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tries could be done for about 200 euros ($265) with generic fertility drugs and basic lab equipment that would fit inside a shoebox.
• "IVF is made to sound complicated but the fact is that the early embryo is not very demanding," said Jonathan Van Blerkom, a fertility expert at the University of Colorado.
• A human embryo doesn't need much beyond some basic solutions, a steady pH level and constant temperature, he said.
• The simpler approach calls for women to take cheaper fertility tablets to stimulate their ovaries to release more than one egg per month. In conventional IVF, expensive, potent drugs that are injected can produce more than 20 eggs.
• ___

• PITTSBURGH (AP) -- People are going nuts in one western Pennsylvania city that claims to be the birthplace of the banana split.
• The residents of Latrobe, a city of 9,000 some 40 miles east of Pittsburgh, are poised to scoop on peanuts, chocolate sauce and whipped cream as they honor the frozen concoction.
• But the cherry on top is a celebration that's morphed into three scoops of fun -- Friday, Saturday and Sundae, er, Sunday -- underwritten by Dole, the banana and fruit company, with help from nearby St. Vincent College, which has adopted the banana split as its unofficial festive food.
• "We started throwing this idea around and it turns into this weekend celebration," Dole spokesman Bil Goldfield said. "It got pretty big, pretty fast."
• Latrobe officials got the ball rolling when the historical commission agreed in April that the city made its case for a historical marker crediting the first fruit-filled sundae to David Strickler 109 years ago.
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