Cultural "lore" outweighs criminal law when Indigenous drivers in regional and remote communities get behind the wheel drunk, a new study by Queensland University of Technology has found. Michelle Fitts, from QUT's Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety-Queensland (CARRS-Q), said the decision to drink drive was not necessarily made in disregard for criminal law but rather to meet cultural obligations. As part of her Ph.D., Fitts explored the motivations that influence Indigenous people to drink drive in regional and remote communities through one-on-one interviews ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for "scheduling" energy in electric grids that moves away from centralized management by tapping into the distributed computing power of energy devices. The approach advances the smart grid concept by coordinating the energy being produced and stored by both conventional and renewable sources. Currently, power infrastructure uses a centralized scheduling approach to forecast and coordinate the energy produced at the thousands of large power plants around the country. But as renewable energy ...

Research has shown that New Zealand blackcurrants are good for keeping us mentally young and agile, a finding that could have potential in managing the mental decline associated with aging populations, or helping people with brain disorders such as Parkinson's disease or depression. The research, conducted by scientists at Plant & Food Research (New Zealand) in collaboration with Northumbria University (UK), showed that compounds found in New Zealand blackcurrants increased mental performance indicators, such as accuracy, attention and mood. The study also showed that ...

Although minority children are frequently reported to be overrepresented in special education classrooms, a team of researchers suggests that minority children are less likely than otherwise similar white children to receive help for disabilities. The previously reported overrepresentation is most likely due to a greater exposure to environmental and economic risk factors, said Paul Morgan, associate professor of education, Penn State. "The general limitation of the available studies is that they haven't been able to correct for minority children's unfortunate, but ...

Scientists at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet have managed to build a fully functional neuron by using organic bioelectronics. This artificial neuron contain no "living" parts, but is capable of mimicking the function of a human nerve cell and communicate in the same way as our own neurons do. Neurons are isolated from each other and communicate with the help of chemical signals, commonly called neurotransmitters or signal substances. Inside a neuron, these chemical signals are converted to an electrical action potential, which travels along the axon of the neuron until ...

New research published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, reports that younger patients, those who are married, and those with Child-Pugh C disease--the most severe measure of liver disease--are more likely immigrants, divorced patients and those at the lowest income levels were less likely to have a potential live donor volunteer for liver donation. With a limited supply of deceased donor organs, livers from living donors provide a much needed, life-saving ...

If it were up to Internet-savvy Americans, more of them would be emailing or sending Facebook messages to their doctors to chat about their health. That's the result of a national survey led by Joy Lee of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US. The findings¹ appear in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published by Springer. Surveys were sent to more than 4,500 customers of a retail pharmacy. The replies of the 2,252 respondents were included in the analysis. Respondents tended to be well educated, in good health, and frequent users ...

(Boston)--Medical students showed a greater acceptance of using approaches in genomic medicine, a key element in the practice of precision medicine, to treat patients as compared to physicians currently in practice according to a Brief Communication in the journal Medical Science Educator. The promise of genomic medicine, where personalized prevention and treatment becomes the health care norm, is poised to become a widespread reality. "The ability to take advantage of this approach to patient care will rest heavily on having appropriately trained physicians," explained ...

This news release is available in German. Supermassive black holes pull in gas with great force from their surroundings. As the gas rotates around the black hole, it becomes progressively hotter through friction and begins to radiate. This is how the brightest objects in the universe, active galactic nuclei (AGN), are formed. They often shine brighter than the hundreds of billions of stars in their galaxy. In the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way there is also such a black hole that, according to some studies, shone as an AGN a few millions of years ago. ETH ...

June 24 -- More Americans are using soft contact lenses -- especially daily disposable lenses -- and taking advantage of new designs targeting vision problems that were difficult to correct with previous contact lenses, reports the July issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer. Recent prescribing trends reflect ongoing advances in contact lens materials and capabilities, according to the survey study by Nathan Efron, Ph.D., DSc, of Queensland University of Technology, Australia, ...

Researchers have found that smoking may increase the risk of dying early in premenopausal women with breast cancer. In a prospective study of 848 women with breast cancer who were followed for a median of 6.7 years, premenopausal women who smoked for more than 21.5 years had a 3.1-times higher risk of dying from any cause as well as a 3.4-times higher risk of dying from breast cancer. These links were not apparent among post-menopausal women. There was also some suggestion that the increased risks seen in premenopausal women were especially relevant to women whose cancers ...

New York, NY, June 24, 2015 - The results of a study assessing safety and efficacy of sTMS therapy with the NEST® device in adult patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) have been published in the Elsevier journal Brain Stimulation and are now available online on Science Direct. In the study, over 200 subjects were analyzed across 17 leading academic and private psychiatric institutions in the United States; enrollment included both treatment naïve and treatment-resistant patients as prior exposure to antidepressant medication was not a requirement for ...

Milan, Italy - 24 June 2015: The first ESC recommendations for patients with cardiac arrhythmias and chronic kidney disease (CKD) are presented today1 at EHRA EUROPACE - CARDIOSTIM 2015 and published in EP Europace.2 The paper was produced by the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and is endorsed by the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) in the US and the Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society (APHRS). Professor Giuseppe Boriani, chair of the writing group, said: "CKD occurs in more than 10% of adults and has ...

