A new study out of the University of Chicago Medicine following young adult drinkers for 10 years has found that individuals who reported the highest sensitivity to alcohol's pleasurable and rewarding effects at the start of the trial were more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder (AUD) over the course of the study. Moreover, when retested on their responses 10 years later, those who became alcoholics had the highest levels of alcohol stimulation, liking and wanting - and these were heightened compared to their baseline with no signs of tolerance to these pleasurable effects. The research, published on Jan. 5 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, followed a ...

Bird diets provide a real treasure for research into the distribution and conservation of their prey, such as overlooked and rare bush-cricket species, point out scientists after studying the diet of the Eurasian Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo) in southeastern Bulgaria. In their END ...

Chemotherapy for breast cancer costs the UK economy more than £248 million annually, including 'out-of-pocket' personal costs of more than £1,000 per patient - according to new research from the University of East Anglia. A new study published today is the first to investigate the total non-healthcare cost of chemotherapy to the UK. It includes the cost of lost productivity, work absence, and personal costs such as paying for transport and parking for treatment, the cost of wigs and new bras, and over the counter medications. The UEA research team say that better targeting of treatment could help avoid placing unnecessary costs upon patients, their caregivers and wider society. Prof Richard Fordham, from UEA's ...

Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms of the embargo not only on their own behalf, but also on behalf of the organization they represent. 1. State laws promoting flu vaccination for hospital workers may help prevent deaths from flu and pneumonia Abstract: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-0413 URL goes live when the embargo lifts Research ...

New Rochelle, NY, January 4, 2021--Crop plants and animals can be infected by bacterial pathogens that reduce yield, cause food wastage, and carry human pathogens that spread disease on consumption. Bacteriophage can play an important role in microbial control, according to a new Special Issue on Agriculture and Aquaculture published in the peer-reviewed journal PHAGE: Therapy, Applications, and Research. Click here to read the issue. "Although the number of problems associated with bacterial diseases in agriculture and aquiculture has increased, food producers ...

When Yellowstone National Park's Steamboat Geyser -- which shoots water higher than any active geyser in the world -- reawakened in 2018 after three and a half years of dormancy, some speculated that it was a harbinger of possible explosive volcanic eruptions within the surrounding geyser basin. These so-called hydrothermal explosions can hurl mud, sand and rocks into the air and release hot steam, endangering lives; such an explosion on White Island in New Zealand in December 2019 killed 22 people. A new study by geoscientists who study geysers throws cold water on that idea, finding few indications of underground magma movement that would be a prerequisite to an eruption. The geysers sit just outside the nation's largest ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- American politicians have long been expected to uphold a certain veneer: powerful, influential and never vulnerable. New Penn State research has found that these idealized forms of masculinity may also help explain support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election and in the days leading up to the 2020 election. Across several studies, the researchers found that when men and women endorsed "hegemonic masculinity" -- a culturally idealized form of masculinity that says men should be strong, tough, and dominant -- they were more likely to vote for and have positive feelings about Trump. The researchers found this was true ...

A geosciences team led by the University of South Florida (USF) has developed a new way to reconstruct the sizes of volcanic eruptions that occurred thousands of years ago, creating a first-of-its kind tool that can aid scientists in understanding past explosive eruptions that shaped the earth and improve the way of estimating hazards of future eruptions. The advanced numerical model the USF team developed allows scientists to reconstruct eruption rates through time by estimating the dimensions of the umbrella clouds that contribute to the accumulation ...

CHICAGO --- While many physicians benefit from social media by networking with potential collaborators or interfacing with patients, a new study from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago found many physicians also report being sexually harassed and personally attacked on these platforms on the basis of their religion, race or medical recommendations. Although the data were collected before the COVID-19 outbreak, the findings highlight the intensity of online harassment before the pandemic, which has only intensified since the spring, the study authors said. "If anything, our data is likely an underestimate of the true ...

