Chronic disease and mental health issues disproportionately affect low-income African-Americans, Latinos and Hispanics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Two new studies by the UCLA Center for Culture, Trauma and Mental Health Disparities shed light on the causes and impacts of this disparity. The first study, published online by the journal Psychological Trauma, analyzed certain types of negative experiences that may affect low-income African-Americans and Latinos. It found five specific environmental factors, which the researchers call "domains," ...

Every time you put on bug spray this summer, you're launching a strike in the ongoing war between humans and mosquitoes -- one that is rapidly driving the evolution of the pests. Scientists studying mosquitoes in various types of environments in the United States and in Russia found that between 5 and 20 percent of a mosquito population's genome is subject to evolutionary pressures at any given time -- creating a strong signature of local adaptation to environment and humans. This means that individual populations are likely to have evolved resistance to whatever local ...

Tens of millions of Americans -- an estimated 1 to 2 percent of the population -- will suffer at some point in their lifetimes from obsessive-compulsive disorder, a disorder characterized by recurrent, intrusive, and disturbing thoughts (obsessions), and/or stereotyped recurrent behaviors (compulsions). Left untreated, OCD can be profoundly distressing to the patient and can adversely affect their ability to succeed in school, hold a job or function in society. One of the most common and effective treatments is cognitive-behavioral therapy, which aims to help patients ...

URBANA, Ill. -- When children participated in a program designed to reduce sibling conflict, both parents benefited from a lessening of hostilities on the home front. But mothers experienced a more direct reward. As they viewed the children's sessions in real time on a video monitor and coached the kids at home to respond as they'd been taught, moms found that, like their kids, they were better able to manage their own emotions during stressful moments. "Parenting more than one child is stressful, and until now, there have been few ways to help parents deal with their ...

In a paper that crystalizes knowledge from a variety of experiments and theoretical developments, scientists from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan have demonstrated that the quantum spin Hall effect--an effect known to take place in solid state physics--is also an intrinsic property of light. Photons have neither mass nor charge, and so behave very differently from their massive counterparts, but they do share a property, called spin, which results in remarkable geometric and topological phenomena. The spin--a measure of the intrinsic angular momentum--can ...

Pressure ulcers affect more than 2.5 million Americans annually and patients who have spinal cord injuries that impair movement are more vulnerable to ulcer development. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have devised a computational model that could enhance understanding, diagnosis and treatment of pressure ulcers related to spinal cord injury. The research publishing this week in PLOS Computational Biology, shows the results of virtual clinical trials that demonstrated that in order to effectively treat the lesions, anti-inflammatory measures ...

Antibiotic resistance, and multi-drug resistance, is a major public health threat. A new study publishing in PLOS Computational Biology finds conditions where restricting certain antibiotics may increase the frequency of multiple drug resistance. Uri Obolski and Prof. Lilach Hadany and colleagues used a mathematical model and electronic medical records data to show that drug restriction may also lead to results opposite of those desired. Restriction might facilitate the spread of resistant pathogens, due to ineffective treatment with antibiotics that have high resistance ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Researchers studying poppy plants -- the natural source of pain-relieving alkaloids, such as morphine and codeine -- have identified a fusion gene that facilitates important, back-to-back steps in the plant's morphine-producing pathway. These findings, which build upon recent efforts to engineer the morphine biosynthesis pathway in yeast, complete the metabolic pathway for morphine and pave the way for cheaper, safer routes to producing the economically important drug without the need for cultivating poppy fields. For about ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Researchers have figured out a way to pump more light farther along an optical fiber, offering engineers a potential solution to the so-called "capacity crunch" that threatens to limit bandwidth on the Web. These findings, which represent a step toward a faster and vaster Internet, show that silica fibers -- the hair-like wires that form the basis of fiber-optic communication -- can handle a lot more data than researchers had originally estimated. Normally, information traveling through an optical fiber is subject to nonlinear ...

The relentless flow of a glacier may seem unstoppable, but a team of UK and US researchers have shown that during some calving events - when an iceberg breaks off into the ocean - the glacier moves rapidly backward and downward, causing the characteristic glacial earthquakes which until now have been poorly understood. This new insight into glacier behaviour should enable scientists to measure glacier calving remotely and will improve the reliability of models that predict future sea-level rise in a warming climate. The research is published today in Science Express. ...

Scientists at the University of York and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Australia have made a key genetic discovery in poppies, paving the way for more effective painkillers. The discovery, published in the latest issue of Science, reveals the long sought after gene that is seen as a critical gateway step in the synthesis of the morphinan class of alkaloids, which include the painkiller drugs morphine and codeine. The gene, called STORR, is only found in poppy species that produce morphinans. The STORR gene evolved when two other genes encoding oxidase and reductase enzymes ...

Electrical engineers have broken key barriers that limit the distance information can travel in fiber optic cables and still be accurately deciphered by a receiver. Photonics researchers at the University of California, San Diego have increased the maximum power -- and therefore distance -- at which optical signals can be sent through optical fibers. This advance has the potential to increase the data transmission rates for the fiber optic cables that serve as the backbone of the internet, cable, wireless and landline networks. The research is published in the June 26 issue ...

