It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
More sex, less pain and irritation for perimenopausal and postmenopausal women
New study suggests that regular sexual activity may reduce the odds of vulvar pain, dryness, and irritation in women aged in their 40s to 70s; orgasm and satisfaction levels are not necessarily affected by age
CLEVELAND, Ohio (June 25, 2025)—It’s no secret that women often become less interested in sex with age. However, orgasm and satisfaction have been shown to not decline significantly with age. A new study suggests regular sexual activity may limit vulvar pain, irritation, and dryness, which are all common reasons women have less sex as they get older. Results of the study are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society.
Estrogen deficiency during and after menopause may reduce the life expectancy of women and impair their quality of life through a condition called genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM). In 2014, GSM was defined as a collection of symptoms and signs associated with decreased estrogen and sex steroid levels. GSM includes genital, sexual and urinary symptoms—all of which can affect the frequency of sexual activity for women aged in their 40s to 70s.
In this new study involving more than 900 women aged 40 to 79 years, researchers sought to examine the association between sexual regularity and vulvovaginal-related problematic menopause symptoms. The vulva refers to the external female genitalia, and the vagina to the internal anatomy. Common problems experienced with menopause include itching, burning, pain, decreased lubrication, and changes in skin appearance.
Engaging in sexual activity in the past 3 months was defined as regular sexual activity, whereas engaging in sexual activity in the past year (but not in the past 3 months) was considered lower sexual activity. Not surprisingly, the researchers confirmed that the proportion of women having regular sexual activity decreased significantly with age, which aligns with the fact that Female Sexual Function Index scores for sexual desire, arousal, and lubrication also significantly decreased with age. The Female Sexual Function Index consists of 19 questions on female sexual function under six domains. Noteworthy, however, was that the scores for orgasm and satisfaction did not change with age.
Based on the results of the study, the researchers determined that some sexual functions and symptoms change with age but may be maintained in women who engage in more regular sexual activity. This study also revealed that women with regular sexual activity showed a low prevalence of GSM-related symptoms.
“The findings highlight the importance of diagnosing and treating GSM. Only 2.9% of the participants reported using hormone therapy. Local low-dose vaginal estrogen therapy is safe and highly effective at alleviating bothersome vulvovaginal symptoms contributing to pain and avoidance of intercourse. And although optimal sexual health is integral to overall well-being, it is also imperative to recognize the effect these symptoms can have on women who aren’t sexually active. Treatment should be offered to anyone with symptoms, whether engaging in sexual activity or not. Normalizing use of local low-dose estrogen therapy should be a thing,” says Dr. Monica Christmas, associate medical director for The Menopause Society.
For more information about menopause and healthy aging, visit www.menopause.org.
The Menopause Society is dedicated to empowering healthcare professionals and providing them with the tools and resources to improve the health of women during the menopause transition and beyond. As the leading authority on menopause since 1989, the nonprofit, multidisciplinary organization serves as the independent, evidence-based resource for healthcare professionals, researchers, the media, and the public and leads the conversation about improving women’s health and healthcare experiences. To learn more, visit menopause.org.
Cross-sectional study of the association between regular sexual activity and sexual function and genitourinary syndrome of menopause-related symptoms
Article Publication Date
25-Jun-2025
New Danish research centre to make designed proteins with vast potential
LIKE BIG OIL FUNDING ENGINEERING DEPARTMENTS
Designed proteins are anticipated to have groundbreaking impact on a range of issues. With a DKK 700 million grant from Novo Nordisk Foundation, a new Center for Protein Design (CPD) at the University of Copenhagen has ambitions to match this potential
The future of protein design will involve coding new amino acid sequences, as these sequences determine how proteins fold into specific structures, which in turn dictate their functions.
Proteins are the workhorses of biology. They perform virtually every important function in living organisms. They store, copy and protect our DNA, digest food to give us energy, and harness this energy to make our cells and muscles work.
But imagine if proteins could be specifically designed to provide even more versatile molecular toolboxes for science, technology and healthcare. In essence, this is what protein design is all about. It is a growing field that allows scientists to create entirely new proteins - including those that nature itself has not explored - and to tailor them to solve specific challenges.