LOS ANGELES -- A growing number of women forgoing reconstruction after a mastectomy say they're satisfied with their choice, even as some did not feel supported by their physician, according to a study led by researchers at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. The study, published in the Journal Annals of Surgical Oncology, surveyed 931 women who had a unilateral or bilateral mastectomy without current breast mound reconstruction to assess the motivating factors for forgoing the procedure and to measure whether surgeons provided adequate information and support for "going flat." Out of the women surveyed, 74% were satisfied with their outcome and 22% experienced "flat denial," where the procedure was not initially offered, the ...

Of the 5,300 children enrolled in the Ohio Behavioral Health Juvenile Justice Initiative since 2006, 21% reported that someone close them had been murdered in the past year. Nearly half of the boys and more than a quarter of the girls in the program have both a substance abuse and mental health disorder. But there's good news, too: From 2017 through 2019, 81% of the participants--aged 10 through 17--successfully completed the state's juvenile diversion program, and data indicated that 79% of youth reduced their contact with police while in treatment. Those findings are from a new detailed evaluation of the Ohio Behavioral Health Juvenile Justice Initiative (BHJJ) by researchers at the Jack, Joseph and ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: Europe's largest gas field, the Groningen field in the Netherlands, is widely known for induced subsidence and seismicity caused by gas pressure depletion and associated compaction of the sandstone reservoir. Whether compaction is elastic or partly inelastic, as implied by recent experiments, is key to forecasting system behavior and seismic hazard. Bart Verberne and colleagues sought evidence for a role of inelastic deformation through comparative microstructural analysis of unique drill-core, recovered from the seismogenic center of the field in 2015, 50 years after gas production started, versus core recovered before production (1965). Quartz grain fracturing, crack healing, and stress-induced Dauphiné twinning are ...

BOSTON - A long-running debate over how an important gene-silencing protein identifies its targets has been resolved by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Their findings, reported in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, also explain certain mysteries about the behavior of this protein, known as Polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2). PRC2 helps regulate whether genes are active ("on) or silent ("off"). PRC2's role in gene silencing is critical throughout the lifespan, from embryo formation to old age. For example, PRC2 determines whether genes that suppress the growth of malignant tumors are turned on or off, which has made it the focus of pharmaceutical companies ...

If you've ever had a bad case of jet lag, you know how a disruption to your body's circadian rhythm makes it difficult to function. Molecular circadian "clocks" exist in cells throughout the body, governing more than just sleep and wake cycles - they are crucial to many aspects of human health. For more than a decade researchers have been trying to figure out what makes them tick, in search of new insights into diseases like Alzheimer's, cancer and diabetes. Until now, that research has focused on what is known as clock genes, which encode proteins that drive oscillating cycles of gene expression affecting physiology and behavior. But research just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals the discovery ...

Plants can perceive and react to light across a wide spectrum. New research from Prof. Nitzan Shabek's laboratory in the Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences shows how plants can respond to blue light in particular. "Plants can see much better than we can," Shabek said. Plants don't have dedicated light-detecting organs, like our eyes. They do have a variety of dedicated receptors that can sense almost every single wavelength. One such are the blue light photoreceptors called cryptochromes. When the cryptochrome detects an incoming photon, it reacts in a way that triggers a unique physiological response. Cryptochromes probably appeared billions of years ago with the first living ...

By Karina Ninni | Agência FAPESP – Treatment of depression faces two main challenges. The first is that almost 50% of patients do not respond well to existing antidepressants. The second is that conventional medications take a relatively long time – around three to five weeks – to have the desired effect. A group of researchers affiliated with the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil set out to tackle the second problem by using epigenetic modulators to try to “erase” the consequences of stress. Epigenetic mechanisms are part of a complex system that controls how and when genes are switched on or off. Exposure to stress, a key trigger of depression, alters certain epigenetic markers in the brain. Many of these alterations ...