PITTSBURGH--Scientific controversies, from problems replicating results - such as with the now debunked association between autism and MMR vaccines - to researcher misconduct and sensationalism, have led to speculation of "trouble at the lab," as the Economist put it. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands recently convened top scientists from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology and other leading institutions to examine ways to return to ...

PITTSBURGH, June 18, 2015 - Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have devised a computational model that could enhance understanding, diagnosis and treatment of pressure ulcers related to spinal cord injury. In a report published online in PLOS Computational Biology, the team also described results of virtual clinical trials that showed that for effective treatment of the lesions, anti-inflammatory measures had to be applied well before the earliest clinical signs of ulcer formation. Pressure ulcers affect more than 2.5 million Americans annually ...

Chloroplasts, better known for taking care of photosynthesis in plant cells, play an unexpected role in responding to infections in plants, researchers at UC Davis and the University of Delaware have found. When plant cells are infected with pathogens, networks of tiny tubes called stromules extend from the chloroplasts and make contact with the cell's nucleus, the team discovered. The tubes likely deliver signals from the chloroplast to the nucleus that induce programmed cell death of infected cells and prepare other cells to resist infection. The work is published online ...

Magnolias are prized for their large, colorful, fragrant flowers. Does the attractive, showy tree also harbor a potent cancer fighter? Yes, according to a growing number of studies, including one from VA and the University of Alabama at Birmingham that is now online in the journal Oncotarget. The study focused on squamous cell head and neck cancers, a scourge among those who use tobacco and alcohol. According to the National Cancer Institute, at least 3 in 4 head and neck cancers are caused by the use of tobacco and alcohol. The cancers have only a 50 percent survival ...

Without new conservation efforts, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could lose up to 20 percent of its forests, unleashing a 60 percent increase in carbon emissions, says a new study by researchers at the University of Vermont's Gund Institute for Ecological Economics. Published by PLOS ONE, the study explores Central Africa's tropical forests, which are among the world's largest carbon reserves. While these forests have historically experienced low deforestation rates, pressures to clear land are growing due to development, foreign investment in agriculture, and ...

An international group of academic leaders, journal editors and funding-agency representatives and disciplinary leaders, including Rick Wilson, the Herbert S. Autrey Chair of Political Science and professor of statistics and psychology at Rice University, has announced guidelines to further strengthen transparency and reproducibility practices in science research reporting. The group, the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Committee at the Center for Open Science in Charlottesville, Va., outlined its new guidelines in a story published in this week's edition of ...

Rainwater could save people in India a bucket of money, according to a new study by scientists looking at NASA satellite data. The study, partially funded by NASA's Precipitation Measurement Missions, found that collecting rainwater for vegetable irrigation could reduce water bills, increase caloric intake and even provide a second source of income for people in India. The study, published in the June issue of Urban Water Journal, is based on precipitation data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace ...

The majority of the United States' poor aren't sitting on street corners. They're employed at low-paying jobs, struggling to support themselves and a family. In the past, differing definitions of employment and poverty prevented researchers from agreeing on who and how many constitute the "working poor." But a new study by sociologists at BYU, Cornell and LSU provides a rigorous new estimate. Their work suggests about 10 percent of working households are poor. Additionally, households led by women, minorities or individuals with low education are more likely to be ...

A new study led by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego indicates a steady population trend for blue whales and an upward population trend for fin whales in Southern California. Scripps marine acoustician Ana Širović and her colleagues in the Marine Bioacoustics Lab and Scripps Whale Acoustic Lab intermittently deployed 16 High-frequency Acoustic Recording Packages (HARPs)--devices that sit on the seafloor with a suspended hydrophone (an underwater microphone)--to collect acoustic data on whales off Southern California from 2006-2012. ...

MINNEAPOLIS - A new study suggests that errors on memory and thinking tests may signal Alzheimer's up to 18 years before the disease can be diagnosed. The research is published in the June 24, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "The changes in thinking and memory that precede obvious symptoms of Alzheimer's disease begin decades before," said study author Kumar B. Rajan, PhD, with Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. "While we cannot currently detect such changes in individuals at risk, we were able to ...

"Hydraulic fracturing" (or fracking) and "environmentally friendly" often do not appear in the same sentence together. But as the United States teeters on the precipice of a shale gas boom, Northwestern University professor Fengqi You is exploring ways to make the controversial activity easier on the environment -- and the wallet. "Shale gas is promising," said You, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science. "No matter if you like it or not, it's already out there. The question we want ...

Over 50 leading doctors and academics including Fiona Godlee, editor in chief of The BMJ, have signed an open letter published in The Guardian today calling on the Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuel companies. The letter is part of The Guardian's "Keep it in the Ground" Campaign that is urging the world's two biggest charitable funds -- the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation -- to move their money out of fossil fuels. It reads: "Divestment rests on the premise that it is wrong to profit from an industry whose core business threatens human and planetary health, ...

EDMONTON, Alberta, June 25 -- Working towards the ultimate goal to develop therapeutics to treat diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ALS, and BSE (Mad Cow Disease), University of Alberta scientists Michael Woodside, Hao Yu, and Derek Dee are investigating the physical principles underlying the formation of misfolded protein aggregates. The aggregates of misfolded proteins -- proteins that clump together in the "wrong" structure -- feature prominently in these fatal degenerative diseases. "This is the big mystery we're trying to solve," says Woodside, a professor ...