Protein design could lead to artificial proteins that are able to detect diseases, and others to cure those diseases directly in the body. It could also produce proteins with industrial and environmental applications such as greener production of pharmaceuticals or the ability to break down plastics and other pollutants. A new centre at the University of Copenhagen will drive efforts to realise this potential.
CPD to play international key role in protein design
Proteins are large chain-like molecules made of building blocks called amino acids. In nature there are 20 different amino acids, and the order of these along the chain (the protein sequence) determines the shape that a protein forms, and, in turn, the job that it does.
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to two artificial intelligence (AI) researchers who helped crack the code that links a protein’s sequence to its three-dimensional structure, and to a biochemist who with many others showed that it is possible to design proteins from scratch using computers. It is this work that Dek Woolfson and the University of Copenhagen will now build on to open a whole new chapter in the story.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Design (CPD) will launch in August 2025, marking the beginning of an ambitious endeavour that will bring together a diversity of disciplines from biology, chemistry and drug design to computer science spread across two faculties to create a world-leading hub for protein design.
The CPD’s Director will be Dek Woolfson, a world-renowned and leading scientist in the field. The chance to lead protein design research in Copenhagen was an offer that he couldn't refuse.
“The great leaps in understanding proteins and in computational design, including AI, that have been made recently give us tools to start designing artificial proteins with confidence, and the resulting possibilities seem almost endless,” says Dek Woolfson. “However, there is still a lot of work to do before the full potential of protein design is realised. The CPD will play a key role in this, including driving fundamental research, and translating it into real-life applications. I am very excited by this opportunity, and I’m looking forward to establishing and leading the centre.”
Dek Woolfson comes from a position at the University of Bristol, UK, where he has pioneered protein design and led initiatives such as BrisSynBio, a Synthetic Biology Research Centre.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation has long recognised the great potential of protein design.
“De novo protein design opens possibilities for entirely new solutions to global challenges - from the development of targeted drugs and vaccines to sustainable biomaterials and enzymes that can degrade microplastics,” says Lene Oddershede, Chief Scientific Officer, Novo Nordisk Foundation. “Recently the field has made significant strides, and Denmark has a strong starting point with its long tradition of protein research. With this grant, we want to help translate groundbreaking basic research into concrete solutions, train the next generation of researchers in this crucial field, and ultimately establish a powerhouse for protein design here in Europe.”
Producing knowledge, researchers and actual proteins
A lot of understanding about how proteins work is still missing. Fundamental knowledge of the chemistry and physics at play within proteins will therefore be an early targeted effort of the CPD, along with advancing understanding of how proteins can be made to work in specified conditions and environments.
“The CPD will design novel proteins with specific properties to work under desired conditions,” says Dek Woolfson. “To do this, we will develop and use the latest computational methods, including generative AI. However, it will be critical to combine this with chemistry and physics to gain a more complete picture of proteins, how they function, and how we can design them. All the time, we will be training new research talent in the field – from biochemists, chemists, and computer scientists to pharmacists, and drug designers.”
The CPD will have its main operation between the Department of Biology and the Department of Drug Design and Pharmacology at UCPH, and with additional activities at the Departments of Chemistry and Computer Science. In addition to a strong core team of experienced researchers, it will host and train a large number of PhD students and post-doctoral researchers. It will also be open to visiting Danish and international guest researchers to ensure the centre’s activities are of the highest standard.
The core strength: Interdisciplinary collaboration on a clear mission
The CPD will bring together researchers from a wide range of disciplines on the common mission of protein design, and this is the great strength of the centre, according to Dean Bo Jellesmark-Thorsen from the Faculty of Science.
“This complex new field does not sit comfortably alone in any of the classical scientific disciplines,” he says. “Interdisciplinary collaboration between biochemists, computer scientists, and pharmaceutical researchers is essential for mastering it. Fortunately, the collaboration across the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences and the Faculty of Science to pave the way for the CPD has been extremely positive. It is the same mindset that will carry the CPD forward and ensure that the great potential is also realised.”
At the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences this view is strongly supported.
“The CPD has been created precisely to bring together expertise across disciplines and institutions,” says the faculty’s Dean, Bente Stallknecht. “Based on collaboration between the departments, the centre will enhance synergy between the best in the field from both faculties. This collaboration extends both nationally and internationally. We are very pleased to have attracted Dek Woolfson, an internationally recognised leader in the field. Under his leadership, the centre will become a hub with strong links to the international research community and have an exchange of both ideas and people through partnerships with collaborating universities working on common projects and grand challenges.”
