Pope tells infertile couple to shun 'arrogant' IVF treatment

Pope tells infertile couple to shun 'arrogant' IVF treatment as sex between husband and wife is the 'only acceptable' way to conceive

By Emma Reynolds


Last updated at 5:47 PM on 25th February

The Pope told scientists and fertility experts that matrimony was the 'only place worthy of the call to existence of a new human being' The Pope today urged infertile couples to shun IVF and insisted that sex between a husband and wife was the only acceptable way of conceiving. Pope Benedict XVI said artificial methods of getting pregnant were simply 'arrogance' as he spoke at the end of a three-day Vatican conference on infertility in Rome. He told scientists and fertility experts that matrimony was the 'only place worthy of the call to existence of a new human being'. The Pope reiterated the Church's stance against artificial procreation, telling infertile couples they should refrain from trying to conceive through any method other than conjugal relations. 'The human and Christian dignity of procreation, in fact, doesn't consist in a "product", but in its link to the conjugal act, an expression of the love of the spouses of their union, not only biological but also spiritual,' Benedict said.

He told the specialists in his audience to resist 'the fascination of the technology of artificial fertility', warning against 'easy income, or even worse, the arrogance of taking the place of the Creator'. Conjugal: Benedict said procreation should be linked to love both biologically and spiritually He suggested that this was the attitude that underlies the field of artificial procreation. Sperm or egg donation and methods such as in vitro fertilization are banned for members of the Catholic church. The emphasis on science and 'the logic of profit seem today to dominate the field of infertility and human procreation', the Pope said. But he added that the Church encourages medical research into infertility.

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Pope calls for silence against Internet noise



January 25, 2012 10:53AM


People "frequently bombarded" with information on internet

Vatican's own news website receives 8-10,000 hits a day


ALSO.Google Chrome enters mobile browser war .... Catholic leader Pope Benedict XVI has called for restraint on the internet, but admitted social media can be useful. Picture: File Photo Source: AP



POPE Benedict XVI has hailed the benefits of silent reflection and encouraged people to stop being "bombarded" by information from the Internet,

But the pontiff says social networks could still be useful modes of communication.

"People today are frequently bombarded with answers to questions they have never asked and to needs of which they were unaware," the pope said in his now-traditional yearly message on the Vatican and social comunications.



"It is necessary to develop an appropriate environment, a kind of ecosystem that maintains a just equilibrium between silence, words, images and sounds," said the pope, while also defending responsible Internet communication.



"Attention should be paid to the various types of websites, applications and social networks which can help people today to find time for reflection and authentic questioning,'' the pope said.





"In concise phrases, often no longer than a verse from the Bible, profound thoughts can be communicated," the 84-year-old pope said in an apparent reference to the micro-blogging site Twitter.



But he added this was true only "as long as those taking part in the conversation do not neglect to cultivate their own inner lives."



The Pope's speech comes as the Vatican reveals its news website is getting between 8000 and 10,000 hits a day with peaks of up to 16,000 hits over Christmas.



The website, which brings together all the Vatican's official communications and news from the Catholic Church around the world, was launched in June.



The data was announced by archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications at a Vatican press conference.



Celli said the average time visitors spent on the site in English, Italian and Spanish was around two minutes, which he said showed that those consulting it were not doing so "by mistake" but were reading some of its continent.



Almost a third of visitors - 27 percent - were from the United States, followed by browsers from Italy, Germany and Spain.



There were also many visitors from Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.



Celli said most the visits to the website were through social media networks - with 65 percent from Facebook and 30 percent from Twitter.



Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/pope-calls-for-silence-against-internet-noise/story-e6frfro0-1226253184682#ixzz1lpnxxGz5

Integral satellite disproves dark matter origin for mystery radiation

Taken from: http://www.physorg.com/news167493073.html


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July 22, 2009 Enlarge

The left-hand panel shows the glow of 511 keV gamma rays coming from the annihilation of electrons by their antimatter counterparts, the positrons. The map shows the entire sky, with the galactic centre at the middle. The emission can be seen extending towards the right-hand side of the map. The right-hand panel shows the distribution of hard low mass X-ray binary stars. This stellar population has a distribution that matches the extent of the 511 keV map. Credits: ESA/ Integral/ MPE (G. Weidenspointner et al.)

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers working with data from ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory has disproved theories that some form of dark matter explains mysterious radiation in the Milky Way.

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That this radiation exists has been known since the 1970s, and several theories have been proposed to explain it. Integral’s unprecedented spectral and spatial resolution showed that it strongly peaks towards the centre of the Galaxy, with an asymmetry along the Galactic disc.
Several researchers have invoked a variety of dark matter to explain Integral’s observations. Dark matter is thought to exist throughout the Universe - undetectable matter that differs from the normal material that makes up stars, planets and us. It is also believed to be present within and around the Milky Way, in the form of a halo.
The recent study has found that the ‘positrons’ fuelling the radiation are not produced from dark matter but from an entirely different, and much less mysterious, source: massive stars explode and leave behind radioactive elements that decay into lighter particles, including positrons, the antimatter counterparts of electrons.

Enlarge

This is an artist’s impression of ESA’s orbiting gamma-ray observatory, Integral. Credits: ESA

The reasoning behind the original hypothesis was that positrons, being electrically charged, would be affected by magnetic fields and thus would not be able to travel far. As the radiation was observed in places that did not match the known distribution of stars, dark matter was invoked as an alternative for the origin of the positrons. But the recent finding by a team of astronomers led by Richard Lingenfelter at the University of California at San Diego, proves otherwise. The astronomers show that the positrons formed by radioactive decay of elements left behind after explosions of massive stars are, in fact, able to travel great distances, with many leaving the thin Galactic disc.
Taking this into account, dark matter is no longer required to explain what Integral saw. A better understanding of how positrons behave has explained the mysterious radiation in our Galaxy.
More information:
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