The nonmedical use of prescription opioids (POs) has become an area of increasing public health concern in the United States and rates of use are particularly high among young adults. In the past decade, an emerging "epidemic" of nonmedical PO use has been reported. Among young adults, self-reported use is 11% and overdose deaths involving POs now exceed deaths involving heroin and cocaine combined. Sexual violence is also a serious problem in the United States receiving increased national attention, and the relationship between substance use and sexual violence is well ...

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 4, 2015 - Stacked in gravity-defying arrangements in the western San Bernardino Mountains, near the San Andreas Fault, granite boulders that should have been toppled by earthquakes long ago resolutely remain. In exploring why these rocks still stand, researchers have uncovered connections between Southern California's San Jacinto and San Andreas faults that could change how the region plans for future earthquakes. In a study to be published online Aug. 5 in Seismological Research Letters, Lisa Grant Ludwig, associate professor of public health at ...

SAN FRANCISCO-- Stacked in gravity-defying arrangements in the western San Bernardino Mountains, granite boulders that should have been toppled long ago by earthquakes are maintaining a stubborn if precarious balance. In puzzling out why these rocks still stand, researchers have uncovered connections between Southern California's San Jacinto and San Andreas faults that could change how the region plans for future earthquakes. In their study published online August 5 in Seismological Research Letters (SRL), Lisa Grant Ludwig of University of California, Irvine and colleagues ...

While cognitive abilities naturally diminish as part of the normal aging process, it may be possible to take a bite out of this expected decline. Eating a group of specific foods known as the MIND diet may slow cognitive decline among aging adults, even when the person is not at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers at Rush University Medical Center. This finding is in addition to a previous study by the research team that found that the MIND diet may reduce a person's risk in developing Alzheimer's disease. The recent study shows that older ...

Los Angeles, CA (August 4, 2015) The Journal of Endovascular Therapy (JEVT), official publication of the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF ENDOVASCULAR SPECIALISTS (ISES), announces that is it today publishing the latest update of the Inter-Society Consensus for the Management of Peripheral Arterial Disease (TASC II),1 an internationally recognized set of guidelines for the management of patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD). JEVT is a SAGE journal. Originally published in 2000, the TASC document represents the collaboration of international vascular specialties involved ...

Washington, DC - August 4, 2015 - The pathogen, Listeria monocytogenes grows on refrigerated smoked salmon by way of different metabolic pathways from those it uses when growing on laboratory media. The research could lead to reduced incidences of food-borne illness and death, said principal investigator Teresa Bergholz, PhD. The research appears July 24 in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. In the study, the investigators showed that L. monocytogenes grows on cold smoked salmon by using different metabolic pathways ...

Our nation's veterans continue to suffer emotional and psychological effects of war--some for decades. And while there has been greater attention directed recently toward post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more veterans are seeking help, current psychotherapy treatments are less than optimal, according to a new narrative review published in the August 4, 2015 issue of JAMA. In a review of medical literature over a 35-year period, researchers from the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Post-Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury -- a program in the Department ...

AURORA, Colo. (Aug. 4, 2015) - Physicians should improve the way they discuss firearm safety with patients by showing more respect for the viewpoints of gun owners, according to an article by a University of Colorado School of Medicine faculty member published in the Aug. 4 issue of JAMA. Marian "Emmy" Betz, MD, MPH, associate professor of emergency medicine, and Garen J. Wintemute, MD, MPH, professor of emergency medicine at the University of California Davis, write that physician counseling about gun safety is a key component of preventing firearm injury and death. ...

In a randomized trial that included veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), those who received mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy showed greater improvement in self-reported PTSD symptom severity, although the average improvement appears to have been modest, according to a study in the August 4 issue of JAMA, a violence/human rights theme issue. Posttraumatic stress disorder affects 23 percent of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Left untreated, PTSD is associated with high rates of other disorders, disability, and poor quality of life. ...

Even though homicide and assault rates have decreased in the U.S. in recent years, the number of these and other types of violent acts remains high, according to a report in the August 4 issue of JAMA, a violence/human rights theme issue. The authors write that multiple strategies exist to improve interpersonal violence prevention efforts, and health care providers are an important part of this solution. Interpersonal violence is a pervasive public health, social, and developmental threat that affects millions of U.S. residents each year. It is a leading cause of death ...

A brief motivational intervention delivered during an emergency department visit did not improve outcomes for women with heavy drinking involved in abusive relationships, according to a study in the August 4 issue of JAMA, a violence/human rights theme issue. There is a strong and reciprocal association between two highly prevalent public health problems: intimate partner violence (IPV) and heavy drinking. Each risk individually represents major costs to individuals, families, and society. The emergency department (ED) visit is conceptualized as a sensitive period or ...

Screening women for partner violence and providing a resource list did not influence the number of hospitalizations, emergency department, or outpatient care visits compared with women only receiving a resource list or receiving no intervention over 3 years, according to a study in the August 4 issue of JAMA, a violence/human rights theme issue. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends women of reproductive age be screened for partner violence. However, others, such as the World Health Organization conclude there is insufficient evidence for this recommendation. ...

