UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

Mar 28, 06:31 PM

Current Headlines: Beef may cause lower sperm count LONDON, March 28 (UPI) -- A U.S. study says high beef consumption by pregnant women may reduce the sperm count in their sons.

Researchers say anabolic steroids and other chemicals fed to North American cattle may be to blame, Britain's Telegraph reported.

The study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, looked at men born in United States between 1949 and 1983. It found that sons born to women who ate beef more than seven times a week while pregnant had a 24 percent lower sperm count than men whose mothers ate less beef.

Researchers said other contaminants and lifestyle factors that correlate with greater beef consumption may also have played a role.

Lead author Shanna Swan of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry said the study needs to be repeated in men born in Europe after 1988 when growth promoters were no longer permitted in beef sold or produced there.

Dinosaur impact on mammals disputed ATHENS, Ga., March 28 (UPI) -- U.S. and European researchers are challenging the idea that the mass extinction of dinosaurs played a major role in the evolution of mammals.

The report, published in the journal Nature, contains a new evolutionary tree for mammals that puts the major diversification of today's mammals long after a die-off of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago.

We have found that when you fuse all of the molecular trees with the fossil evidence, the timing does not work, University of Georgia Institute of Ecology Director John Gittleman said in a release. The preponderance of mammals really didn't take off until 10 (million) to 15 million years after the demise of the dinosaurs.

Scientists combined more than 2,500 partial trees constructed using molecular data and the fossil record to create the first virtually complete mammalian tree.

Lead author Olaf Bininda-Emonds of the University of Jena, Germany, says

the mammals we know today are actually quite old and just flew under the radar of everything that was out there.

MRI creator Paul C. Lauterbur dead at 77 URBANA, Ill., March 28 (UPI) -- Nobel Prize winner Paul C. Lauterbur, who helped develop magnetic resonance imaging, has died at 77 of kidney disease in Urbana, Ill.

Lauterbur worked at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Ill., for 22 years. He died Tuesday, The New York Times reported.

His work with MRIs has helped revolutionize medicine, allowing for a good look inside the human body without cutting it open. It helps avoid unnecessary surgery and cuts out the radiation of X-rays.

Paul's influence is felt around the world every day, every time an MRI saves the life of a daughter or a son, a mother or a father, said Richard Herman, chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois.

Germany launches cancer vaccine campaign BERLIN, March 28 (UPI) -- Teenage girls in Germany will be urged to get free cervical cancer vaccines under a new public health campaign.

Germany's Standing Commission for Vaccination recommended that the nation's 3 million girls between 12 and 17 be vaccinated against the human papilloma virus, The Times of London Reported.

The HPV virus causes about 70 percent of cervical tumors. Germany has sold the vaccines since last year but the commission's approval means they will be covered by state insurance companies for teenage girls.

It not only prevents cancer, Dr. Lutz Gissman of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg told The Times, "it also takes away the fear of many thousands of women waiting for the outcome of tests for the illness.