This news release is available in German. An international team of scientists led by the University of Bayreuth and with participation of DESY has created the highest static pressure ever achieved in a lab: Using a special high pressure device, the researchers investigated the behaviour of the metal osmium at pressures of up to 770 Gigapascals (GPa) - more than twice the pressure in the inner core of the Earth, and about 130 Gigapascals higher than the previous world record set by members of the same team. Surprisingly, osmium does not change its crystal structure ...

BOSTON -- In response to the growing opioid crisis, several states, including Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have granted pharmacists the authority to provide naloxone rescue kits without a prescription to at-risk patients. This model of pharmacy-based naloxone (PBN) education and distribution is one of the public health strategies currently being evaluated at hundreds of pharmacies in both states to determine the impact on opioid overdose death rates. Led by researchers at Boston Medical Center (BMC), Rhode Island Hospital, and the University of Rhode Island College ...

For software programmers, security tools are analytic software that can scan or run their code to expose vulnerabilities long before the software goes to market. But these tools can have shortcomings, and programmers don't always use them. New research from National Science Foundation-funded computer science researcher Emerson Murphy-Hill and his colleagues tackles three different aspects of the issue. "Our work is focused on understanding the developers who are trying to identify security vulnerabilities in their code, and how they use (or don't use) tools that can help ...

URBANA, Ill. - Men and persons age 65 and older who have access to natural surroundings, whether it's the green space of a nearby park or a sandy beach and an ocean view, report sleeping better, according to a new University of Illinois study published in Preventive Medicine. "It's hard to overestimate the importance of high-quality sleep," said Diana Grigsby-Toussaint, a U of I professor of kinesiology and community health and a faculty member in the U of I's Division of Nutritional Sciences. "Studies show that inadequate sleep is associated with declines in mental ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new study of the records of millions of nursing home residents affirms the value of influenza vaccination among the elderly. The Brown University analysis found that between 2000 and 2009, the better matched the vaccine was for the influenza strain going around, the fewer nursing home residents died or were hospitalized. Although flu vaccination is a standard of care and a measure of quality in nursing homes, some public health experts question the evidence of whether they do any good, said Vincent Mor, corresponding author of ...

The Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM mission core satellite gathered rainfall data on Tropical Depression Kilo as it heads toward Johnston Island in the Central Pacific Ocean. On August 24, a Tropical Storm Warning was posted for Johnston Island Kilo formed as depression and strengthened into a tropical storm to southeast of the Hawaiian Islands on August 20, 2015. By 5 a.m. EDT on Sunday, August 23, Kilo weakened to a tropical depression. Today, August 24, the tropical depression nearing Johnston Island. The National Hurricane Center noted that Johnston Island ...

Washington D.C., August 24, 2015 - Children who have been abused typically experience more intense emotions than their peers who have not been abused. This is often considered a byproduct of living in volatile, dangerous environments. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) set to find out what happens when these children are taught how to regulate their emotions. Could that better help them cope with difficult situations? The team of researchers from the University of Washington studied what happens ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 2015 -- You're tired and you need an energy boost, but you don't want the jitters from caffeine. What to do? In this Reactions video, we give you some chemistry-backed tips -- one of which involves cats -- to boost your productivity and stay awake without refilling the coffee cup. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/SvEQBURrPow INFORMATION: Subscribe to our weekly series at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions and follow us on Twitter @ACSReactions. The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 158,000 ...

We humans have been using self-medication to cure the illnesses since the dawn of our species. There is some evidence that also other animals can exhibit this type of behavior, but the evidence has been hard to come by. Scientists from the University of Helsinki, Finland, have now shown that black ant Formica fusca can change their taste for food once exposed to the fungal pathogens. In the compound of interest was hydrogen peroxide, which can be found in the damaged plants, other insects and cadavers. "When ants are feeding on the diet containing extra free radicals ...

People are motivated to participate in the sharing economy because of its ecological sustainability, the enjoyment derived from the activity, the sense of community, and saving money and time. Ecological sustainability is one of the basic principles of the sharing economy - not to purchase everything individually but rather consumer collaboratively by sharing goods and services. Another canonical principle of the sharing economy is 'paying it forward'. However, collaborative consumption may involve the same hurdles as any other type of green consumption, researcher from ...

The report, published on F1000Research and titled Neuropathic pain in a patient with congenital insensitivity to pain has just passed peer review. It concerns a unique case of a woman with Channelopathy-associated Insensitivity to Pain (CIP) Syndrome, who developed features of neuropathic pain after sustaining pelvic fractures and an epidural hematoma that impinged on the right fifth lumbar (L5) nerve root. These injuries were sustained during a painless labour, which culminated in a Caesarean section. The patient had been diagnosed with CIP as child. This was later ...

CINCINNATI - A study published online Aug. 24 by the journal Pediatrics finds a significant decrease in the use of computed tomography (CT) scans at children's hospitals for 10 common childhood diagnoses including seizure, concussion, appendectomy and upper respiratory tract infection. Alternate types of imaging such as ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are being used more frequently for eight of the 10 diagnoses. Study authors hypothesize the decline in CT usage may be attributable to a growing body of evidence linking ionizing radiation from CT scans to ...

