Category Archives: Human Reproduction

Cross-species liaisons occurred as Stone Age wound down

Web edition : 9:41 am

A new study suggests that present-day Europeans share more genes with now-extinct Neandertals than do living Africans, at least partly because of interbreeding that took place between 37,000 and 86,000 years ago.

Cross-species mating occurred when Stone Age humans left Africa and encountered Neandertals, or possibly a close Neandertal relative, upon reaching the Middle East and Europe in the latter part of the Stone Age, says a team led by geneticist Sriram Sankararaman of Harvard Medical School.

The new study, published online October 4 in PLOS Genetics, indicates that at least some interbreeding must have occurred between Homo sapiens and Neandertals, Sankararaman says. But its not yet possible to estimate how much of the Neandertal DNA found in modern humans comes from that interbreeding and how much derives from ancient African hominid populations ancestral to both groups.

A separate analysis of gene variants in Neandertals and in people from different parts of the world also found signs of Stone Age interbreeding outside Africa. That study, published online April 18 in Molecular Biology and Evolution, was led by evolutionary geneticist Melinda Yang of the University of California, Berkeley.

Results from Sankararaman and Yangs groups convincingly show that the finding of a higher proportion of Neandertal DNA in non-Africans compared to Africans can be best explained by gene flow from Neandertals into modern humans, says evolutionary geneticist Johannes Krause of the University of Tbingen in Germany.

Other studies have found that ancient interbreeding may not be necessary to explain the presence of Neandertal DNA in modern humans. It may be possible that African populations ancestral to both H. sapiens and Neandertals possessed some genes that became part of both species genomes. Evolutionary ecologists Anders Eriksson and Andrea Manica of the University of Cambridge recently demonstrated the plausibility of this scenario using a model based on more than 100 populations of human-Neandertal ancestors spread across Africa, Europe and West Asia.

Sankararamans analysis assumes that the common ancestors of humans and Neandertals more than 230,000 years ago consisted of two African populations and one population outside Africa. Its not clear whether a more complex model that includes 100 or more populations of human-Neandertal ancestors would yield any signs of late Stone Age interbreeding, says Cambridges Manica.

Sankararaman and his colleagues measured the lengths of DNA segments shared by Neandertals and present-day Europeans. Since genetic reshuffling via sexual reproduction reduces the size of such segments over time, lengths of Neandertal-related chunks of DNA in people today can be used to calculate the time since those chunks entered the human genome.

Original post:
Human-Neandertal mating gets a new date

By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on October 4, 2012

A new EU study provides a comprehensive evaluation of the different stress points that challenge women as they struggle to become pregnant.

Researchers looked at the stress of not being able to naturally conceive and the stress associated with the difficult decision to undergo and then receive fertility treatments.

In the study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, researchers examined experiences of patients in four countries with the highest number of cases of assisted reproduction cycles in Europe: France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

Researchers acknowledge that the inability to normally conceive is extremely stressful for women who want to have a family.

Infertility causes a series of varied emotions that have a negative impact on important aspects of a womans life, said Dr. Juan Garca Velasco, one of the authors of the study. It is linked to depression, anxiety, anger, cognitive imbalance and low self-esteem.

Researchers analyzed the emotional impact of infertility and also identified aspects of fertility treatments that contribute to the physical and psychological stress suffered by many women.

Investigators studied 445 women, between the ages of 18 and 44 years, who were experiencing difficulties in conceiving. While some had never undergone any fertility treatment, others were receiving it at the time or had already received it in the past two years.

Almost one-third of the participants said they began to worry from the momentthey started trying to get pregnant, and nearly half claimed to have felt ashamed or like a failure as a woman.

Researchers determined that anxiety toward injections and the deterioration of their relationship with their partner were the main causes of stress for the women.

See the rest here:
Study Details Stresses Tied to Fertility Treatments

Reaching a long-sought milestone, Japanese researchers have demonstrated in mice that eggs and sperm can be grown from stem cells and combined to produce healthy offspring, pointing to new treatments for infertility.

If the achievement can be repeated in humans and experts said they are optimistic that such efforts will ultimately succeed the technique could make it easier for women in their 30s or 40s to become mothers. It could also help men and women whose reproductive organs have been damaged by cancer treatments or other causes.

