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www.catholicnewsagency.com Researcher: Children of same-sex couples more likely to be homosexual Manhattan, Kans., Oct 22, 2010 / 06:04 am (CNA).- Social scientist Walter Schumm doesn't think his forthcoming paper ought to be provoking outraged responses he has already received. For years, researchers have admitted the possibility that he says he has now confirmed -- that children raised by homosexual parents are more apt to become homosexual themselves. Nevertheless, Schumm's article, which will be published in the November edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science, has triggered a firestorm since it began circulating online this summer. Irate advocates for the...

BONN, Germany, October 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Scientists announcing their success at achieving a new genetic defect-screening technique have at the same time admitted that many of the two-thirds of IVF embryos that fail to survive do so because of genetic abnormalities.Luca Gianaroli, chairman of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), and Cristina Magli, an embryologist from Bologna, Italy, announced their success in a study of a genetic testing procedure called "comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) by microarray," after two women gave birth to healthy children following screening of the embryos using the technique.However, Gianaroli said in a statement...

Cancer is a man-made disease fuelled by the excesses of modern life, a study of ancient remains has found. Tumours were rare until recent times when pollution and poor diet became issues, the review of mummies, fossils and classical literature found. A greater understanding of its origins could lead to treatments for the disease, which claims more than 150,000 lives a year in the UK. Michael Zimmerman, a visiting professor at Manchester University, said: 'In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. 'The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as...

BALTIMORE (CNS) -- Nineteen-month-old Mason Shaffer has no qualms about somersaulting off a couch in his family's Pennsylvania home. He's equally fearless when exploring new surroundings or playing a spirited round of peek-a-boo with his mother. It's a far cry from a year ago when Mason couldn't even sit up or roll over. Afflicted with malignant infantile osteopetrosis, a rare bone disease, Mason was severely underdeveloped and in significant pain. His life was saved through a transplant of adult stem cells obtained from umbilical-cord blood donated to a public collecting bank. "He's cured," said Sarah Shaffer, Mason's mother. "He's completely...

lifenews.com - Printer Friendly Page© V2.0 - CJ Website Designwww.cj-design.comPro-Life News: Adult Stem Cells, Bart Stupak, Pro-Life Day, Abby Johnson, Rome by Steven ErteltLifeNews.com Editor October 7, 2010 Email RSSPrint Best Kept Secret of Adult Stem Cells: They Are Treating Multiple Sclerosis by David PrenticeWashington, DC -- Adult stem cell success treating patients has been noted as “the best-kept secret in the galaxy” by Dr. Jean Peduzzi Nelson of Wayne State University. In her recent Senate testimony she described the case of Barry Goudy, who had relapsing-remitting MS. Barry had numerous relapses and medication was not helping his condition. He...

Downturn lasted 18 months; longest recession since World War II The “Great Recession” has ended, officially. At least, that's the word from the private research organization that calls the beginnings and endings of recessions, the National Bureau of Economic Research. The NBER said Monday that the recession which began in December 2007 ended in June 2009, which marked the beginning of an expansion. The announcement rules out the possibility of a so-called “double-dip” recession, because any new downturn would be seen as a brand new recession.

New Poll Finds Americans Continue to Oppose Tax Funding Embryonic Stem Cell Research Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- As Congress considers potential legislation that would repeal the law a federal judge has cited as standing in the way of the executive order President Barack Obama issued to force taxpayers to finance embryonic stem cell research, a new poll shows Americans don't want their tax dollars used to fund it. http://www.lifenews.com/bio3180.html

A U.S. Appeals court on Thursday temporarily lifted a judge's ban on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research until it rules on the merits of the Obama administration's argument against the ban. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled last month that embryonic stem cell research violated federal law because it involved destroying human embryos. The Obama administration claimed that the ban would set back key research and cost more than a thousand jobs -- an argument that Lamberth rejected on Tuesday -- but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed Tuesday to lift...

WASHINGTON – Seeking ways to spur economic growth ahead of the November elections, President Barack Obama will ask Congress to increase and permanently extend research and development tax credits for businesses, a White House official said Sunday. Obama will outline the $100 billion proposal during a speech on the economy Wednesday in Cleveland, the official said. The announcement is expected to be the first in a series of new measures Obama will propose this fall as the administration looks to jump-start an economy that the president himself has said isn't growing fast enough. In addition to making the research credits...