Dek Woolfson is extremely experienced in collaborative and interdisciplinary research. He has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a highly renowned scientific academy in the UK. Currently, Dek works across the Schools of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University Bristol, where he established BrisSynBio and promoted collaborations that bring protein design to cell biology, materials science and other fields. He will maintain these links and forge new international partnerships by creating several CPD spokes, including one in Engineering Biology at the University of Bristol.
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Facts about protein design
Proteins are chain-like molecules made of building blocks called amino acids. The chains fold up into three-dimensional structures that determine the functions of the proteins.
Our genes determine the order in which the amino acids are linked together, called the protein sequence. This is crucial for correct protein folding. Understanding the connections between protein sequence on the one hand and protein structure and function on the other has been a massive challenge for science since the 1960’s.
In 2024, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for two pieces of pioneering work that applied advances in computation to the protein folding problem. One half of the prize was awarded to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper at Google DeepMind in the UK. They led the team that developed AlphaFold, an AI that accurately predicts protein structure from sequence. The second half went to biochemist David Baker from the University of Washinton, who made computational breakthroughs to do the reverse: that is, for a targeted protein structure, what is the sequence needed to form it?
Their work has established and accelerated the field of protein design, in which synthetic or artificial proteins are made from scratch. These designed proteins have the potential to perform entirely new functions and can be made relatively easily by introducing synthetic genes that encode them into bacteria.
The next steps of making protein design mainstream, and to generate new protein structures and functions to order are considerable challenges, but it is exciting frontier science with enormous potential.
Flawed impact metrics jeopardize EU deregulation plans, study finds
A newly published peer-reviewed study has raised concerns about the evidence base behind the European Union’s long-running efforts to reduce bureaucracy for businesses, suggesting that key measurement tools are methodologically flawed and have faced little scrutiny over the years.
The study, led by Academy Research Fellow Matti Ylönen of the University of Helsinki, traces the EU’s deregulation agenda back to the 1990s, focusing on its reliance on the Standard Cost Model (SCM)—a methodology used to estimate administrative burdens on firms. Initially built on a limited number of industry interviews, the model's guidelines were further loosened in the 2010s, reducing both its transparency and reliability.
“The SCM was problematic from the start,” Ylönen explains. “But when interview requirements and data collection standards were relaxed, its shortcomings became even more serious.”
Despite these flaws, the SCM remains central to current policy. As recently as May 28, European Commission Executive Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis reaffirmed its use in setting targets for administrative cost savings.
This comes as the EU negotiates wide-reaching omnibus directives—raising concerns that deregulation could undercut hard-won rules on corporate sustainability and responsibility. With the EU’s deregulation push entering a pivotal phase, the study’s findings suggest that the evidence base behind it may be shakier than policymakers are willing to admit.
Another example is the Competitiveness Compass of the von der Leyen Commission, which has provided a key foundation for the current omnibus directives. At the heart of the EU’s simplification narrative is a striking figure: €150 billion in recurring administrative costs borne by European businesses. This estimate serves as the baseline for the Commission’s goal of cutting €37.5 billion in administrative costs by the end of its mandate.
“The Commission’s referencing of this estimate is worryingly vague, but it appears to stem from Standard Cost Model -related calculations conducted in the early 2000s, whose methodology and relevance for today’s situation is questionable. Strikingly, the quantification approach also conflicts with the Commission’s own conclusions from its first generation of SCM efforts”, Ylönen notes.
He refers to the 2012 report on Regulatory Fitness, which stated: “the Commission does not believe that setting global targets and/or quantitative formulae for managing the stock of legislation will produce the desired results.”
The self-criticism mirrored similar concerns raised in 2015 by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the World Bank, which has been another major proponent of the administrative burdens agenda. In its evaluation, IEG concluded that the SCM’s focus solely on administrative costs made it a narrow measure of social value, as it “ignores any benefits of regulation.” The IEG emphasized that the model “can only treat regulation as a burden, cost, or constraint on businesses – but never as something that enables benefits.”
Ylönen co-authored the study with Professor Tero Erkkilä, also from the University of Helsinki.