About one in 10 American women of childbearing age have trouble becoming or staying pregnant, and more than one-third of infertile couples must contend with a medical problem related to the prospective father, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Using current technology, only about one-third of attempts at assisted reproduction result in live births, CDC data show. Scientists, doctors and patients would like to boost that percentage.

"These studies provide that next level of evidence that in the future fertility could be managed with stem cell intervention," said Teresa Woodruff, chief of fertility preservation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

The prospect of using stem cells to grow new eggs is particularly tantalizing, since women are born with a set number and don't make more once they are gone. In a sense, the therapy would allow them to turn back their biological clocks, said Stanford stem cell researcher Renee A. Reijo Pera, who studies reproduction.

"This is a get-them-back strategy," she said.

Dr. Mitinori Saitou and colleagues at Kyoto University detailed how they generated the functional mouse eggs in a report published online Thursday by the journal Science. Last year, the researchers reported in the journal Cell that they had done the same thing with mouse sperm.

In both cases, the team started with embryonic stem cells, which have the potential to develop into all of the different types of cells in the body.

The scientists exposed the embryonic stem cells to stimuli that coaxed them to become egg and sperm precursors.

See the article here:
Mouse stem cells used to produce eggs, Japanese scientists say

Either ignored or plainly blindsided by her educational policymakers, multiculturalism and the infusion of the practices of multicultural education is absent, even though it is clear that politics and education cannot be taken as separate disciplines in order to understand the nature and future of national development.

Malaysias survival as a nation depends primarily on the re-crafting of an education system philosophically, systemically, and pedagogically sound enough to bridge the gaps between the socio-economic and cultural deficiencies brought about by the legacy of Mahathirism; one based on the use of race ideology to sustain control and to design hegemony of the Malay-Muslim race.

Education as the only means for personal, social, cultural, and even spiritual and ecumenical progress can only be achieved if one goes back to the its philosophical foundations and re-look at the conception of human nature itself.

In Malaysia, a legacy of British colonial policy and its tool of social reproduction, i.e. schooling, has paved the way for Malaysias neo-colonialist strategy of a hidden system of apartheid, to ensure that the races are still separated in an unequal way.

Issues and institutions in such a scenario reflect the ideology of dominance - of one race over others or the rest - blinding educationalists and policy-makers to see beyond race and religion in making sure that the gentle profession and humanistic enterprise called education is driven fundamentally by the almost ideologically-bankrupt United Malays National Organisations (Umnos) idea of education and nation-building.

Pre-schools, primary schools, secondary schools and even universities take the nature of racial educational exclusivity.

Shinning examples of this apartheid-isation of education are any all-racial schools, Mara Junior Science Colleges, and the Universiti Teknologi Mara system - all these in addition to the already apartheid-ised Malaysian Civil Service, albeit de facto in nature, whose existence is shackled by the ideology of an endangered ruling class of Malay-dominated politicians, in all its ignorance of the meaning of education, claimed superior knowledge to what that enterprise solely means.

New breed of educational policymakers needed

Malaysia needs not only a new educational direction, detouring from the road of further apartheid-isation of education it is happily traversing but also a new breed of cosmopolitanistic-thinking educational policymakers and practitioners.

Beyond these, Malaysia needs most logically a regime change in toto - to allow a new political will to an educational hope for the nation; anything short of these, will bring Malaysia to a pariah or a failed state educationally and economically in an increasingly predatorily globalised state. What then must Malaysians do?

Read more:
Dismantle our apartheid education system

ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2012) Fertility treatment has a strong emotional impact on women who want to have children. A study of European countries with the highest number of assisted reproduction cycles identifies which aspects of reproduction treatment contribute to psychological stress.

Inability to conceive is extremely stressful for women who want to have a family. This notion is shown by a study published in the 'Human Reproduction' journal on patients in four countries with the highest number of cases of assisted reproduction cycles in Europe: France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

"Infertility causes a series of varied emotions that have a negative impact on important aspects of a woman's life," as explained by Juan Garca Velasco, one of the authors of the study, who is also director of the Infertility Institute of Valencia and lecturer in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Rey Juan Carlos de Madrid University. "It is linked to depression, anxiety, anger, cognitive imbalance and low self-esteem," he adds.