(Adds details) WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will ask the U.S. Congress on Wednesday to increase and permanently extend a tax credit for business research as a way of boosting job growth, an administration official said on Sunday. The proposal would cost $100 billion over 10 years, and Obama would pay for the plan by closing other corporate tax breaks, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Obama will call on Congress to increase to 17 percent from 14 percent one of two credit options available to businesses, the official said.

Poll: 57% of Americans Oppose Tax Funding of Embryonic Stem Cell Research Washington, DC -- On the week in which a federal judge ruled that President Barack Obama's executive order forcing Americans to pay for embryonic stem cell research with taxpayer funds violates a federal law, a new poll shows a majority of Americans opposed tax-funding the controversial and unproven research. http://LifeNews.com/bio3152.html

It takes the Congress and the president to enact or to change laws; the president can't do it alone and neither can an administrative agency. The August 23, 2010, decision of Royce C. Lamberth, chief judge of U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C, in Sherley v. Sebelius has legal significance for one main reason: it reasserts the principle, occasionally lost sight of, that laws passed by the Congress and signed by the president — good, bad, or indifferent — trump both executive orders and the actions of administrative agencies. It is hardly a novel principle, and its application here was...

A federal judge on Monday issued a temporary ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, sidetracking President Barack Obama’s executive order which had expanded federal funding for human stem cell research last year. U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that the order, which Obama signed in March 2009, violated a federal law that prohibits the use of federal funds for research practices that result in the destruction of a human embryo. According to the ruling, the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which Congress passed in 1996, clearly prohibits the use of federal funds for stem cell research, regardless of...

Obama Admin Plays Politics With Science, Embryonic Stem Cell Research Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- When scientists play politics with science, society and science both suffer, sometimes with life-threatening implications. One recent example is Climategate, with revelations that leading global warming researchers played with the data, concealed and tried to suppress data that challenged their assertions and attempted to game the peer-review system. And as a result of scientists caught playing politics with science, claims of man-made global warming have been met with growing skepticism. But a similar scenario has played out regarding human embryonic stem cell research (hESCR), With the...

Tel Aviv University (TAU) researchers have discovered that routine blood tests can provide an early warning for colorectal cancer. Anemia, a common blood disorder characterized by low hemoglobin levels, has long been associated with those suffering from colorectal cancer. It doesn't happen suddenly, however - and Tel Aviv University researchers say they have found that gradually decreasing hemoglobin levels can actually indicate a potential for colon cancer years in advance. Graduate student Inbal Goldshtein, who works with Dr. Gabriel Chodick and Dr. Varda Shalev of TAU's School of Public Health and Maccabi Healthcare Services' Department of Medical Informatics, says that...

I have an uncle who recently passed away, he told me that during the war he was a paratrooper. I'm guessing 82nd Airborne, can anyone direct me to a website where I could research his service?

A new University of British Columbia study says that an overreliance on research subjects from the U.S. and other Western nations can produce false claims about human psychology and behavior because their psychological tendencies are highly unusual compared to the global population.According to the study, the majority of psychological research is conducted on subjects from Western nations, primarily university students. Between 2003 and 2007, 96 per cent of psychological samples came from countries with only 12 per cent of the world’s populations. The U.S. alone provided nearly 70 per cent of these subjects.However, the study finds significant psychological and behavioral...

WASHINGTON -- A group of scholars, social scientists, and psychologists are sounding alarm bells that pornography is much more harmful to society than most people think. The group recently revealed before the National Press Club startling new evidence of how widespread porn has become in the U.S.

There is a good deal of debate about the health effects of caffeine, and whether these effects are primarily positive or negative. Caffeine, particularly in coffee, has been studied closely to determine where it may be of benefit, and where it may cause undesirable effects. Health benefits of caffeine Parkinson's disease Parkinson's is caused by the loss of brain cells that produce a chemical messenger called dopamine. According to a researcher from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, people who drink coffee or consume caffeine regularly have a lower risk of developing Parkinson's disease. The research put forth...

Last year, Zhao Bowen was part of a team that cracked the genetic code of the cucumber. These days, he's probing the genetic basis for human IQ. Zhao is 17. Centuries after it led the world in technological prowess -- think gunpowder, irrigation and the printed word -- China has barged back into the ranks of the great powers in science. With the brashness of a teenager, in some cases literally, China's scientists and inventors are driving a resurgence in potentially world-changing research. Unburdened by social and legal constraints common in the West, China's trailblazing scientists are also pushing the...

