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Access To IVF Increases As New Guidance Makes System Fairer
The NHS is taking a step closer to ending regional variation in the provision of IVF to couples who are unable to conceive naturally, Public Health Minister Gillian Merron announced today.

National Institutes Of Health Chooses Web Of Science(R) To Power Electronic Scientific Portfolio Assistant (eSPA)
Thomson Reuters with Discovery Logic, Inc. announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has chosen Web of Science((R)) data to power the NIH electronic Scientific Portfolio Assistant (eSPA). eSPA is an information technology system designed to assist NIH grants management officials in creating grant portfolios and tracking research outputs and outcomes, including publications and citations.
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Obama's Proposal To Redirect Abstinence-Only Funding Renews 'Culture-War Battle,' Washington Times Columnist States
President Obama is causing the "core culture-war battle" over sex education to "come full circle" by proposing to redirect funding for abstinence-only sex education to a new Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative that "rejects an abstinence-only approach," Washington Times columnist Cheryl Wetzstein writes. According to Wetzstein, Obama"s fiscal year 2010 budget plan "zeroed out" the Title V abstinence-only sex education grant program, set to expire on June 30, and the Community-Based Abstinence Education program. Wetzstein continues that groups supporting comprehensive sex education have "loathed Title V from its inception" because of its "prohibition on teaching teens how to use birth-control products (i.e., no condom demonstrations) and its eight-point definition that seemed utterly unrealistic to sex educators." For example, Title V"s definition said that the ""expected standard of human sexual activity"" was a ""mutually faithful, monogamous relationship in the context of marriage,"" which Wetzstein says she has "heard many times, was insulting to gay youth who couldn"t marry" and "insensitive to minority youth who grew up in neighborhoods where marriage was rare." Wetzstein asks, "What will happen to Title V?" She writes that opponents "are staying vigilant" and working to avoid "any last-minute, back-door revivals of this program." Groups that support abstinence-only sex education are "working the phones, too," Wetzstein reports. According to Wetzstein, Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, noted that "[s]aving Title V will require some heavy lifting, but "it"s expired before and been retroactively renewed."" Wetzstein concludes that "we"ll soon see what happens with the new players in town" (Wetzstein, Washington Times, 6/23).
Mental Health

Neurological Differences Support Dyslexia Subtypes

Parts of the right hemisphere of the brains of people with dyslexia have been shown to differ from those of normal readers. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare the two groups, and were able to associate the neurological differences found with different language difficulties within the dyslexic group. Cyril Pernet, from the University of Edinburgh, worked with a team of researchers to compare the brains of 38 people with dyslexia to a model "typical brain" created by combining the scans of 39 normal readers. In all cases, differences could be seen in either the right cerebellar declive or the right lentiform nucleus. These were associated with varying performance in language tests. It is increasingly accepted that dyslexia is not a unique entity, but might reflect different neuro-cognitive pathologies. Researchers have been looking for a way to distinguish between different types of dyslexia for several years, and this research is among the first to show a direct link between brain structure and symptom severity. According to Pernet, "These results provide evidence for the existence of various subtypes of dyslexia characterized by different brain phenotypes. In addition, behavioral analyses suggest that these brain phenotypes relate to different deficits of automatization of language-based processes such as grapheme/phoneme correspondence and/or rapid access to lexicon entries". Notes: Brain classification reveals the right cerebellum as the best biomarker of dyslexia Cyril R Pernet, Jean Baptiste Poline, Jean Francois Demonet and Guillaume A Rousselet BMC Neuroscience (in press) Article. All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central"s open access policy. Graeme Baldwin BioMed Central


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