The International Aids Conference is currently underway in Vienna right now and some exciting news has been announced there. A new vaginal gel containing an AIDs drug is excellent at curtailing HIV infections.
The gel was found to be both safe and acceptable when used once in the 12 hours before sex and once in the 12 hours after sex by women aged 18 to 40 years.
Salim Abdool Karim, one of the two leading co-researchers, told reporters in Vienna that the 889 women involved in the trial, conducted in the coastal city of Durban and a remote rural village, had largely used the gel as directed.
They were also given condoms and advice about sexually transmitted diseases, and tested for HIV once a month.
After 30 months, 98 women became infected with HIV – 38 in the group that got tenofovir in the gel and 60 in the group that got placebos.
Teh G(irls)20 has started in Toronto, the first of many G20 related events for people by the people. The best news of all? These summits don’t $1 billion in security preparations. We’ve looked at the G(irls)20 before, but here’s more info on it:
The event, organized by the Belinda Stronach Foundation, has brought together young women from the 20 countries represented at the G20, plus one representative from the African Union. Travel and accommodation for the delegates is being covered by sponsors.
Held in downtown Toronto as the city girds itself for the large international G20 summit, the event aims to brainstorm solutions, from a young female perspective, to the world’s problems. Their ideas will then be made public, with hopes of influencing the world leaders before they begin official talks at both the G8 and G20.
Brigitte, Germany’s most popular women’s magazine will stop using professional models because the models do not reflect the vast majority of women. Previously, the magazine has been adding weight to the super-thin models using photoshop.
“From 2010 we will not work with professional models any more,” said Andreas Lebert, editor-in-chief, adding that he was “fed up” with having to retouch pictures of underweight models who bore no resemblance to ordinary women.
“For years we’ve had to use Photoshop to fatten the girls up,” he said. “Especially their thighs, and decolletage. But this is disturbing and perverse and what has it got to do with our real reader?”
He said the move was a response to complaints by readers who said they had no connection with the women depicted in fashion features and “no longer wanted to see protruding bones”.
New research on how to get Americans cycling points to a very blunt conclusion: you can increase the amount of cyclists by improving cycling for women. Things like physically separated bike lanes instead of just painted lines can make a huge difference in the enjoyability of cycling and the safety of it.
Women are considered an “indicator species†for bike-friendly cities for several reasons. First, studies across disciplines as disparate as criminology and child rearing have shown that women are more averse to risk than men. In the cycling arena, that risk aversion translates into increased demand for safe bike infrastructure as a prerequisite for riding. Women also do most of the child care and household shopping, which means these bike routes need to be organized around practical urban destinations to make a difference.
“Despite our hope that gender roles don’t exist, they still do,†says Jennifer Dill, a transportation and planning researcher at Portland State University. Addressing women’s concerns about safety and utility “will go a long way†toward increasing the number of people on two wheels, Dill explains.
So far few cities have taken on the challenge. In the U.S., most cycling facilities consist of on-street bike lanes, which require riding in vehicle-clogged traffic, notes John Pucher, a professor of urban planning at Rutgers University and longtime bike scholar. And when cities do install traffic-protected off-street bike paths, they are almost always along rivers and parks rather than along routes leading “to the supermarket, the school, the day care center,†Pucher says.
Although researchers have long examined the bike infrastructure in Europe, they have only just started to do so for the U.S. In a study conducted last year, Dill examined the effect of different types of bike facilities on cycling. The project, which used GPS positioning to record individual cycling trips in Portland, compared the shortest route with the path cyclists actually took to their destination. Women were less likely than men to try on-street bike lanes and more likely to go out of their way to use “bike boulevards,†quiet residential streets with special traffic-calming features for bicycles. “Women diverted from the shortest routes more often,†Dill says.
Cycling is so awesome that in Sao Paulo bicycles are faster than helicopters:
It showed those who drank two or more cups of tea daily had a 46 per cent lower risk of the disease compared with those who never or seldom drank tea.
Alex Ford, chief executive of The Eve Appeal, which supports patients with gynaecological cancers, said women should be aware of the signs of ovarian cancer, especially those over 50.
She said: ‘Traditionally, early diagnosis was difficult as experts didn’t agree on the symptoms and they are easily mistaken for other, much more common and less serious conditions.