Disturbing evidence is mounting that something frightening is happening deep under the waters of the Gulf of Mexico—something far worse than the BP oil gusher. Warnings were raised as long as a year before the Deepwater Horizon disaster that the area of seabed chosen by the BP geologists might be unstable, or worse, inherently dangerous. What makes the location that Transocean chose potentially far riskier than other potential oil deposits located at other regions of the Gulf? It can be summed up with two words: methane gas.

Non-Random Equidistant Letter Sequence Extensions in the Hebrew BibleBy Richard E. Sherman, FCAS, MAAA, and Nathan Jacobi, Ph.D. Summary Bible codes are equidistant letter sequences (ELSs) that appear in the Hebrew Bible. Extended Bible codes are found by first locating a single word ELS with a given skip and then by searching for extensions in good Hebrew on both sides, continuing at the same skip. The longer an extended ELS is, the more improbable it is. A Markov chain model was developed for estimating the probability of chance occurrence of extended ELSs of a variety of different lengths. Monte Carlo...

www.catholicnewsagency.com Study shows problems for adults conceived by sperm donation Alana Sveta and Olivia Pratten. New York City, N.Y., Jun 12, 2010 / 07:56 am (CNA).- A recent report by the Commission on Parenthood’s Future indicates that adult offspring of sperm donation struggle with questions of identity as a result of not knowing their biological father. Fr. Thomas Berg, who specializes in bioethics, told CNA that the practice of sperm donation has “grossly underestimated” the human need to connect with one's biological parents. The report, “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm...

University of California librarians are urging professors not to submit research to Nature or 66 related journals to protest a 400 percent increase in the publisher's prices. A new contract with Nature Publishing Group would raise the university's subscription costs by more than $1 million, library and faculty leaders wrote in a letter this week to professors throughout the 10-campus system. With recent budget cuts, UC libraries simply can't handle the higher price, which would take effect in 2011, the letter said. Boycotting the Nature group would be a huge step for a university that, according to UC estimates, has...

In recent years the average bra size has expanded from 34B to 36D. Lingerie retailers, dietitians and doctors reveal why – and explain how bra designers are staying ahead of the curve

I'll admit it. The seeming lack of scientific evidence that acupuncture actually relieves pain has left me skeptical since I first learned of the ancient Chinese technique. And to this day, it's possible that much of the relief patients feel during and after an acupuncture treatment results from the placebo effect. But new research published this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience finds that the natural compound adenosine, known for its anti-inflammatory properties, floods tissue that is punctured or aggravated, and may be the secret ingredient in acupuncture.A man gives his brother an acupuncture treatment for back pain in Taiwain...

Thursday May 20, 2010 Analysis: Childhood Family Structure Linked to Rate of Female Homosexuality WASHINGTON, D.C., May 20, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Family Research Council (FRC) released a new analytic report Thursday indicating that women who did not grow up with their biological mother and father are much more likely to engage in homosexual conduct as adults than are women who grew up in an intact family."This research further undermines the claim that homosexuality is largely genetic or biological in origin," stated Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D., senior fellow and director of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute (MARRI) at FRC, and...

Peter Segerström, a Swedish predator researcher, was attacked on Monday by a bear who had been put to sleep to be tagged. "It bit pretty hard," Segerström said to the local Norrländska Socialdemokraterna daily. After the attack Segerström was taken to Gällivare hospital for treatment for arm injuries as the bear had managed to register some fairly deep cuts in both arms with its jaws. The harrowing attack occurred near Nausta outside of Jokkmokk in the far north of Sweden after Segerström had shot a sedation dart into a female bear with the intention of tagging the animal. As it...

THE HAGUE (AFP) – The head of the United Nations' climate change panel defended the body Friday before an academic council charged with reviewing its research methods after a string of challenges to its findings. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), admitted an error was made in warning that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, but said there was nevertheless some value in the finding. "Alright, there was this error, but there is a whole lot of valid information and assessment related to the glaciers which we can only ignore at our own peril and...

Barack Obama and the Democrats keep trying to paint the new law in Arizona on immigration as some sort of misguided effort by a frustrated fringe. Unfortunately for them, a new poll from Pew Research shows that they’re the fringe — even in their own party. Almost three-quarters of Americans support Arizona’s new law, and almost two-thirds of Democrats support the already-law requirement for immigrants to carry ID: The public broadly supports a new Arizona law aimed at dealing with illegal immigration and the law’s provisions giving police increased powers to stop and detain people who are suspected of being...

