How Cervical Mucus Helps Predict Your Most Fertile Days

Get over the gross-out factor and learn how to use cervical mucus to let you know when you’re most fertile. Also check out our Fertility Calculator to find the best times for sex.

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Get over the gross-out factor and learn how to use cervical mucus to let you know when you’re most fertile.
There are many ovulation predictor kits on the market, but there’s one inside every woman that’s absolutely free. Cyclical changes in the secretions produced by the cervix provide a simple, easy way for women to monitor their cycles–and their most fertile times. As opposed to the change in basal body temperature that occurs after ovulation, the change in cervical mucus (CM) occurs several days prior to ovulation, giving women the opportunity to time intercourse for conception.
The cervix is the neck of the uterus, leading to the vagina. It’s not a smooth pipe, but a passage filled with crevices. In these nooks and crannies, CM is produced and released. Hormonal changes over the course of a woman’s menstrual cycle affect the amount and the consistency of CM. In a way, CM is the gatekeeper of the reproductive system. Sperm released into the vagina have to swim through the cervix–and its CM–and past the uterus if they are to successfully fertilize the egg as it makes its passage down the fallopian tubes.
For most of the cycle, CM acts as a barrier to sperm. It protects the cervix chemically–with white blood cells fighting foreign bodies–and mechanically–acting as a plug and closing the cervical canal.
But during the fertile phase, the consistency and composition of CM changes. Instead of being a barrier, CM now aids and accelerates the sperms’ passage through the cervix. CM during the fertile phase also extends sperm longevity, allowing them to live for up to five days within the female body. The CM even acts as a quality control device, screening the sperm and catching any with irregular or curved swimming.
By observing CM to pinpoint the fertile phase, women can help increase their chances of conception. Changes in CM will indicate the days leading up to ovulation, and sexual intercourse during this time will ensure that sperm—nourished by fertile phase CM—will be present when the egg is released.

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What to Look For
A woman can monitor her CM by feel or appearance. The sensation of CM in the vagina–dry, moist, or wet–is one clue to follow for detecting impending ovulation. The color (white, creamy, cloudy or clear) and consistency (sticky, or smooth and slippery) are others.
Women can see and feel CM when it moistens their underwear, or when they wipe themselves with toilet paper. Bearing down (such as with a bowel movement) or releasing the muscles following a Kegel exercise may release more mucus. Women can also conduct a “finger test.” To do this, a woman should first thoroughly wash her hands, then carefully insert a finger into the vagina. When the finger is removed, she can observe and note the color and consistency of the CM by stretching it out between two fingers. Because it may sometimes be difficult to distinguish between CM and semen, it’s best to test CM before intercourse, or wait for a while afterwards. Cervical mucus can also be altered by vaginal infections, medication, and birth control.
The chart below gives the information for de-coding CM to detect ovulation.

Phase	Sensation	CM Appearance
Pre-ovulatory	Dry	No visible mucus.
Fertile	Moist or sticky	White or cream colored, thick to slightly stretchy. Breaks easily when stretched.
Highly Fertile	Slippery, wet, lubricated	Increase in amount. Thin, watery, transparent, like egg white.
Post-ovulatory	Dry or sticky	Sharp decrease in amount. Thick, opaque white or cream-colored.

Barbara J. B. Clark, a certified physician assistant at Knox Ob-Gyn in Galesburg, Illinois, describes the most fertile CM as “raw egg white.” This fertile CM is clear, and may stretch several inches before it breaks.
Some women may think that gazing at toilet paper or performing an internal test is not only a bit odd, but even distasteful. But it’s a feeling worth getting over. Clark believes that women who check their CM “feel like they’re doing something to help.” They’re using their bodies’ signals to predict ovulation and help themselves conceive.
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2005 issue of Conceive Magazine.

