VirusBom costs 350 Taiwan dollars ($10) and can be used 700 times, Money Marketing Communication representative said. It contains a chemical compound that can destroy many kinds of bacteria and viruses, including the H1N1 swine flu strain, company representative Heidi Wang said.

The study was based on 295 women who were sexually active more than twice a month.

To assess whether sexual satisfaction and well-being were linked, the team from Monash University in Australia recruited women aged 20-65 who self-identified as being satisfied or dissatisfied with their sexual function.

The report, which was released in Geneva, was jointly launched by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

“You may ask why, but it is a fact that gays are going for a gender makeover these days. I have done several cases in Delhi and Kolkata,” Ashutosh Misra, a senior reconstructive surgeon here, told IANS.

The residents have been demanding a pay hike, but talks failed.

“The government said it can increase our stipend by Rs 6000 which we think is unreasonable and unacceptable. We have not got any written assurance from the government,” said Dr Asad Rehman, spokesperson, Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors.

The woman, who had gone recently to Australia, returned to the city on June 18 and went to a hospital in south Mumbai the next day after she caught fever, Dr Pradeep Awate, head of the state health department’s influenza cell, said.

“She was admitted to the Kasturba Hospital this morning and her throat swab samples have been sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune, the results of which are expected tomorrow,” Awate said.

WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda said the number wasn’t a prediction, but that experience with flu pandemics showed one-third of the world’s population gets infected.

Johns Hopkins scientists, who conducted the first ever study examining the link between blood levels of folate, the naturally occurring form of folic acid and allergies, said results add to mounting evidence that folate can help regulate inflammation.

Recent studies, including research from Hopkins, have found a link between folate levels and inflammation-mediated diseases, including heart disease.

These findings were based on a study of more than 2,000 seniors who were current smokers, past smokers and had never smoked.

All three groups were compared to show a link between smoking and the speed at which participants walked.

Scientists at University College London aim to kick off patient trials of the treatment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) by 2012.

If the tests prove successful, a treatment could be available four years later.

The research team are developing a treatment using embryonic stem cells to replace the cells lost in the eyes of people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

“There is a carpet of cells at the back of the eye which support the seeing part of the eye, which is the retina,” the Scotsman quoted Professor Peter Coffey, from the Institute of Ophthalmology at UCL, as saying.

“Cancer scenario in India is not very comfortable and every year there is an increment of 10,000 new cancer patients and the number of total victims stands at about 25 lakh all over,” Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Director General Viswamohan Katoch said at a seminar on ‘New Frontiers in Haematology and Oncology’ here today.

American scientists have found that a combination of two FDA-approved drugs Clavulanate and Meropenem, meant for fighting other bacterial infections like ecoli, completely blocked the growth of 13 strains of XDR TB, isolated in the lab.

According to scientists from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the drugs worked in tandem — while one brought down the guard of the TB bacteria by inhibiting the enzyme that normally shields it from antibiotics, the other killed it.

The US House of Representatives approved The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act by a 298-112 margin, sending the legislation to face an uncertain fate in the Senate, where it died in 2008.

“This is truly a historic day in the fight against tobacco,” said Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California, the measure’s chief author. “Now we all can breathe a little easier.”

The study compared 186 pairs of identical twins and found that dropping one dress size could age a woman by an average of four years, ‘Herald Sun’ newspaper reported.

Identical twins share all their genes and so any differences in their looks must be determined by lifestyle, rather than DNA.

Rajiv Grover, secretary of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, said “It’s not wrinkles and lines that make people look older, it’s changes in the shape of the face.

By 2016, it is estimated that 68 million people in the country will be afflicted by the CAD problem and by 2025, 57 million will suffer from diabetes and 21.5 million from hypertension.

With the magnitude of the problem being very high in the next 10 years, it would mean 80 per cent of the global burden of CAD and cancer will be borne by India and lower middle income countries.

“MicroRNAs are very small, newly-identified RNA elements of the cell, and we’ve shown that one in particular – microRNA-7 or miR-7, can play a profound role in reversing cancer cell growth,” said Peter Leedman, a professor who led the research team.

Leedman, deputy director of Western Australian Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR), added that miR-7 can significantly reduce the growth of some cancer cells, as well as killing off others – particularly in cancers of the brain, lung, breast and prostate.

“What’s special about this discovery is that we’ve shown, on a cellular level, that we can inhibit cancer cell growth and kill-off some cancerous cells very effectively with miR-7.”

Expansion of a popular public health insurance program for lower income children is being financed by an increase in the federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes of about $1.01 per pack, up from the current 39 cents on a $4.35 pack.

Smoking kills about 440,000 Americans annually and costs the nation $193 billion in medical expenses and lost productivity, said Dr. Terry Pechacek of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health.

The long-promised move, coming nearly two months into his term, will allow a rush of research aimed at better treatment, if not cures, for ailments from diabetes to paralysis — research that crosses partisan lines, backed by such notables as Nancy Reagan and the late actor Christopher Reeve. But it stirs intense controversy over whether government crosses a moral line with such research.

Obama also planned to make a broad declaration that science — not political ideology — would guide his administration.

Well-known psychiatrist Samir Parikh, who conducted the study in 20 schools across Delhi and the surrounding towns of Gurgaon and Noida, said the pressure from teachers and parents to perform is intense. “Instead of a supportive environment that is needed to help make students feel calm and relaxed, there is a tendency by teachers and parents to constantly prod them. It places excessive pressure on them to perform,” Parikh, chief of the mental health and behavioural science department at Max Healthcare, Saket, south Delhi, said.

A team at the Moorfield’s Eye Hospital in London, led by Lyndon da Cruz, has carried out the “experimental” surgery seven months back on Ron who lost his sight 30 years ago, the ‘BBC News’ portal reported.

The bionic eye, known as Argus II and developed by US company Second Sight, uses a camera and video processor mounted on sunglasses to send captured images wirelessly to a tiny receiver on the outside of eye, according to the doctors.

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The new vaccine is potentially a sound solution in case of an H5N1 bird flu pandemic, which many scientists have been worried about, the study co-authored by scientists from the two sides said.

China’ Xinhua news agency reported that the new vaccine has proved safer in experiments on mice and that “a single vaccine dose will provide rapid protective immune responses.”

Sharing two hobbies, having three cuddles every 24 hours, saying at least one “I love you” a day and enjoying two romantic meals a month could also help ensure a lasting liaison, reports the Telegraph. Researchers also discovered the husband and wife who will stay true to their “till death do us part” vow will have met through friends — and tied the knot after three and a half years together.

A new study, funded by the European Union, has shown that newborns have a sense of pitch from birth, and it is not something learned through experience as earlier believed — in fact, infants are even sensitive to the beat in music.

“The bottom line is we come into the world with brains that are continually looking for patterns, and telling us when there is something unexpected we should learn about,” Susan Denham, who led the study, said.