Susan Hurt is like millions of Americans, spending long hours at the computer. Doing so, however, is taking its toll. "By the end of the day when I'm done working, my eyes are bothering me," she explained. "They're sore. They're tired. They're dry and irritated." Hurt is not alone. It's estimated 70 percent of computer-users experience headaches, pain in the neck, shoulders, back, arm or wrist, and all sorts of vision problems.

Three genetically modified cows born at the AgResearch centre at Ruakura, Hamilton, were born with ovaries that grew so large they caused ruptures and killed them.

FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, May 3, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Population Research Institute (PRI) has just released the third video in its YouTube cartoon series, designed to refute the idea of overpopulation with science — and stick figures. Contrary to claims advanced by population control advocates, the latest video reveals data indicating that world hunger is not caused by a lack of food, but by wars, lack of transportation, and economic factors. To date the series has garnered well over 200,000 views on YouTube, and has made PRI one of the more popular non-profit channels on the video channel.

Friday April 23, 2010 Bolivian President Decries Feminizing Influence of Hormones in Food By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Latin America CorrespondentCOCHABAMBA, Bolivia, April 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Bolivian President Evo Morales has caused a stir in Latin America by asserting publicly that hormones found in mass-produced foods are having a feminizing effect on men."The chicken that we eat is loaded with feminine hormones," Morales said during a speech Wednesday at the "World People's Conference," held in Cochabamba, Bolivia.  "For that reason, when men eat those chickens, they are diverted from their nature as men."Morales' words have been met with ridicule...

More than 80% of the male bass fish in Washington's major river are now exhibiting female traits such as egg production because of a "toxic stew" of pollutants, scientists and campaigners reported yesterday. Intersex fish probably result from drugs, such as the contraceptive pill, and other chemicals being flushed into the water and have been found right across the US.

www.catholicnewsagency.com Researcher finds strong link between contraception and HIV Related articles: Young adults under the age of 25 continue to be at risk for HIV/AIDSSexual Trafficking and Pornography - the Link Between the TwoMessage for the World Day Against AIDSCondoms do not eliminate risk of HIV Front Royal, Va., Apr 23, 2010 / 01:04 am (CNA).- A researcher reported earlier this week that there is a strong scientific link between hormonal contraceptives and a woman's risk of contracting AIDS/HIV.Joan Robinson, a researcher at the Population Research Institution, said that although over 50 medical studies to date show the link...

Wednesday April 21, 2010 Fordham Study Provides ‘Empirical Evidence’ for Sexual Orientation Change Efforts By Hilary White   April 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Researchers at Fordham University in New York have published a study in the March edition of the Journal of Men's Studies, showing that positive results can be gained by homosexual men seeking to change their “orientation” by developing healthy non-sexual relationships with other men.   According to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homoseuxality (NARTH), the study rovides “valuable empirical evidence” from the mainstream of psychological research supporting environmental factors as the cause of...

Back when Historian Michael Beschloss said Obama was "probably the smartest guy ever to become President," we that guy was smoking crack. But, now it's official. The Puffer in Chief can't possibly be the smartest president evah: Smokers have lower IQs than those who abstain, with intelligence decreasing the more one smokes, researchers have found.

A High-Fat Breakfast of Bacon and Eggs May Be The Healthiest Start To The Day, Report Shows A high-fat breakfast of bacon and eggs may be the healthiest start to the day, a new university report showed. 31 Mar 2010 For the first meal eaten after a night's sleep appears to programme the metabolism for the rest of the day, the researchers found. And the age-old maxim "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper" may in fact be the best advice to follow to prevent metabolic syndrome, according to a new University of...

Gino the gorilla knows the drill. He reaches way up with his left hand and puts his right hand out to the side. When his keeper asks, he pushes his right leg out and presses his left thigh and chest against the crisscrossed bars of his enclosure. He knows that striking this unusual pose — it looks like an upright round of Twister — earns him a treat. He doesn’t know that the ultrasound machine rolled up to the bars will collect information that could help gorillas beyond his Disney’s Animal Kingdom home. The animal-programs team at Walt Disney World...

Mr. Pinto is the first chief technology officer of a major American tech company to move to China. The company, Applied Materials, is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent firms. It supplied equipment used to perfect the first computer chips. Today, it is the world’s biggest supplier of the equipment used to make semiconductors, solar panels and flat-panel displays. On the other side of Xian from Applied Materials sits Thermal Power Research Institute, China’s world-leading laboratory on cleaner coal. The company has just licensed its latest design to Future Fuels in the United States. Future Fuels will ship the equipment...