“Without a critical examination of the indicators used to justify these sweeping changes,” Erkkilä warns, “the EU risks undermining the credibility and effectiveness of its work.”
The peer-reviewed study is titled “What Sustains Flawed Indicators? Unpacking the EU’s Administrative Burden Agenda.” was published at the Policy Studies journal, and is freely available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2025.2519297
Policymakers and drinkers are speaking different languages when it comes to alcohol consumption, according to new research.
A new study by a team psychologists, linguists and policy experts from University of Staffordshire, University of Liverpool, Oxford Brookes University and London South Bank University reveals stark differences in the way that policymakers and the public talk about alcohol consumption – and argues for a new approach to alcohol interventions and health campaigns.
Using linguistics software, the team analysed the language used in England’s three most recent alcohol policies, compared to how young adults talk about drinking.
Dr Emma Moreton, researcher in Applied Linguistics at University of Liverpool, explained: “By examining the language used to talk about alcohol in different contexts and by different individuals and groups, it becomes possible to identify some of the underlying attitudes, assumptions and beliefs around alcohol consumption and alcohol harms.”
The findings show that although policymakers and drinkers often reference similar topics – such as alcohol-related health risks and intoxication – the ways they frame these narratives differ significantly.
The policy documents frame alcohol use in predominantly negative terms, often as a behavioural problem to be corrected, whereas drinkers talk about the negative and positive impact of alcohol consumption.
Richard Cooke, Professor of Health Psychology at University of Staffordshire, said: “Our new paper shows that policymakers and drinkers talk about drinking in different ways. While policymakers focused on drinking behaviour, drinkers talked about how drinking made them feel different emotions: embarrassed, happy, guilty, sad.
“Policymakers need to construct policies to reflect the importance of emotions in drinkers’ narratives. This fits in with psychological theories of drinking behaviour which propose that people drink for different reasons – to socialise, to relax, to cope with negative emotions, to fit in with their friends. Policy initiatives telling people to cut down, or drink within the guidelines of 14 units per week, will work for some but not all; if people are worried that cutting down will isolate them from others or their social life, they are likely to ignore such messages.”
The findings also challenge the continued focus on young drinkers, pointing to rising alcohol use among older adults, whose consumption is more closely linked to long-term health issues like cancer and heart disease.
Alcohol accounts for around 17,000 cancer diagnoses every year and World Cancer Research Fund recently launched a petition calling on Government to introduce a National Alcohol Strategy for England, including improved alcohol labelling, minimum unit pricing, and marketing restrictions.
The Government's most recent Alcohol Strategy was published in March 2012 and the paper’s researchers are backing calls for a new strategy – with drinkers involved in the policymaking process.
They argue that policies must reflect real-life behaviours and motivations if they are to make a meaningful difference and that dialogue, not just directives, is key to reducing alcohol-related harm.
Professor Cooke added: “As most people in England drink within the guidelines, we need acceptable messages that fit with people’s lives. We call on policymakers to talk to drinkers about their experiences, find out what policies they like, and don’t like, and move away from an exclusive focus on harm. Given the recent calls for a new National Alcohol Strategy, our study is a timely reminder to involve everyone in discussions about alcohol.”
A new study is shedding light on why solar radiation is more effective than other forms of energy at causing water to evaporate. The key factor turns out to be the oscillating electric field inherent to sunlight itself.
“It’s well established that the sun is exceptionally good at causing water to evaporate – more efficient than heating water on the stove, for instance,” says Saqlain Raza, first author of a paper on the work and a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. “However, it has not been clear exactly why. Our work highlights the role that electric fields play in this process.”
“This is part of a larger effort in the research community to understand this phenomenon, which has applications such as engineering more efficient water-evaporation technologies,” says Jun Liu, co-corresponding author of the paper and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State.
To explore questions related to sunlight’s efficiency at evaporating water, the researchers turned to computational simulations. This allowed them to alter different parameters associated with sunlight to see how those characteristics influence evaporation.
“Light is an electromagnetic wave, which consists – in part – of an oscillating electric field,” Liu says. “We found that if we removed the oscillating electric field from the equation, it takes longer for sunlight to evaporate water. But when the field is present, water evaporates very quickly. And the stronger the electric field, the faster the water evaporates. The presence of this electric field is what separates light from heat when it comes to evaporating water.”
