徐州怀孕中期(徐州四维彩超 作用) (今日更新中)

SAN FRANCISCO, June 8 (Xinhua) -- Facebook Inc. will be probed by European Union (EU) regulators over its latest facial recognition feature rolling out worldwide, U.S. media reported on Wednesday.The feature, called Tag Suggestions, uses face recognition software to match users' new photos to other photos they are tagged in. It groups similar photos together and suggests the name of the friend in the photos.Facebook rolled out the feature in the United States late last year, where users can opt out of the feature by going to their private settings. But Facebook switched it on by default without telling users first when it became available on Tuesday in countries outside of the United States.A group of privacy watchdogs from 27 EU nations will study the measure for possible rule violations, a Luxembourg official of Article 29 Data Protection Working Party told Bloomberg. The Working Party, an independent EU advisory body on data protection and privacy, comprises the data protection regulators of all the 27 EU member states."Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people' s prior consent and it can't be activated by default," said the Luxembourg official, Gerald Lommel. He noted that such automatic features "can bear a lot of risks for users" and the European data- protection regulators will "clarify to Facebook that this can't happen like this."Authorities in Britain and Ireland said they are also looking into the new function on Facebook. The British Information Commissioner's Office told Bloomberg that "the privacy issues that this new software might raise are obvious," saying it is "speaking to Facebook" about the issue.Facebook has been under scrutiny by EU regulators for several privacy concerns, such as users' default settings and how the company uses the information collected from its social network website.

BEIJING, Aug. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- Researchers have discovered how a human egg captures an incoming sperm for fertilization, paving the way to help couples suffering from infertility, according to media reports on Monday.An international team of researchers found that a sugar chain known as the sialyl-lewis-x sequence (SLeX) makes the outer coat of the egg “sticky,” which has proven to be helpful in binding the egg and the sperm.As a result, this observation has filled in a huge gap in the understanding of fertility and provides hope for ultimately helping couples who currently cannot conceive.Scientists and doctors know that a sperm identifies an egg when proteins on the head of the sperm match and bind to a series of specific sugars in the egg’s outer coating. With a successful match of proteins, the outside surfaces of the sperm and egg then bind together before merging, which is then followed by delivery of sperm’s DNA into egg.To identify this molecules, the researchers used ultra-sensitive mass-spectrometric imaging technology to observe and identify which molecules are most likely to be key in the binding process.They experimented with a range of synthesised sugars in the laboratory and found that it is SLeX that specifically binds sperm to an egg.According to the World Health Organisation, infertility affects about 15 percent of reproductive-aged couples around the world and almost one in every seven couples in Britain has problems conceiving a child for various reasons.

LOS ANGELES, July 6 (Xinhua) -- NASA scientists have got the first-ever, up-close details of a Saturn storm that is eight times the surface area of Earth, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ( JPL) announced on Wednesday.The images were captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraf, according to JPL in Pasadena, Los Angeles.On Dec. 5, 2010, Cassini first detected the storm that has been raging ever since. It appears approximately 35 degrees north latitude of Saturn.The storm is the biggest observed by spacecraft orbiting or flying by Saturn. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured images in 1990 of an equally large storm.Pictures from Cassini's imaging cameras show the storm wrapping around the entire planet covering approximately two billion square miles (4 billion square kilometers).The storm is about 500 times larger than the biggest storm previously seen by Cassini during several months from 2009 to 2010. At its most intense, the storm generated more than 10 lightning flashes per second.Cassini has detected 10 lightning storms on Saturn since the spacecraft entered the planet's orbit.Those storms rolled through an area in the southern hemisphere dubbed "Storm Alley." "Cassini shows us that Saturn is bipolar," said Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini imaging team member at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. "Saturn is not like Earth and Jupiter, where storms are fairly frequent. Weather on Saturn appears to hum along placidly for years and then erupt violently. I'm excited we saw weather so spectacular on our watch."The new details about this storm complement atmospheric disturbances described recently by scientists using Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's JPL manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

BEIJING, June 26 (Xinhua) -- China on Sunday issued a regulation on drug rehabilitation that encourages drug users to voluntarily undergo rehabilitation programs.The regulation took effect Sunday as a supplement of the country's anti-drug law that was implemented three years ago.Drug users who voluntarily receive intervention programs "will be exempt from punishment," said the regulation, promulgated on the 24th International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, which falls on Sunday.With seven chapters and 46 articles, it also stipulates the rights and obligations of drug addicts, as well as supporting measures for voluntary, community-based, and government-ordered drug rehabilitation.Up to date, more than two million Chinese have been receiving compulsive rehabilitation or treatment, statistics show. However, many of them find it difficult to completely give up the addiction.The regulation, aiming to explore effective ways to curb drug use, calls for boosting "the role of communities and families" in helping reduce drug users' dependency on narcotics.It asks rehabilitation centers to provide addicts with consulting services and education on the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other contagious diseases.Efforts should be made to "boost pharmaceutical management" so as to prevent loss or abuse of psychotropic substances and narcotics, the regulation says.The regulation also stipulates on the protection of drug addicts' personal information, saying "members of the police, judiciary and health departments who cause the leak of personal information must be punished."The regulation has solicited public comments before it was released.Transnational drug trafficking remains rampant in China, particularly in southwestern border regions of Yunnan and Guangxi.A report issued last month by China's National Narcotics Control Commission said authorities investigated 89,000 drug-related crimes and arrested 101,000 suspects last year.Law enforcers confiscated 5.3 metric tonnes of heroin and one metric tonne of opium in 2010, the report said, adding that intervention programs were used to treat and rehabilitate some 175,000 drug addicts last year.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Researchers have found a way to turn mouse embryonic stem cells into sperm and this finding opens up new avenues for infertility research and treatment, according to a study published Thursday in the online edition of journal Cell,A Kyoto University team coaxed mouse embryonic stem cells into sperm precursors, called primordial germ cells (PGCs), and shown that these cells can give rise to healthy sperm. The researchers say that such in vitro reconstitution of germ cell development represents one of the most fundamental challenges in biology.When transplanted into mice that were unable to produce sperm normally, the stem cell derived PGCs produced normal-looking sperm, which were then used to successfully fertilize eggs. These fertilized eggs, when transplanted into a recipient mother, produced healthy offspring that grew into fertile male and female adult mice. The same procedure could produce fertile offspring from induced pluripotent stem cells that are often derived from adult skin cells."Continued investigations aimed at in vitro reconstitution of germ cell development, including the induction of female primordial germ cell-like cells and their descendants, will be crucial for a more comprehensive understanding of germ cell biology in general, as well as for the advancement of reproductive technology and medicine," the researchers wrote.

来源：资阳报