Measuring the universe's 'exit door'

Measuring the universe's 'exit door' by Jennifer Chu for MIT News Boston MA (SPX) Oct 02, 2012

This image, created using computer models, shows how the extreme gravity of the black hole in M87 distorts the appearance of the jet near the event horizon. Part of the radiation from the jet is bent by gravity into a ring that is known as the 'shadow' of the black hole. Image: Avery E. Broderick (Perimeter Institute and University of Waterloo).

The point of no return: In astronomy, it's known as a black hole - a region in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Black holes that can be billions of times more massive than our sun may reside at the heart of most galaxies. Such supermassive black holes are so powerful that activity at their boundaries can ripple throughout their host galaxies.
Now, an international team, led by researchers at MIT's Haystack Observatory, has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy - the closest distance at which matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole.
The scientists linked together radio dishes in Hawaii, Arizona and California to create a telescope array called the "Event Horizon Telescope" (EHT) that can see details 2,000 times finer than what's visible to the Hubble Space Telescope.
These radio dishes were trained on M87, a galaxy some 50 million light years from the Milky Way. M87 harbors a black hole 6 billion times more massive than our sun; using this array, the team observed the glow of matter near the edge of this black hole - a region known as the "event horizon."
"Once objects fall through the event horizon, they're lost forever," says Shep Doeleman, assistant director at the MIT Haystack Observatory and research associate at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. "It's an exit door from our universe. You walk through that door, you're not coming back."
Doeleman and his colleagues have published the results of their study this week in the journal Science.
Jets at the edge of a black hole Supermassive black holes are the most extreme objects predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of gravity - where, according to Doeleman, "gravity completely goes haywire and crushes an enormous mass into an incredibly close space."
At the edge of a black hole, the gravitational force is so strong that it pulls in everything from its surroundings. However, not everything can cross the event horizon to squeeze into a black hole. The result is a "cosmic traffic jam" in which gas and dust build up, creating a flat pancake of matter known as an accretion disk.
This disk of matter orbits the black hole at nearly the speed of light, feeding the black hole a steady diet of superheated material. Over time, this disk can cause the black hole to spin in the same direction as the orbiting material.
Caught up in this spiraling flow are magnetic fields, which accelerate hot material along powerful beams above the accretion disk The resulting high-speed jet, launched by the black hole and the disk, shoots out across the galaxy, extending for hundreds of thousands of light-years. These jets can influence many galactic processes, including how fast stars form.
'Is Einstein right?' A jet's trajectory may help scientists understand the dynamics of black holes in the region where their gravity is the dominant force. Doeleman says such an extreme environment is perfect for confirming Einstein's theory of general relativity - today's definitive description of gravitation.
"Einstein's theories have been verified in low-gravitational field cases, like on Earth or in the solar system," Doeleman says. "But they have not been verified precisely in the only place in the universe where Einstein's theories might break down - which is right at the edge of a black hole."
According to Einstein's theory, a black hole's mass and its spin determine how closely material can orbit before becoming unstable and falling in toward the event horizon. Because M87's jet is magnetically launched from this smallest orbit, astronomers can estimate the black hole's spin through careful measurement of the jet's size as it leaves the black hole. Until now, no telescope has had the magnifying power required for this kind of observation.
"We are now in a position to ask the question, 'Is Einstein right?'" Doeleman says. "We can identify features and signatures predicted by his theories, in this very strong gravitational field."
The team used a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI, which links data from radio dishes located thousands of miles apart. Signals from the various dishes, taken together, create a "virtual telescope" with the resolving power of a single telescope as big as the space between the disparate dishes. The technique enables scientists to view extremely precise details in faraway galaxies.
Using the technique, Doeleman and his team measured the innermost orbit of the accretion disk to be only 5.5 times the size of the black hole event horizon. According to the laws of physics, this size suggests that the accretion disk is spinning in the same direction as the black hole - the first direct observation to confirm theories of how black holes power jets from the centers of galaxies.
The team plans to expand its telescope array, adding radio dishes in Chile, Europe, Mexico, Greenland and Antarctica, in order to obtain even more detailed pictures of black holes in the future.
Christopher Reynolds, a professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, says the group's results provide the first observational data that will help scientists understand how a black hole's jets behave.
"The basic nature of jets is still mysterious," Reynolds says. "Many astrophysicists suspect that jets are powered by black hole spin ... but right now, these ideas are still entirely in the realm of theory. This measurement is the first step in putting these ideas on a firm observational basis."