The study not only analyses the emotional impact of infertility on women but also identifies those aspects of ovary stimulation that contribute to the physical and psychological stress suffered by many patients.

The 445 women between the ages of 18 and 44 years taking part in the study had experienced difficulties in conceiving. While some had never undergone any fertility treatment, others were receiving it at the time or had already received it in the past two years. Almost a third of the participants said they began to worry from the moment in which they started trying to get pregnant and nearly half claimed to have felt ashamed or like a failure as a woman.

It was found that anxiety toward injections and the deterioration of their relationship with their partner were the main causes of stress. In this respect, the women who actually received treatment said that they got closer to their partner (33% compared to 19%). The majority of participants felt that their partner supported them, especially those that received fertility therapy (63%).

Women undergoing treatment said they were more anxious when it comes to sex and negative emotions, such as impatience or frustration. Whereas those not having treatment said they felt "confused" and those undergoing treatment claimed to mostly feel "vulnerable and exhausted."

Despite being aware of the limitations of age, 68% never thought they would have a problem conceiving. According to Garca Velasco, "in order to overcome the physical and psychological challenges that such treatment implies, some form of protocol would be necessary that involves a minimal number of injections and an increase in readily available information in order to reduce stress and increase patient satisfaction."

Waiting two years to start treatment

Garca Velasco outlines that "infertility can significantly affect women's lives and their personal relationships." "However, despite its negative impact, many of those women trying to conceive do not seek medical help."

Read the original here:
Fear of treatment puts stress on women undergoing fertility therapy

BASEL.- With the exhibition Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting, Reproduction Kunsthalle Basel presents the latest project by Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz (*1979). This exhibition is her first institutional solo show in German-speaking Switzerland.

Rosenkranz is interested in evolutionary mechanisms and processes, that seem to be the basis of how people are organized in a society. The artist is interested in the differences between body and mind, in human interactions, and in mens relationship to nature. Rosenkranz explores these interests, utilizing scientific explanations that contradict our current notions of what it means to be human.

Rosenkranz uses a variety of materials. The emphasis is on the naturalness of these materials, and to that end even PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) can be seen as a natural product. Even though they claim to be the most evolved of all organisms, human beings are just one of many elements on our planet. Everything created by humans is natural; in this way, the concept of artificiality is called into question. Rosenkranz thinking is influenced by a materialistic perspective that calls the subject into question. The artist annuls identity and gender differences; her position as a woman is likewise rendered meaningless.

Rosenkranz works explore the various ways in which we define ourselves as human. They address fundamental human qualities, highlighting these and placing them in a partly new, partly familiar context. Even though the exhibition consists of individual works, it can be understood as one overall examination by Rosenkranz in which, themes and elements recur throughout the rooms of the Kunsthalle. In the first space of the Kunsthalle, the artist has installed a sink, which is the same as those found in the restrooms of the Campari Bar located in the adjacent rooms. The faucet is open and blue colored water flows permanently; its splashing against the ceramic sink makes a sound which superimposes itself upon the silence in the rooms. Strolling through the rooms, visitors will realize that the color blue is a recurring element. The evolutionary perception of blue within our visible spectrum was created at a pre-evolutionary stage when creatures only existed under the sea. Our sensitivity to this color has barely changed throughout the course of the history of humankind and we are still highly sensible for the wavelengths of blue than of all the other colors of the visible spectrum.

On large-format prints behind plexiglass, Rosenkranz presents monotone blue surfaces based on the IKB works (International Klein Blue) by Yves Klein that were created at the end of the 1950s and downloaded by her as JPEGs from the internet; for these monochrome paintings produced by the French artist, he invented and patented a specific blue tone, which increases the brilliance of ultramarine blue. The color of Rosenkranz pigment inkjet prints is based on the data information which contains colors that are subject to prevailing light conditions, scan settings, or photochemical conditions, etc. The prints are hand-mounted and due to the manual operation bubbles arise undermining Yves Klein's idea of an intangible heaven, and the immateriality of the sky: as the bubbles become objects they challenge the concept of air being immaterial.