Yes, a good cry indeed might go a long way to make you feel better, says Asmir Gračanin of the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, lead author of a study in Springer's journal Motivation and Emotion. These findings were established after a research team videotaped a group of participants while watching the emotionally charged films La vita è bella and Hachi: A Dog's Tale. Afterwards, the participants were asked a few times to reflect on how they felt. Although humans are the only species able to shed emotional tears, little is known about the function ...

21.08.2015: In mountainous regions earthquakes often cause strong landslides, which can be exacerbated by heavy rain. However, after an initial increase, the frequency of these mass wasting events, often enormous and dangerous, declines, in fact independently of meteorological events and aftershocks. These new findings are presented by a German-Franco-Japanese team of geoscientists in the current issue of the journal Geology, under the lead of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. Even after strong earthquake the activity of landslides returns back over the course ...

By minimizing the acceleration of industrial robots, energy consumption can be reduced by up to 40 percent - while retaining the given production time. This is the result of a new optimization algorithm that was developed by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology. Optimization of the robot's movements reduces acceleration and deceleration, as well as the time the robot is at a standstill since being at a standstill also consumes energy. "We simply let the robot move slower instead of waiting for other robots and machines to catch up before carrying out the ...

The public sector has long served as an equalizer in American society, a place where minority workers could find stable employment that offered advancement and a reliable path to a middle-class life. But the Great Recession wiped out many of those jobs, as tax revenues declined and anti-government sentiment added to a contraction that continued long after the Great Recession ended in 2008. Those job cuts disproportionately hurt African-American workers and increased racial disparity in the public sector, a new study by University of Washington sociologist Jennifer Laird ...

CHICAGO -- As the World War I military draft brought to the forefront the high rate of venereal disease among the civilian population, states began to enact measures to quarantine people and begin forms of treatment to try to control syphilis, gonorrhea and other potential outbreaks. However, a University of Kansas (KU) researcher has documented examples of how this process continued well into peacetime and how these laws were generally enforced along lines of gender and class, especially punishing poor women. Nicole Perry, a University of Kansas graduate student in ...

CHICAGO -- Early adolescent girls lose friends for having sex and gain friends for "making out," while their male peers lose friends for "making out" and gain friends for having sex, finds a new study that will be presented at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). "In our sample of early adolescents, girls' friendship networks shrink significantly after they have sex, whereas boys' friendship networks expand significantly," said Derek A. Kreager, the lead author of the study and an associate professor of sociology and criminology at ...

CHICAGO -- Skin color is a significant factor in the probability of employment for male immigrants to the United States, according to a new study by two University of Kansas (KU) researchers. The researchers, Andrea Gomez Cervantes, a doctoral candidate in sociology, and ChangHwan Kim, an associate professor of sociology, found that among men, darker skin color negatively influenced their likelihood of employment, even after accounting for the effects of race and other demographic and education related variables. The negative effect of darker skin color was particularly ...

A new analysis of patient records indicates that certain drugs taken to improve heart health may also have anti-cancer properties. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings indicate that additional studies are warranted to determine whether patients with cancer may benefit from adding beta blockers to their treatment regimen. There is growing evidence that stress hormones can stimulate cancer to grow and spread. Beta blockers, which are drugs commonly used to treat hypertension and other heart-related conditions, ...

One in five older people who drink alcohol are consuming it at unsafe levels - over 21 units of alcohol for men and 14 units for women each week - according to a study by King's College London. The research in inner-city London, published in BMJ Open, found these unsafe older drinkers are more likely to be of higher socioeconomic status. The researchers used anonymised electronic GP health records for 27,991 people aged 65 and over in the Borough of Lambeth in London. From these records, they identified 9,248 older people who had reported consuming alcohol and of these ...

Amsterdam, NL, August 24, 2015 - Bedwetting, or nocturnal enuresis, causes distress in children and young adults, as well as for their parents or caregivers. The causes are not fully understood and there may be both physiological and psychological components to the condition. In a new study published in Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, researchers report that repetitive sacral root magnetic stimulation (rSMS) can reduce the frequency of nighttime bedwetting and improve quality-of-life for sufferers. In a study conducted by researchers at the Assiut University Hospital, ...

CHICAGO-If men take up more of the child-care duties, splitting them equally with their female partners, heterosexual couples have more satisfaction with their relationships and their sex lives, according to new research by Georgia State University sociologists. The research was presented Aug. 23 at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Daniel L. Carlson, along with graduate students Sarah Hanson and Andrea Fitzroy used data from more than 900 heterosexual couples' responses in the 2006 Marital Relationship Study (MARS). The researchers found ...

CHICAGO -- African women in polygamous marriages or with alcoholic husbands have a significantly higher risk of being physically abused by their husbands than women in monogamous marriages or women whose husbands don't abuse alcohol, new research shows. A trio of researchers pulled data from the Demographic Health Survey to look at intimate partner physical violence in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. The four countries have high rates of domestic violence. The researchers selected the countries based on the availability of timely data and to represent different regions ...

CHICAGO -- People who report having spiritual awareness have it vary throughout the day, rather than being constant, according to a study by University of Connecticut researchers. The study, which will be presented at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA), found that people had the highest levels of spiritual awareness in the morning and while engaged in activities such as praying, worship, and meditation. Spiritual awareness also was high when people listened to music, read, or exercised. It was low while people were doing work-related ...