Nearly one in three women still experience painful sexual intercourse a year after their baby is born and more than half have at least one sex-related health problem, according to research in the March issue of Journal of Clinical Nursing.

482 women who had attended maternity units in Birmingham, UK, took part in a self-administered questionnaire at least a year after their most recent birth.

"87 per cent complained of at least one health problem" says Midwife Amanda Williams, who is currently on secondment to the city's Perinatal Institute.

We take "self-assembly" for granted when it is carried out by the biopolymers which are our hair, teeth, or skin. But when scientists devise new ways for molecules to self assemble into new materials, it is an important achievement.

Researchers with the Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute (MII www.mii.vt.edu) at Virginia Tech report such a development in the online issue for the Journal of the American Chemical Society, in the article, "Aggregation of Rod-Coil Block Copolymers Containing Rigid Polyampholyte Blocks in Aqueous Solution" (10.1021/ja070422+) and at the 233rd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Chicago, March 25-29.

Maps of the sea surface temperature around Galapagos Islands and Cocos Island in the Pacific Ocean are being produced daily and are available online in full resolution in near-real time as part of the Medspiration project, an ESA-funded effort to represent the most reliable temperature of the seas on a global basis.

Galapagos Islands and Cocos Island have been integrated into Medspiration until 31 March in order to support the study of wildlife migration processes from the two islands as part of ESA’s new Diversity project, which kicked off in January 2007 to support the initiative of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) to reduce significantly the current rate of biodiversity loss by 2010.

A new nanoscale apparatus developed at JILA—a tiny gold beam whose 40 million vibrations per second are measured by hopping electrons—offers the potential for a 500-fold increase in the speed of scanning tunneling microscopes (STM), perhaps paving the way for scientists to watch atoms vibrate in high definition in real time.

Psychologists have taken the "media priming" effects of popular video console and PC-based games on the road, finding that virtual racing seems to lead to aggressive driving and a propensity for risk taking. Extending prior findings on how aggressive virtual-shooter games increase aggression-related thoughts, feelings and behaviors, researchers at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians University and the Allianz Center for Technology found that of 198 men and women, those who play more virtual car-racing games were more likely to report that they drive aggressively and get in accidents. Less frequent virtual racing was associated with more cautious driving.

The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM), one of the leading math institutes in the U.S., announced today that after four years of intensive collaboration, 18 leading mathematicians and computer scientists from the U.S. and Europe have successfully mapped E₈, one of the largest and most complicated structures in mathematics. Partners on this project included MIT, Cornell University, University of Michigan, University of Utah and University of Maryland.