But what exactly is the oscillating electric field doing?
“During evaporation, one of two things is happening,” Raza says. “Evaporation either frees individual water molecules, which drift away from the bulk of liquid water, or it frees water clusters. Water clusters are finite groups of water molecules which are connected to each other but can be broken away from the rest of the liquid water even though they are still interconnected. Usually both of these things happen to varying degrees.”
“We found that the oscillating electric field is particularly good at breaking off water clusters,” says Liu. “This is more efficient, because it doesn’t take more energy to break off a water cluster (with lots of molecules) than it does to break off a single molecule.”
The researchers demonstrated this by simulating how evaporation works in a model of pure water and how evaporation works in a model where water saturates a hydrogel.
“In pure water, you don’t find many water clusters near the surface – where evaporation can take place,” says Raza. “But there are lots of water clusters in the second model, because they form where the water comes into contact with the hydrogel. Because there are more water clusters near the surface in the second model, evaporation happens more quickly. Basically, there are more water clusters that the oscillating field can cleave off from the liquid water.”
“This work substantially advances our understanding of what’s taking place in this phenomenon, since we are the first to show the role of the water clusters via computational simulation,” says Liu.
The paper, “Oscillations in Incident Electric Field Enhances Interfacial Water Evaporation,” is published in the journal Materials Horizons. The paper was co-authored by Cong Yang, a Ph.D. graduate from NC State. Co-corresponding author of the paper is Xin Qian of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
This work was done with support from the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund, under award ND5-65609.
A new analysis of published data finds no evidence to indicate that the long-standing practice of having patients fast for a period of time prior to surgery prevents post-surgical aspiration: vomiting that is followed by gastric contents getting into the lungs, which in turn causes what is known as aspiration pneumonia.
Why it matters
A universal phenomenon that patients dislike is not being able to eat before undergoing a procedure. This is done to avoid the risk of vomiting when anesthesia is given. The research, however, shows that there is no association between pre-surgery fasting and post-procedure vomiting to support this recommendation.
The study
The researchers reviewed randomized clinical trials comparing outcomes from pre-procedural fasting regimens as well as observational studies that were published between January 1, 2016, and December 1, 2023 of witnessed aspiration events. They included 801 patients in the experimental groups and 990 patients in the control groups. The main primary outcome was clinical aspiration. Secondary outcomes included gastric volume and pH. They performed random effects meta-analysis on the outcomes data. They also performed trial sequential analysis to determine the likelihood that further studies of fasting effects on aspiration events would change conclusions drawn from the current analysis.
What they found
Of the 3580 initial references found in the initial search, the researchers included 17 in their analysis. Of these, nine reported outcomes for aspiration events. Clinical aspiration was not affected by the various pre-procedural fasting regimens. The researchers found that aspiration was rare, occurring in four of 801 experimental group patients (incidence of 0.50%) and seven of the 990 control group patients (0.71%). Trial sequential analysis of aspiration studies showed little likelihood of finding a significant effect of new fasting regimens on aspiration. Most studies reported gastric volume and/or pH as a surrogate outcome for aspiration, which have never been shown to correlate with human anesthesia–related aspiration.
What's next
The next step, which the researchers have already taken, was to examine the literature showing the relationship between guidelines for duration of fasting and actual observed fasting times in various hospitals. They analyzed more than 80 published papers finding that people are fasting many more hours than necessary, creating substantial discomfort. This work has been completed. Another step will be to perform prospective trials where fasting durations before surgery are reduced and modern methods of assessing the risk for vomiting, such as preoperative gastric ultrasound, would be used to determine if it is safe to proceed with anesthesia.
From the experts
“At some point, almost everybody will undergo a procedure and there are universal policies in every healthcare facility that require some degree of fasting before surgery,” said Dr. Edward Livingston, health sciences professor of surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study’s senior author. “Fasting for long periods of time is extremely uncomfortable and patients really don't like to do it. Our research suggests that long periods of fasting may not be necessary.”
Additional study authors are Dr. Stephanie Lam and Dr. Maxime Cannesson of the department of anesthesia at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Antonia Osuna-Garcia of UCLA Biomedical Library.
Funding and Disclosures
UCLA Department of Surgery research funds supported this study.
