In 2001, analysis of Swiss data collected since 1993 included 1001 treatment cycles with IVF, 2217 treatment cycles with intracytoplasmic sperm injection and 2160 treatment cycles with frozen-thawed embryos or zygotes. IVF cycle number has remained constant over the past 10 years, now representing only 18% of the total. ICSI treatment cycles have plateaued since 2001. Altogether, patients recei...

The high dialysis prevalence and incidence in Taiwan have been an important public health and social issue. Reducing incident patients and improving prevalent patient care are the two major tasks for all nephrologists in Taiwan. Constant report of current dialysis status is essential to fulfill the tasks. Taiwan Renal Registry Data System (TWRDS) was established in 1987. Taiwan Society of Nephr...

Outer space has been a favourite theme of science fiction literature for a long time, with Stanley Kubrick's movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) being a climax in this regard. People are also interested by inner space. In Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966), miniature submarines allow a medical team to adventure into the familiar and mysterious universe of the human body. In a certain wa...

Modern and Cenozoic deep-sea hydrothermal-vent and methane-seep communities are dominated by large tubeworms, bivalves and gastropods. In contrast, many Early Cretaceous seep communities were dominated by the largest Mesozoic rhynchonellid brachiopod, the dimerelloid Peregrinella, the paleoecologic and evolutionary traits of which are still poorly understood. We investigated the nature of Pereg...

In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick 1968), crewmembers of a spaceship interact with the ship’s computer by talking to it. The computer, named HAL9000, has no keyboard or mouse; the only way to communicate with it is conversationally. HAL9000 behaves the same way people do in conversation, using subtle strategies such as hedging, indirect requests, and politeness to accomplish its goals....

We determined the types of cholera toxin (CT) produced by a collection of 185 Vibrio cholerae O1 strains isolated in Bangladesh over the past 45 years. All of the El Tor strains of V. cholerae O1 isolated since 2001 produced CT of the classical biotype, while those isolated before 2001 produced CT of the El Tor biotype.

Based on data from the 2003 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS 2003), this policy brief provides a profile of nonelderly Californians' health insurance coverage and lack of coverage, as well as estimates of children and adults who are uninsured but eligible for coverage through public programs. It also describes how this profile has changed since 2001, based on data from CHIS 2001.

BACKGROUND The dual-plane technique has been widely used in augmentation mammaplasty procedures. However, there are some concerns about aesthetic contour maintenance for long time after muscle releasing. This study aims to track and analyze breast dynamic morphological changes after dual-plane breast augmentation with three-dimensional (3D) scanning technique. METHODS Thirteen dual-plane anat...

Physical characteristics, such as breast size and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR), function as important features used by human males to assess female attractiveness. Males supposedly pay attention to these features because they serve as cues to fecundity and health. Here, we document that women with higher breast-to-underbreast ratio (large breasts) and women with relatively low WHR (narrow waists) h...