthermore, the cell cultures must be monitored throughout the entire manufacturing process in order to provide optimal process control and to allow timely detection of any contamination with fungi or bacteria. The skin factory is expected to be finished in two years. "Our goal is a monthly production of 5,000 skin models with perfect quality, and a unit price under 34 euros. These are levels that are attractive for industry," Saxler continues. But chemical, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and medical technology companies who have to test the reaction of skin to their products are not the only ones interested in Automated Tissue Engineering. In transplantation medicine, surgeons require healthy tissue in order to replace destroyed skin sections when burn injuries cover large portions of the body. The two-layer models that the new machine is intended to produce are not yet suitable for this purpose, however. "They don"t have a blood supply, and are consequently rejected by the body after some time," Saxler explains. But IGB researchers are already working on a full-skin model that will even include blood vessels. Once the research has been completed, fully automatic production of the transplants should also be possible. "We have designed the production system in such a way that it satisfies the high standards for good manufacturing practices (GMP) for the manufacture of products used in medicine," Mertsching explains. "And so they are also suitable for producing artificial skin for transplants." This release is available in German. Dr. Heike Mertsching Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft


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