Tech

University of Florida urologists have used robot-assisted surgery to cut about 20 minutes off average surgery time for conventional vasectomy reversal using a microscope.

Sperm count after surgery is comparable over a year for the two procedures, but the robotic procedure appears to result in a quicker return of sperm count.

"For a couple that's trying to get pregnant, this is a big deal," said Sijo Parekattil, M.D., director of male infertility and microsurgery at UF, who led the study.

Washington, January 7, 2010 – The American College of Physicians (ACP) today sent a letter to key legislators urging them to ensure that the final health care reform bill includes provisions to support the primary care workforce.

"Recent studies show that the U.S. faces a shortage of more than 40,000 primary care physicians, even before taking into account increased demand for primary care associated with increased coverage," said ACP President Joseph W. Stubbs, MD, FACP in the letter.

A Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) study has found that relatively young men with longstanding HIV infection and minimal cardiac risk factors had significantly more coronary atherosclerotic plaques – some involving serious arterial blockage – than did uninfected men with similar cardiovascular risk. The investigation appearing in the January 2010 issue of the journal AIDS is the first to use CT angiography to identify coronary artery plaques in HIV-infected participants.

INDIANAPOLIS – Frequent testing and treatment of infection does not reduce the prevalence of chlamydia in urban teenage girls, according to a long term study by Indiana University School of Medicine researchers published in the January 1, 2010 issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

This release is available in German.

Viruses love plane travel. They get to fly around the world inside a closed container while their infected carrier breathes and coughs, spreading pathogens to other passengers, either by direct contact or through the air. And once people deplane, the virus can spread to other geographical areas.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- When it comes to pumping up the appeal of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), some regions are more ripe for the cars than others, and some consumers' buttons need more pushing than others – an important policy distinction when shaping subsidies, two energy policy experts say.

Amid concerns regarding terrorists targeting airliners using weapons less detectable by traditional means, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is ramping up deployment of whole body scanners at security checkpoints in U.S. airports. These systems produce anatomically accurate images of the body and can detect objects and substances concealed by clothing.

To date, TSA has deployed two types of scanning systems:

High antiretroviral therapy adherence, which has been shown to be a major predictor of HIV disease progression and survival, is now associated with lower health care costs, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Researchers examined the effect of antiretroviral therapy adherence on direct health care costs and found that antiretroviral therapy improves health outcomes for people infected with HIV, saving a net overall median monthly health care cost of $85 per patient.

Scientists in Texas are reporting the development of a "nanodragster" that may speed the course toward development of a new generation of futuristic molecular machines. The vehicle — only 1/50,000th the width of a human hair — resembles a hot-rod in shape and can outperform previous nano-sized vehicles. Their report is in ACS' Organic Letters, a bi-weekly journal.

Manufacturers of counterfeit prescription drugs are embracing new tactics to deal with an estimated $75-billion-year market in knockoffs, a battle that is far from being won. That's the focus of an article in the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine. Counterfeiting ploys include embracing the same technology that pharmaceutical companies use to identify their products as genuine.

The United States needs to fundamentally rethink its policy of promoting ethanol to diversify its energy sources and increase energy security, according to a new policy paper by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University determined that immune responses to the tetanus vaccine were not changed when rituximab in combination with methotrexate (MTX) was compared with MTX alone in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Responses to a pneumococcal vaccination (Pneumovax® pneumonia vaccine), however, were reduced in RA patients with rituximab. Complete findings of this study are published in the January 2010 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology.

A new computerised device that tracks portion size and how fast people eat is more successful in helping obese children and adolescents lose weight than standard treatments, according to research published on bmj.com today.

The quest to discover whether Mars ever hosted an environment friendly to microscopic forms of life has just gotten a shot in the arm.

"Mars was a lot different 3-1/2 billion years ago. It was more like Earth with liquid water," said Jennifer Eigenbrode, a scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Maybe life existed back then. Maybe it has persisted, which is possible given the fact that we've found life in every extreme environment here on Earth. If life existed on Mars, maybe it adapted very much like life adapted here."