The coronavirus pandemic is creating a large spike in significant psychological distress among Americans, with the first month of the pandemic causing as much distress in the same number of individuals that experienced it during the whole previous year, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Findings from the first longitudinal study of psychological distress during the pandemic show that among a representative sample of Americans, more than 10% reported experiencing symptoms of significant psychological distress during April and May of 2020 -- the same amount they reported experiencing over an entire year during a survey conducted a year earlier. The study also found that people with distress prior to the ...

Scientists have long been aware of the dangerous overuse of antibiotics and the increasing number of antibiotic-resistant microbes that have resulted. While over-prescription of antibiotics for medicinal use has unsettling implications for human health, so too does the increasing presence of antibiotics in the natural environment. The latter may stem from the improper disposal of medicines, but also from the biotechnology field, which has depended on antibiotics as a selection device in the lab. "In biotech, we have for a long time relied on antibiotic and chemical selections to kill cells that we don't want to grow," said UC Santa Barbara chemical engineer Michelle ...

Following the repeal of the short-lived Cook County, Illinois Sweetened Beverage Tax, sales of sweetened beverages went right back to where they were before the tax went into place, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago. The study is published in JAMA Network Open. The tax, which included both sugar-sweetened and artificially-sweetened diet beverages, was largely pitched as a way to reduce county budget deficits. The tax lasted just four months -- it went into effect on Aug. 2, 2017 and ended on Dec. 1, 2017. "We ...

Mollusks build shells to protect their soft tissues from predators. Nacre, also known as the mother of pearl, has an intricate, highly regular structure that makes it an incredibly strong material. Depending on the species, nacres can reach tens of centimeters in length. No matter the size, each nacre is built from materials deposited by a multitude of single cells at multiple different locations at the same time. How exactly this highly periodic and uniform structure emerges from the initial disorder was unknown until now. Nacre formation starts uncoordinated ...

Drones, robots and autonomous systems can transform the natural world in and around cities for people and wildlife. International research, involving over 170 experts and led by the University of Leeds, assessed the opportunities and challenges that this cutting-edge technology could have for urban nature and green spaces. The researchers highlighted opportunities to improve how we monitor nature, such as identifying emerging pests and ensuring plants are cared for, and helping people engage with and appreciate the natural world around them. As robotics, autonomous vehicles and drones become more widely used across cities, pollution and traffic ...

What The Study Did: In this observational study of 5,256 U.S. nursing home residents with COVID-19, increased age, male sex and impaired cognitive and physical function were independent risk factors for all-cause 30-day mortality. Authors: Orestis A. Panagiotou, M.D., Ph.D., of the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island, is the corresponding author. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.7968) Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, ...

What The Study Did: The findings of a survey study using data from California suggests the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with increases in self-reported worry about violence for oneself and others, increased firearm acquisition and changes in firearm storage practices. Authors: Nicole Kravitz-Wirtz, Ph.D., M.P.H., University of California Firearm Violence Research Center and Violence Prevention Research Program, Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento, is the corresponding ...

Whether in beta-blockers to treat high blood pressure or in natural products: So-called vicinal aminoalcohols are high-quality organic compounds that are found in many everyday products. However, their production is difficult. For a long time, chemists are trying to develop efficient methods of synthesizing them. In their recent study published in the journal Nature Catalysis, scientists led by Prof. Dr. Frank Glorius of Münster University have found a solution for the production of a special variant of aminoalcohols. "The new method helps to study the properties of the substance and to find applications for these ...

Assembling tiny chips into unique programmable surfaces, Princeton researchers have created a key component toward unlocking a communications band that promises to dramatically increase the amount data wireless systems can transmit. The programmable surface, called a metasurface, allows engineers to control and focus transmissions in the terahertz band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Terahertz, a frequency range located between microwaves and infrared light, can transit much more data than current, radio-based wireless systems. With fifth generation (5G) communications systems offering speeds 10 to 100 times faster than the previous generation, demand for bandwidth is ever increasing. Facing the emergence of technologies such as self-driving cars and augmented reality ...