More than 1 in 4 female sex workers in the northern Mexico cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez reported entering the sex trade as minors, and entering the sex trade as an adolescent vs as an adult was associated with a greater risk for HIV infection, according to a study in the August 4 issue of JAMA, a violence/human rights theme issue. Adolescents migrating from Central America and Mexico to the United States are at risk for being trafficked into the sex industry in Mexico's northern border cities. Research from other regions indicates that those entering the sex trade ...

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that more than one in four female sex workers in two Mexican cities on the U.S. border entered the sex trade younger than age 18; one in eight before their 16th birthday. These women were more than three times more likely to become infected with HIV than those who started sex work as adults. They were also three times more likely to be violently coerced to engage in sex with male clients and seven times less likely to use a condom during their first month in the sex trade. The study is published ...

Scientists have discovered how earthworms can digest plant material, such as fallen leaves, that would defeat most other herbivores. Earthworms are responsible for returning the carbon locked inside dead plant material back into the ground. They drag fallen leaves and other plant material down from the surface and eat them, enriching the soil, and they do this in spite of toxic chemicals produced by plants to deter herbivores. The scientists, led by Dr Jake Bundy and Dr Manuel Liebeke from Imperial College London, have identified molecules in the earthworm gut that ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 4, 2015 -- Terahertz radiation, the no-man's land of the electromagnetic spectrum, has long stymied researchers. Optical technologies can finagle light in the shorter-wavelength visible and infrared range, while electromagnetic techniques can manipulate longer-wavelength radiation like microwaves and radio waves. Terahertz radiation, on the other hand, lies in the gap between microwaves and infrared, whether neither traditional way to manipulate waves works effectively. As a result, creating coherent artificial sources of terahertz radiation in ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 4, 2015 -- Studies of the impact a droplet makes on solid surfaces hark back more than a century. And until now, it was generally believed that a droplet's impact on a solid surface could always be separated into two phases: spreading and retracting. But it's much more complex than that, as a team of researchers from City University of Hong Kong, Ariel University in Israel, and Dalian University of Technology in China report in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing. "During the spreading phase, the droplet undergoes an inertia-dominant ...

UBC scientists have opened the doors to new research into malnutrition by creating an animal model that replicates the imbalance of gut bacteria associated with the difficult-to-treat disease. Malnutrition affects millions of people worldwide and is responsible for one-fifth of deaths in children under the age of five. Children can also experience impaired cognitive development and stunted growth. The problem arises when people don't have enough food to eat and their diet lacks proper nutrients. The disease also has a lot to do with environmental factors and it has ...

In vitro studies of the cellular effects of modeled osteopathic manipulative therapy (OMT) provide proof of concept for the manual techniques practiced by doctors of osteopathic medicine (DOs), according to researchers from the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix. The study, published in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, focused on modeling two common OMT techniques, myofascial release and counterstrain. Researchers subjected fibroblast matrices to various strains and employed a scratch wound strain model to test the ability of OMT ...

A new strain of yeast called Yarrowia lipolytica Y-3492 was found to be very active in waste water treatment. The discovery was made by by microbiologists from Kazan Federal University during their research at Western Siberian peat bogs. The strain is said to be effective against nitro compounds which are used in explosives, herbicides, insecticides, polymers, dyes, and some medications. Oil refineries and military equipment plants produce especially high amounts of such waste. The research was conducted with the use of widely known trinitrotoluene (TNT). It is well-known ...

COLLEGE STATION -- It's happy hour at a lab in College Station. The cocktail of choice, developed by scientists with Texas A&M AgriLife Research, is one that stops or prevents the deadly Pierce's disease on wine grapes. The discovery could turn a new leaf on the multimillion-dollar U.S. wine industry. Hear, hear. The study, published in the academic journal PLOS ONE, describes the use of four bacteriophages that were identified for their ability to attack the bacteria that causes the devastating disease in grapes and several other plants. A bacteriophage, or phage, ...

A paper from the University of Exeter has highlighted the dangers of relying on climate-based projections of future crop pest distributions and suggests that rapid evolution can confound model results. Crop pests and pathogens are destructive organisms which pose a huge threat to food security and land management across the world. Much research has been carried out into why the pests are spreading, where they are likely to establish next, what damage they will do and what can be done to reduce their impact. In a new synthesis, published today in the Annual Review of ...

Diagnosis of deadly brain conditions could be helped by new research that shows how infectious proteins that cause the disease spread. The study reveals how the proteins - called prions - spread from the gut to the brain after a person or animal has eaten contaminated meat. Scientists say their findings could aid the earlier diagnosis of prion diseases - which include variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in people and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cows. In people, the disease remains very rare - 229 people have died from vCJD since it was first identified ...

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, and the American Society of ExtraCorporeal Technology have released a set of clinical practice guidelines to address management of a patient's temperature during open heart surgery. The guidelines appear in the August issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery and were published simultaneously in two other journals. Numerous strategies are currently used to optimally manage the practice of cooling the blood, temperature maintenance (control of body temperature during surgery), and rewarming ...

This news release is available in French. While it is already possible to obtain in vitro pluripotent cells (ie, cells capable of generating all tissues of an embryo) from any cell type, researchers from Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla's team have pushed the limits of science even further. They managed to obtain totipotent cells with the same characteristics as those of the earliest embryonic stages and with even more interesting properties. Obtained in collaboration with Juanma Vaquerizas from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine (Münster, Germany), these ...