INSTEAD of killing off cancer cells with toxic drugs, scientists have discovered a molecular pathway that forces them to grow old and die. Cancer cells spread and grow because they can divide indefinitely. But a study in mice showed that blocking a cancer-causing gene called Skp2 forced cancer cells to go through an aging process known as senescence - the same process involved in ridding the body of cells damaged by sunlight. If you block Skp2 in cancer cells, this process is triggered, Pier Paolo Pandolfi of Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues reported in the journal Nature.

Intestinal bacteria may contribute to obesity and metabolic syndrome, a new study in mice suggests. "It has been assumed that the obesity epidemic in the developed world is driven by an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and the abundance of low-cost, high-calorie foods. However, our results suggest that excess caloric consumption is not only a result of undisciplined eating but that intestinal bacteria contribute to changes in appetite and metabolism," senior study author Andrew Gewirtz, an associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Emory University School of Medicine, said in a university news release. He and his colleagues found that increased...

Washington, D.C.—A new report released today by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) details how the nation's medical schools and teaching hospitals are advancing science and stimulating economic growth one year after passage of an additional $10 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The report, From Recovery to Discovery: ARRA Funding and Medical Research, contains letters from 83 institutions that highlight how ARRA grants have been used during the past year to advance scientific and medical innovation, improve the health of local communities, and stimulate economic growth....

Obama Admin Proposes Expanding Embryonic Stem Cell Research by David Prentice This expands the unethical use of human embryos, and creates additional incentives to cannibalize more embryos. Stating that the guidelines are "ethical" simply puts a veneer on unethical practices; they are simply providing a recipe for human embryo destruction so that taxpayers funds can be used to reward the scientists. http://www.LifeNews.com/bio3060.html

Tipsy mice and sexed-up cactus bugs have been enlisted to help in America's economic recovery. But will they do much to boost employment? The critters are the stars of two seemingly flaky projects among several at Florida universities being funded by hundreds of thousands of federal stimulus dollars. The projects, whose usefulness is keenly debated by America's politicians, are also a subject of dispute among academics: Are they scientifically worthy? Is the stimulus cash wisely spent? No, says Nova Southeastern University economics professor Albert Williams. "There is no guarantee that these quirky projects will in fact create jobs," he said....

Today, Max Irvine enjoys life as a normal, 4-year-old boy. But just last year, more than 100 daily epileptic seizures were deteriorating his brain. His family's strong and a unique medical diet is what saved the young boy's life. "Last November he basically stopped talking and walking and he started losing all of his skills," Max's mom, Kristine Irvine, recalled. "There were times when I prayed to God to either make him better, or take him home," his father, Troy Irvine, added. "Because I just couldn't stand to see him going through what he was going through. There were many...

This week, the media gave us what appeared to be startling news: Research, appearing in a journal published by the American Medical Association, showed (shock!) that abstinence programs dramatically reduced teen sexual activity. No one knowledgeable about abstinence education, however, would find this startling. In fact, eleven previous sound studies showed strong positive effects from abstinence programs. The mainstream media simply ignored them. Unfortunately, the most recent story came too late — President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have already terminated the federal government’s abstinence programs. What other story has the mainstream media ignored? The big one concerns the...

Rome, Italy, Feb 3, 2010 / 07:22 pm (CNA).- The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano republished an interview on Wednesday detailing current research on a new source of stem cells that is being called "the future of medicine." According to the Vatican newspaper, the pioneering research is presently taking place at the Biocell Center of Busto Arsizio in Milan and involves using stem cells taken from amniotic fluid to create a retinal regeneration therapy. This stem cell source is considered morally licit as it does not require the destruction of human embryos. In an interview with Giuseppe Simoni, an Italian...

Monday February 1, 2010 The Sooner Marriage, the Better: 88% of Women's Eggs Gone by 30 by James Tillman Monday, February 1, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- A new study from the Universities of St. Andrews and of Edinburgh is offering a more accurate understanding of fertility and its decline with age, which researchers say is steeper than previously thought. The study, which involved about 325 women of different ages from the United States and Europe, investigated the number of eggs that remain in the ovaries over time.  This number, said the researchers, peaks at about 20 weeks after conception and subsequently drops...