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The Influences Of Peers, Parents On Self Identity Confirmed By fMRI
Ask middle-school students if they are popular or make friends easily, they likely will depend on social comparisons with their peers for an answer. Such reliance on the perceived opinions of others, or reflected self-appraisals, has long been assumed, but new evidence supporting this claim has now been found in the teen brain. Buy arimidex to treat cancer.

Blogs Comment On Need For Abortion Providers, Antiabortion-Rights Protests, Other Topics
The following summarizes selected women"s health-related blog entries. ~ "Obama"s True Colors: Appointee Opposes Abortion and Birth Control," Bonnie Erbe, U.S. News & World Report"s "Thomas Jefferson Street": President Obama"s appointment of Alexia Kelley, founder of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, as director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships at HHS "doesn"t surprise me at all," Erbe writes, adding that Obama is "merely feeling comfortable enough to show his true self, rather than staying true to promises he made to his supporters prior to being elected." Erbe includes an excerpt from Frances Kissling"s Salon opinion piece in which Kissling questions whether Kelley will follow through with the Obama administration"s pledges to implement policies that help prevent teenage pregnancy and reduce the need for abortion. Erbe concludes, "[A]s the evidence mounts that winning re-election is more important to this president than anything else, his supporters should re-examine their votes in 2012" (Erbe, "Thomas Jefferson Street," U.S. News & World Report, 6/8).~ "This Weekend is the International Demonstration Against Birth Control," Cristina Page, Birth Control Watch: "This weekend marks the second year of "The Pill Kills" campaign," which its antiabortion-rights organizers are calling the ""International Demonstration Against Birth Control"" that they say will ""expose the tragic effects"" hormonal contraception has on women, Page writes. She writes that while last year"s campaign focused on convincing women that birth control pills and other common contraceptives "were really abortion methods," this year"s campaign "is trying to scare women" from using birth control "by claiming it will kill them." The campaign "targets the regular birth control pill in particular," Page says, adding that "it appears impossible to find a single instance in which any pro-life group has anything good to say about any birth control method except natural family planning -- a technique most notable for its high failure rate." She notes, "Even the lowly condom disturbs them." According to Page, David Grimes, "one of the world"s leading experts on contraception," said that ""some antiabortion groups describe a subtle blend of fake claims and real, but exaggerated, risks to frighten women,"" and only ""those very knowledgeable can tease out which are which."" Grimes also noted, ""Ironically, the net effect of this campaign to discredit contraception is more unplanned pregnancies and, of course, more abortions."" Page writes, "One can safely say" that the American Life League -- lead organizer of "The Pill Kills" campaign -- has a "desire to ban birth control [that] is equally intense as its campaign against legal abortion." As evidence of this, she cites the group"s efforts to defeat legislation offering contraception coverage for federal employees and its distribution of anti-contraception literature. She adds, "Not only does ALL promote" that "birth control is abortion," but it "also put[s] forth that any attempt to prevent pregnancy during sex is tantamount to having an abortion." Page concludes, "In actuality," efforts by ALL and similar groups "punish people for having the type of sex they define as contrary to God"s wishes. Pregnancy is, according to them, what sex is for" (Page, "Birth Control Watch," 6/5).~ "The Next Generation of Providers: One Doctor Shows the Way," Sheila Bapat, RH Reality Check: The recent murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller "brings into sharp relief the gravity" of women"s health care providers" decision to perform abortions, Bapat writes. She profiles an ob-gyn -- a "young woman in her early 30s" -- who holds a faculty position at a university hospital in a southern, conservative state and also is "one of just a handful of abortion providers in the South." Bapat writes that the "low number of abortion providers" in the U.S. is the result of several factors, including fear o

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Poll Reveals Americans Wary About U.S. Healthcare Reform
Americans are unsure that a healthcare reform bill introduced this week is the solution to problems with the U.S. healthcare system, according to a poll created and commissioned by a public policy expert at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
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Jumping Genes Challenge Assumptions About Genetic Diseases Such As Cancer

Jumping genes do their jumping while the embryo is growing and not when sperm and eggs are developing, according to a new study by US scientists which challenges current assumptions about the timing of when mobile DNA inserts itself into the human genome. The finding could have important implications for genetic research into rare diseases that are thought to be caused by jumping genes. The study was conducted by senior author Dr Haig H. Kazazian Jr, Seymour Gray Professor of Molecular Medicine in Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia, and colleagues, and is published this month in the journal Genes and Development. Transposons, or "jumping genes", are DNA sequences that jump to different parts of the genome within a cell. Transposons cause disease but we don"t know the extent to which the diseases they cause, such as hemophilia and Duchenne muscular dystrophy, are passed onto offspring. They also play a role in the development of cancer. Kazazian Jr and colleagues found that transposons insertion can occur after fertilization, when the embryo is developing, which is after the point at which genetic changes can be inherited: ie they happen once the individual is formed from the egg and sperm of the bioligical parents. Based on their findings, the researchers propose that many of the insertions occur in the early embryo, while it comprises just 4 or 8 cells. This is a dramatic challenge to current assumptions about mobile DNA, which until now scientists assumed could only be inserted in the genome prior to fertlization, in egg and sperm of the parents. For the study, Kazazian Jr and colleagues looked at the L1 family of retrotransposons, the most common type of retrotransposon in the human genome. A retrotransposon is a type of jumping gene that moves in a distinct way: its DNA sequence is copied to RNA as with other genes, but instead of being used directly to code a protein, it is then copied back into DNA under the control of its own reverse transcriptase enzyme. This new DNA sequence is then put back into the genome. The process is similar to the way that HIV and other retroviruses behave, leading scientists to suggest that retroviruses came from retrotransposons. About 17 per cent of the human genome is made up of the L1 family of retrotransposons, so they are no small matter and they have an impact that is even larger than this. For example, when they "jump" they take parts of nearby DNA sequences with them, causing new genes to be created where they eventually "land". Eventually, as one can imagine, the more that retrotransposons jump around the genome, the longer it gets and the more its content gets shuffled. As well as this, an otherwise unremarkable jump of L1 can have a significant impact such as lowering the ability of nearby genes to express themselves. L1 insertions come about in two ways: one is where the L1 RNA is carried over from the parent through fertilization and then gets inserted in the embryo"s genome. The other and more frequent way, is when the L1 itself arises in the embryonic genome. Using mice and rats bred to have elements of human L1, the researchers showed there was lots of L1 RNA in egg, sperm and embryos. But they also showed that integration into the genome occured primarily at the embryo development stage and not within egg and sperm cells and were therefore not inheritable. Kazazian Jr and colleagues also showed that L1 RNA transcribed in egg and sperm cells carry over through fertilization and insert during embryo development, which is a curious example of RNA being heriditary independently of the DNA that encodes it. This creates what the authors called "somatic mosaicism" with some cells having the insertion and others not, leading to cell populations with different genotypes developing within the same organism. This mosaicism could suggest that L1 plays an important role in the development of cancer and other diseases, for instance if the insertion happens near a cancer gene, it could trigger cancer growth. "L1 retrotransposition occurs mainly in embryogenesis and creates somatic mosaicism." Hiroki Kano, Irene Godoy, Christine Courtney, Melissa R. Vetter, George L. Gerton, Eric M. Ostertag, and Haig H. Kazazian, Jr. Genes Dev. June 1, 2009 23: 1303- 1312. doi:10.1101/gad.1803909 Additional s: PENN Medicine. Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD Copyright: Medical News Today Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today


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