Black hole surprise in ancient star cluster--Simulations Uncover 'Flashy' Secrets of Merging Black Holes

Black hole surprise in ancient star cluster by Staff Writers Perth, Australia (SPX) Oct 08, 2012

illustration only

Astronomers have made the unexpected discovery of two black holes inside an ancient cluster of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
The research, published in the prestigious journal Nature, describes the detection of two black holes that are about 10 to 20 times heavier than our Sun in the globular cluster named M22.
Black holes, so dense that even light can't escape them, are what is left when a massive star reaches the end of its life and collapses in on itself.
Co-author Dr James Miller-Jones, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), said the discovery of two black holes in the same cluster was a complete surprise. All the theory up to now says that should not happen in a globular cluster that is 12 billion years old.
"The study was originally searching for just one larger black hole within the cluster of hundreds of thousands of stars which, when viewed from the naked eye, resembles a hazy round 'puff' of light," he said.
"Simulations of how globular clusters evolve show many black holes are created early in a cluster's history."
"The many black holes then sink towards the middle of the cluster where they begin a chaotic dance leading to most being thrown out of the cluster until only one surviving black hole remains.
"We were searching for one large black hole in the middle of the cluster, but instead found two smaller black holes a little way out from the centre, which means all the theory and simulations need refinement."
Dr Miller-Jones said the newly discovered black holes are the first to be found in a globular cluster in our galaxy. M22 is about 10,000 light years from Earth but can be seen clearly with a backyard telescope.
"M22 may contain as many as 100 black holes but we can't detect them unless they're actively feeding on nearby stars," he said.
"We plan to do further study to pin down the properties of the two we've already found."
The research was led by Assistant Professor Jay Strader from Michigan State University and The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and also involved colleagues from The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, The University of Utah in the United States and The University of Southampton in the United Kingdom.
Original Publication: The paper "Two black holes in the globular cluster M22" is available here.

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Simulations Uncover 'Flashy' Secrets of Merging Black Holes Greenbelt, MD (SPX) Oct 02, 2012 According to Einstein, whenever massive objects interact, they produce gravitational waves - distortions in the very fabric of space and time - that ripple outward across the universe at the speed of light. While astronomers have found indirect evidence of these disturbances, the waves have so far eluded direct detection. Ground-based observatories designed to find them are on the verge of achie--Simulations Uncover 'Flashy' Secrets of Merging Black Holes by Francis Reddy for Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD (SPX) Oct 02, 2012

Supercomputer models of merging black holes reveal properties that are crucial to understanding future detections of gravitational waves. This movie follows two orbiting black holes and their accretion disk during their final three orbits and ultimate merger. Redder colors correspond to higher gas densities. (Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; P. Cowperthwaite, University of Maryland). Download video in high resolution from NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio

According to Einstein, whenever massive objects interact, they produce gravitational waves - distortions in the very fabric of space and time - that ripple outward across the universe at the speed of light. While astronomers have found indirect evidence of these disturbances, the waves have so far eluded direct detection. Ground-based observatories designed to find them are on the verge of achieving greater sensitivities, and many scientists think that this discovery is just a few years away.
Catching gravitational waves from some of the strongest sources - colliding black holes with millions of times the sun's mass - will take a little longer. These waves undulate so slowly that they won't be detectable by ground-based facilities. Instead, scientists will need much larger space-based instruments, such as the proposed Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, which was endorsed as a high-priority future project by the astronomical community.
A team that includes astrophysicists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is looking forward to that day by using computational models to explore the mergers of supersized black holes. Their most recent work investigates what kind of "flash" might be seen by telescopes when astronomers ultimately find gravitational signals from such an event.
Studying gravitational waves will give astrophysicists an unprecedented opportunity to witness the universe's most extreme phenomena, leading to new insights into the fundamental laws of physics, the death of stars, the birth of black holes and, perhaps, the earliest moments of the universe.
A black hole is an object so massive that nothing, not even light, can escape its gravitational grip. Most big galaxies, including our own Milky Way, contain a central black hole weighing millions of times the sun's mass, and when two galaxies collide, their monster black holes settle into a close binary system.
"The black holes orbit each other and lose orbital energy by emitting strong gravitational waves, and this causes their orbits to shrink. The black holes spiral toward each other and eventually merge," said Goddard astrophysicist John Baker.
Close to these titanic, rapidly moving masses, space and time become repeatedly flexed and warped. Just as a disturbance forms ripples on the surface of a pond, drives seismic waves through Earth, or puts the jiggle in a bowl of Jell-O, the cyclic flexing of space-time near binary black holes produces waves of distortion that race across the universe.
While gravitational waves promise to tell astronomers many things about the bodies that created them, they cannot provide one crucial piece of information - the precise position of the source. So to really understand a merger event, researchers need an accompanying electromagnetic signal - a flash of light, ranging from radio waves to X-rays - that will allow telescopes to pinpoint the merger's host galaxy.
Understanding the electromagnetic counterparts that may accompany a merger involves the daunting task of tracking the complex interactions between the black holes, which can be moving at more than half the speed of light in the last few orbits, and the disks of hot, magnetized gas that surround them. Since 2010, numerous studies using simplifying assumptions have found that mergers could produce a burst of light, but no one knew how commonly this occurred or whether the emission would be strong enough to be detectable from Earth.
To explore the problem in greater detail, a team led by Bruno Giacomazzo at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and including Baker developed computer simulations that for the first time show what happens in the magnetized gas (also called a plasma) in the last stages of a black hole merger. Their study was published in the June 10 edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The simulations follow the complex electrical and magnetic interactions in the ionized gas - known as magnetohydrodynamics - within the extreme gravitational environment determined by the equations of Einstein's general relativity, a task requiring the use of advanced numerical codes and fast supercomputers.
Both of the simulations reported in the study were run on the Pleiades supercomputer at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. They follow the black holes over their last three orbits and subsequent merger using models both with and without a magnetic field in the gas disk.
Additional simulations were run on the Ranger and Discover supercomputers, respectively located at the University of Texas, Austin, and the NASA Center for Climate Simulation at Goddard, in order to investigate the effects of different initial conditions, fewer orbits and other variations.
"What's striking in the magnetic simulation is that the disk's initial magnetic field is rapidly intensified by about 100 times, and the merged black hole is surrounded by a hotter, denser, thinner accretion disk than in the unmagnetized case," Giacomazzo explained.
In the turbulent environment near the merging black holes, the magnetic field intensifies as it becomes twisted and compressed. The team suggests that running the simulation for additional orbits would result in even greater amplification.
The most interesting outcome of the magnetic simulation is the development of a funnel-like structure - a cleared-out zone that extends up out of the accretion disk near the merged black hole. "This is exactly the type of structure needed to drive the particle jets we see from the centers of black-hole-powered active galaxies," Giacomazzo said.
The most important aspect of the study is the brightness of the merger's flash. The team finds that the magnetic model produces beamed emission that is some 10,000 times brighter than those seen in previous studies, which took the simplifying step of ignoring plasma effects in the merging disks.
"We need gravitational waves to confirm that a black hole merger has occurred, but if we can understand the electromagnetic signatures from mergers well enough, perhaps we can search for candidate events even before we have a space-based gravitational wave observatory," Baker said.