Minutes after having sexual intercourse with her boyfriend, a 35-year-old woman suddenly felt her left arm go weak. Her speech became slurred and she lost feeling on the left side of her face.

She had suffered a stroke and the conclusion was that the stroke probably was due to several related factors, including birth control pills, a venous blood clot, sexual intercourse and a heart defect. Doctors at Loyola University Medical Center describe the unusual case in the Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease.

Birth control pills slightly increase the risk of blood clots. Doctors believe a small clot formed in one of the veins in her thigh, broke loose and traveled to the right atrium (the heart's upper right pumping chamber). Normally in such cases, the clot will get pumped out of the right atrium and travel to the lungs, where it may harmlessly dissolve.

Despite low overall unemployment, Canada's manufacturing industry has cut 88,000 jobs this year, with nearly all the losses occurring in Ontario. Also, part-time employment has grown by 3.5 per cent in 12 months, much faster than the 0.9 per cent growth in full time work. A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) on the social determinants of health demonstrates that these kind of employment changes can affect more than your wallet. Research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)'s Dr. Carles Muntaner in the WHO report highlights the profound impact of employment conditions on health.

Dr. Muntaner and his research team found that poor mental health outcomes are associated with precarious employment (e.g. temporary contracts or part-time work with low wages and no benefits). When compared with those with full-time work with benefits, workers who report employment insecurity experience significant adverse effects on their physical and mental health.

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have isolated three important genes involved in the development of a type of childhood brain cancer. The breakthrough is revealed in a study published in the British Journal of Cancer today.

Researchers from the Children's Brain Tumour Research Centre at The University of Nottingham, on behalf of the Children's Cancer and Leukaemia Group (CCLG), have found three genes associated with specific characteristics of ependymoma — the third most common form of childhood brain cancer.

Before now, relatively little was known about the underlying biology of this disease. The results of this study provide a more detailed understanding of the genetics behind ependymoma, which could help scientists develop targeted drugs to treat the disease more successfully, and with fewer side effects.

Rutgers geneticist Gleb Shumyatsky has shown that the same gene that controls innate fear in animals also promotes "helicopter mom" behavior in female animals, where they instinctively protect newborn pups and interact cautiously with unknown peers. The gene is known as stathmin or oncoprotein 18.

This "fear gene" is highly concentrated in the amygdala, a key region of the brain that deals with fear and anxiety. Shumyatsky's newest finding could enhance our understanding of human anxiety, including partpartum depression and borderline personality disorders.

An ongoing rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels might be kept below harmful levels if emissions from coal are phased out within the next few decades, say researchers. They say that less plentiful oil and gas should be used sparingly as well, but that far greater supplies of coal mean that it must be the main target of reductions, write climatologist Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

The burning of fossil fuels accounts for about 80 percent of the rise of atmospheric CO₂ since the pre-industrial era, to its current level of 385 parts per million. However, while there are huge amounts of coal left, predictions about when and how oil and gas production might start running out have proved controversial, and this has made it difficult to anticipate future emissions. To better understand how the emissions might change in the future, Kharecha and Hansen considered a wide range of scenarios.

Demonstrating that despite the large number of cancer-causing genes already identified, many more remain to be found, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have linked a previously unsuspected gene, CDK8, to colon cancer.

The discovery of CDK8's role in cancer was made possible by new tools for assessing the activity of specific genes, say the authors of the new study. As these tools are further improved, the stream of newly discovered cancer genes is expected to increase, providing new avenues for therapy, the authors suggest in Nature on Sept. 14.

The study is noteworthy in another respect, as well, the authors indicated. Many of the abnormal proteins linked to cancer are known as "transcription factors" because they're able to "read" cell DNA and use that information for producing other cell proteins. Although transcription factors are important regulators, this class of proteins has proven to be impossible to target with drugs. Genes that influence such transcription factors, however, make attractive targets for drugs, since they can potentially disrupt the cancer process and disable tumor cells. CDK8 is such a gene.