(Reuters) -Amazon.com Inc on Thursday said it expects a jump in fourth-quarter revenue and profit, boosted by a holiday marketing

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 1, 2023--

Taiwan's chip giant TSMC said Thursday it did not expect any direct effect on production from China's latest export controls on two rare...

Here's some inspiration for Xbox controller designs!

Meta has made cuts to its teams that tackle disinformation and coordinated troll and harassment campaigns on its platforms, people with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN, raising concerns ahead of the pivotal 2024 elections in the US and around the world.

Infertility is a problem that afflicts more than a billion people across the world, which is why treatments such as IVF are so important. The procedure (in vitro fertilisation, to use it’s full name) involves the extraction of an egg from the woman's ovaries to be fertilised with sperm in a laboratory and returned to the woman’s womb. The goal is that the resulting embryo will then grow and develop into a foetus, blessing the parent or parents with a baby. However, success rates for IVF – as in, the percentage of treatments that result in a live birth – remain somewhat unencouraging: 32 per cent for women aged under 35; 25 per cent for women aged 35 to 37, with the numbers continuing to drop the older you get, according to the NHS. Nevertheless, a major new study has revealed a striking new finding which could help boost the hopes of countless aspiring mums and dads across the world. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter After analysing 3,657 frozen embryos over a period of eight years, researchers in Western Australia found that IVF was much more likely to work when eggs had been harvested in the summer. The team clarified that it didn’t seem to matter when the embryos were transferred to the mother’s womb, just when the eggs were collected. Indeed, the likelihood of babies being born when the eggs had been retrieved in the summer was 30 per cent higher than when they had been retrieved in the autumn, according to the scientists. The team also found that the temperature on the day of egg collection didn’t seem to have an impact on success rates, but the number of sunny hours did. Of the embryos they tested, those harvested on days that had the most sunshine were 28 per cent more likely to result in a live birth compared to the darkest and most overcast days. “Our study suggests that the best conditions for live births appear to be associated with summer and increased sunshine hours on the day of egg retrieval,” the study’s lead, Dr Sebastian Leathersich, of Perth’s King Edward Memorial Hospital, said about the paper, which was published in the journal Human Reproduction. Still, he noted: “There are many factors that influence fertility treatment success, age being among the most important. “However, this study adds further weight to the importance of environmental factors and their influence on egg quality and embryonic development." He further explained: “We effectively separated the conditions at the time of egg collection from the conditions at the time of transfer, demonstrating that environmental factors when the eggs are developing are as, if not more, important than environmental factors during implantation and early pregnancy.” The expert obstetrician and gynaecologist added: “Optimising factors such as avoiding smoking, alcohol and other toxins and maintaining healthy activity levels and weight should be paramount. However, clinicians and patients could also consider external factors such as environmental conditions.” Despite Dr Leathersich and his colleagues concluding that the temperature on the day of egg collection had little bearing on the success of the process, they also found that the temperature on the day of embryo implantation did make a difference. The chances of a live birth rate decreased by 18 per cent when the embryos were transferred on the hottest days (when average temperatures measured between 14.5C and 27.8C) compared to the coolest days (0.1C to 9.8C), and there was a small increase in miscarriage rates, from 5.5 per cent to 7.6. The finding that miscarriage rates were highest when embryo transfer took place on the hottest days is consistent with other studies showing higher rates of miscarriage in the summer months. “This suggests that the negative effects of high temperature are more likely related to early pregnancy rather than egg development,” Dr Leathersich concluded. When it comes to the disparity in success rates between eggs retrieved in summer and autumn, he and his team pointed out that melatonin levels could be at play. Differences in lifestyles between the winter and summer months may also play a role, he and his colleagues acknowledged. "It is possible that there are differences in activity, diet, and lifestyle in different seasons which could underlie the observed differences in live birth rates, though such data were not collected in this study," they wrote. "It is also possible that other environmental factors, including pollutants, may impact clinical outcomes." Whilst the study’s findings are compelling, Dr Leathersich and his team admitted that it did have its limitations. The research was done in hindsight, using eggs that had been frozen, then thawed, so it could not draw watertight conclusions. “Ideally, these findings should be replicated in other sites with different conditions and different treatment protocols to confirm the findings,” Dr Leathersich said. “It would also be interesting to look at the impact of season and environmental factors on sperm parameters, as this could have contributed to our observations.” He added: “We are now planning to analyse this same group of patients using air quality data, as there may be seasonal changes in exposure to harmful pollutants which could negatively affect reproductive outcomes. “Finally, given the huge increase in so-called 'social egg freezing' for fertility preservation and the fact that this group generally have flexibility about when they choose to undergo treatment, it would be very interesting to see if these observations hold true with frozen eggs that are thawed and fertilised years later. “Any improved outcomes in this group could have big impacts for women making decisions about their future fertility, but the long-term follow-up required means it is likely to be some time before we can draw any conclusions for this population.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 5, 2023--

Nintendo has said it will no longer sell games in Russia through its online store as the Japanese giant winds down operations...

U.S. Facebook users have one more month to apply for their share of a $725 million privacy settlement that parent company Meta agreed to pay late last year

Apple has announced its new major update for the iPhone – but not for every iPhone. The new release, iOS 17, brings new Messaging features as well as whole new ways of using the iPhone, in the form of a new feature called StandBy. It was announced during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in California this week, as part of a live-streamed event that also saw the reveal of a new virtual reality headset. Apple announced an early version of the software shortly after that event, but only to developers. Those registered developers can download it now. The company will then release a public beta, for which anyone can sign up and download the software, in July. It did not give a more precise date for the release. Apple will then release the update to the public in the autumn, it said. Each year’s iOS update usually arrives just before the introduction of the new iPhone, in September. Apple will release the updates for MacOS, WatchOS and iPadOS on a similar schedule. Sometimes, however, the launch of the new iPad and Mac update is held until later in the year, in October. The new update will be available on all iPhone devices that can run the current iOS 16 – with the exception of the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X. Those devices were introduced in 2017. Apple has said that it keeps new updates coming to older devices for as long as possible, but that new features sometimes mean it has to drop them from new updates. MacOS will drop support for 2017 iMacs and MacBook Pros, with the exception of that year’s iMac Pro. The new Watch will be compatible with every device that could run WatchOS 9, which means it is available on the Series 4 and later. Read More Apple just launched a whole load of features. It avoided mentioning one specific word Augmented reality headset Vision Pro is ‘most advanced device ever’ – Apple Apple reveals shocking price of new virtual reality headset

Oklahoma burgers—which feature onion slices smashed directly into the patty—may be the best way to enjoy the American classic.

Chinese tech firms Baidu and SenseTime launched their ChatGPT-style AI bots to the public on Thursday, marking a new milestone in the global AI race.