Milan, Italy - 24 June 2015: A unique consensus paper on patient preferences for arrhythmias management is presented today1 at EHRA EUROPACE - CARDIOSTIM 2015 and published in EP Europace.2 "Patients live with the consequences of treatments so it's reasonable that they should have some say." The document was produced by the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and is endorsed by the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) in the US, the Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society (APHRS) and Sociedad Latinoamericana de Estimulación ...

Philadelphia, PA, June 24, 2015 - One American dies from suicide every 12.8 minutes, making suicide the tenth leading cause of death in the United States according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. There is consensus that if we could better predict who was at risk for suicide, then we could more effectively intervene to reduce this terrible burden on individuals, families and public health. A new analysis of existing studies strongly supports the idea that there are increased levels of chemicals, called cytokines, in the body and brain that promote inflammation ...

A University of Colorado Boulder scientist unexpectedly discovered two lichen species new to science in the same week while conducting research in Boulder Colorado, near the city's eastern limits. After a day of fieldwork inventorying lichens at White Rocks Open Space, Erin Tripp was walking back to her car when an unfamiliar lichen caught her eye. Later that week, Tripp spotted a second species of lichen that she suspected might also be a new species. Tripp, curator of botany for the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and assistant professor of ecology ...

A study of how people can quickly spot animals by sight is helping uncover the workings of the human brain. Scientists examined why volunteers who were shown hundreds of pictures - some with animals and some without - were able to detect animals in as little as one-tenth of a second. They found that one of the first parts of the brain to process visual information - the primary visual cortex - can control this fast response, rather than more complex parts of the brain being required, as previously thought. The findings suggest that when people look at a scene for ...

South African and Argentinian palaeontologists have discovered a new 200 million year old dinosaur from South Africa, and named it Sefapanosaurus, from the Sesotho word "sefapano". The researchers from South Africa's University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), and from the Argentinian Museo de La Plata and Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio made the announcement in the scientific journal, Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society. The paper, titled: A new basal sauropodiform from South Africa and the phylogenetic relationships ...

Boulder, Colo. -- The 26 December 2004 Mw ~9.2 Indian Ocean earthquake (also known as the Sumatra-Andaman or Aceh-Andaman earthquake), which generated massive, destructive tsunamis, especially along the Aceh coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia, clearly demonstrated the need for a better understanding of how frequently subduction zone earthquakes and tsunamis occur. Toward that end, Harvey M. Kelsey of Humboldt State University and colleagues present a study of earthquake history in the area. Using subsidence stratigraphy, the team traced the different modes of coastal ...

The tooth plate of just some millimeters in size had been in a box for more than 40 years, without being recognized after the discovery and preparation of the fish it belonged to. Palaeontologists from Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Netherlands and the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, studied the fossil using high energy X-rays at the Swiss Light Source at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, revealing the structure and development of teeth and bones. Their findings are published today in Biology Letters. Teeth are important in our daily life, they are crucial ...

A digital map of the ageing brain could aid the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders in older people, a study suggests. The atlas created using images from MRI scans of older people could aid diagnosis by comparing the patients' scans with a detailed map of the healthy ageing brain. Most existing MRI atlases are based on the brains of young and middle-aged people, which don't reflect the normal changes that take place in the brain as we age, the team says. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh constructed a detailed atlas of ...

Various diagnostic imaging techniques are currently used for clinical imaging/disease diagnosis. The accuracy of diagnosis is mainly based on the type of energy used (such as X-ray, sound waves, photons and positrons) to derive the visual information, as well as the degree of spatial resolution (mesoscopic or microscopic) and the level of information that can be obtained (physiological, anatomical or molecular). Based on potential health hazards imposed by type of energy used, clinical imaging modalities can be broadly categorized as ionizing and non-ionizing modalities. ...

Milan, Italy - 24 June 2015: Uninterrupted treatment with novel oral anticoagulants (NOACs) during catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation (AF) is safe, reveals research presented today at EHRA EUROPACE - CARDIOSTIM 2015 by Dr Carsten Wunderlich, senior consultant in the Department of Invasive Electrophysiology, Heart Centre Dresden, Germany.1 Continuation of NOAC therapy was not associated with periprocedural bleeding or thromboembolic complications. The joint meeting of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and Cardiostim ...

TORONTO, ON - Adults who were exposed to childhood adversity, including witnessing parental domestic violence, childhood physical and sexual abuse have higher odds of experiencing migraine headaches in adulthood, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto. "We found the more types of violence the individual had been exposed to during their childhood, the greater the odds of migraine. For those who reported all three types of adversities--parental domestic violence, childhood physical and sexual abuse--the odds of migraine were a little over ...

Scientists have demonstrated for the first time the ability to rapidly, reliably and simultaneously identify the 'handedness' of different molecules in a mixture. The research, led by chemists at The University of Nottingham and the VU University Amsterdam, and published in the academic journal Nature Communications, could offer a new technique to easily distinguish whether a molecule is present in a left- or right-handed form. The breakthrough could be important in developing effective molecules for use in a wide range of industries -- everything from the development ...