In contrast with the color blue as Wild Blue Yonder (the fascination with the vastness of the sky) the color red represents physicality and the body. The color of blood next to genetic skin pigmentation is primarily responsible for skin tone. The red also shines through the white walls of the Kunsthalle, which have been painted with standard dispersion mixed with fake or real blood. A bottle of SmartWater filled with a liquid is set close to the pink wall. Is the content water or sillicon? Is it skin color? The work does not spell it out, and yet it refers to our desire to look fresh and eternally young. It is about the preservation of beauty, of purity as physical criteria of perfection. Health and fitness are two issues often recurring in Rosenkranz exhibitions, and here they come to the fore once again.

Another new work in the exhibition focuses on the influence of color in decision-making. A seemingly random sequence of gigantic expanses of color is projected in the two last exhibition spaces of the Kunsthalle. The projection is accompanied by a computer-generated voice called Heather. This voice repeats the words Yes and No agreement and rejection in every conceivable intonation available for the range of meanings offered by the voice program. At this point this work refers to a specific way in which colors have been used in the domain of science, especially in the so-called Brainbow project. This specific color spectrum is used by scientists and was developed while conducting experiments on mice to make their brain activity visible. The RGB color spectrum was used to color-code their neurons. Rosenkranz project in turn, is interested in knowing how existential human emotions can also be color-coded and how they can then be contemplated and categorized in a manner that is strictly analogous to colors.

Pamela Rosenkranz approach is not based on a scientific interest as such. She works with findings and speculations culled not only from the natural sciences, but also from politics, history, philosophy, and popular culture. The exhibition Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting, Reproduction therefore can be thought of as a self-contained project that revolves around the conflict between scientific description and subjective experience. Furthermore, she also criticizes a conception of art, which puts the focus on the artists subjectivity, and she does this by confronting statements and explanations from contemporary science with prevailing notions of art, thereby radically negating the use of terms like experience, identity, and gender.

Pamela Rosenkranz (*1979, Altdorf, CH) lives and works in Zrich, CH and Amsterdam. Rosenkranz graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts Bern with the Master of Fine Arts in 2004 and studied Comparative Literature at the University of Zurich in 2005. In 2010 she participated at the Independent Residency Program at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.

Solo exhibitions (selection): To you I would like to be Who, Tongewlbe T25, Ingolstadt (2011); This Is Not My Color / The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, mit Nikolas Gambaroff, Swiss Institute, New York (2011); Untouched by Man, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig (2010); No Core, Centre dArt Contemporain Genve, Geneva (2010); Our Sun, Swiss Institute, Venice (2009); High Purity, Amden, Switzerland (2009); Unfade, Nuit Blanche, Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (2008); Enter (Projectspace), Kunstmuseum Thun, Thun. Group exhibitions (selec-tion): Man in the Holecene, MIT, List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge (2012); Insight - Outsight II, Stdtische Galerie im Park, Viersen, Germany (2012); The Greater Cloud, Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam (2011); He disappeared into complete silence, De Hallen Haarlem, Haarlem, The Netherlands (2011); Unbounding and Crossing Over as Art, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein (2011); Open Studio, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (2011); How to Work (More for) Less, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2011); How to Work, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2011); Poste Restante, Artspeak, Vancouver (2011); Une Ide, une Forme, un tre - Posie/Politique du cor-porel, Migrosmuseum fr Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2010); The Real Thing, Tate Britain, London (2010); Big Minis, Fetishes of Crisis, Muse d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux (2010); Declaracin Anual de Personas Morales 2010, House of Gaga, Mexiko City (2010); Exhibition, Exhibition, Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2010); Fax, Art Museum Torrance, Torrance, California (2010); Of Ob-jects Fields and Mirrors, Kunsthaus Glarus, Glarus (2010); Fax, Drawing Center, New York (2009); Reduction and Suspense, Kunstverein Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria (2009); Dragged Down into Lowercase, Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern (2008); Principle Hope, Manifesta7, Rovereto, Italy (2008); NoLeftovers, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern (2008); Vertrautes Terrain, ZKM Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe (2008); Shifting Identities, Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich (2008); When Things cast no Shadow, 5th Berlin Biennale, Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2008).

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Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting, Reproduction: Pamela Rosenkranz' solo show opens at Kunsthalle Basel