U.S. Army soldiers hospitalized with a psychiatric disorder have a significantly elevated suicide risk in the year following discharge from the hospital, according to research from the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers (Army STARRS). The yearly suicide rate for this group, 263.9 per 100,000 soldiers, was far higher than the rate of 18.5 suicides per 100,000 in the Regular Army for the same study period, the study found. The researchers looked at data from the 12 months following a hospital discharge for more than 40,000 anonymous, Regular Army ...

It has long been known that patients recently discharged from psychiatric hospitalizations have a significantly elevated suicide risk. However, the rarity of suicide even in this high-risk segment of the population makes it impractical to justify providing intensive post-hospital suicide prevention programs to all recently discharged patients. Targeted programs for patients at especially high suicide risk would be more feasible, but it is difficult for clinicians to predict with good accuracy which patients are at high risk for suicide. A new report published online today ...

Nearly a quarter of all patients who underwent initial breast conservation surgery (BCS) for breast cancer had a subsequent surgical intervention, according to a report published online by JAMA Surgery. Completely removing breast cancer is seen as the best way to reduce recurrence and improve survival. A lack of consensus on an adequate margin width has led to variable rates of reexcision and, as a result, patients undergo repeat or additional surgeries, according to background information provided in the study. Lee G. Wilke, M.D., of the University of Wisconsin School ...

A study that looked at predicting suicides in U.S. Army soldiers after they are hospitalized for a psychiatric disorder suggests that nearly 53 percent of posthospitalization suicides occurred following the 5 percent of hospitalizations with the highest predicted suicide risk, according to a report in JAMA Psychiatry. The suicide rate in the U.S. Army has increased since 2004 and now exceeds the rate among civilians. Still, suicide is a rare outcome even among recently discharged psychiatric patients. A potentially promising approach to assess posthospitalization suicide ...

SEATTLE - Preterm birth is now the leading cause of death for children under 5 worldwide, and a new scientific paper reveals a startling lack of knowledge about what causes it and how to prevent it. Published in the November issue of Science Translational Medicine, "Prevention of Preterm Birth: Harnessing Science to Address the Global Epidemic" shines a light on the urgent need for a larger, coordinated research effort to discover how to identify women at risk of preterm birth and develop prevention interventions. "There are not enough resources dedicated to researching ...

Older women with disordered breathing during sleep were found to be at greater risk of decline in the ability to perform daily activities, such as grocery shopping and meal preparation, according to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of California, San Francisco. The study was published Nov. 6 in the online edition of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The findings are notable given the aging of the population - an estimated 3.7 million Americans will turn 65 in 2015, and by 2030, 19 ...

In school-age children previously diagnosed with depression as preschoolers, a key brain region involved in emotion is smaller than in their peers who were not depressed, scientists have shown. The research, by a team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, also suggests that the size of the brain's right anterior insula may predict the risk of future bouts of depression, potentially giving researchers an anatomical marker to identify those at high risk for recurrence. The study is published online Nov. 12 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. There is ...

One of the world's deadliest mosquitoes sustains its taste for human blood thanks in part to a genetic tweak that makes it more sensitive to human odor, according to new research. Researchers report in the journal Nature that the yellow fever mosquito contains a version of an odor-detecting gene in its antennae that is highly attuned to sulcatone, a compound prevalent in human odor. The researchers found that the gene, AaegOr4, is more abundant and more sensitive in the human-preferring "domestic" form of the yellow fever mosquito than in its ancestral "forest" form that ...

Adding tiny amounts of vegetable puree to milk and then rice at the time of weaning makes children more likely to eat vegetables, new University of Leeds research shows. Infants who consumed either milk (breast milk or formula) followed by rice mixed with vegetable puree ate nearly half as many vegetables again as infants who ate just milk followed by baby rice. Professor Marion Hetherington, of the School of Psychology at the University of Leeds, led the study. She said: "We took inspiration from French mothers, as previous studies in this area have shown that they ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- In its first clinical application in pediatric patients, an investigational medication developed and manufactured at UC Davis has been found to effectively treat children with life-threatening and difficult-to-control epileptic seizures without side effects, according to a research report by scientists at UC Davis and Northwestern University. The investigational formulation of allopregnanolone was manufactured by UC Davis Health System's Good Manufacturing Practice Laboratory. Two children were treated with the allopregnanolone formulation, one ...

LA JOLLA, CA - November 12, 2014 - Driving to work becomes routine--but could you drive the entire way in reverse gear? Humans, like many animals, are accustomed to seeing objects pass behind us as we go forward. Moving backwards feels unnatural. In a new study, scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) reveal that moving forward actually trains the brain to perceive the world normally. The findings also show that the relationship between neurons in the eye and the brain is more complicated than previously thought--in fact, the order in which we see things ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. - November 12, 2014) An international collaboration has identified frequent mutations in two genes that often occur together in Ewing sarcoma (EWS) and that define a subtype of the cancer associated with reduced survival. The research, conducted by the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital-Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project and the Institut Curie-Inserm through the International Cancer Genome Consortium, appears in the current issue of the scientific journal Cancer Discovery. Mutations in the genes STAG2 and TP53 have previously been ...

Giant otters may have a vocal repertoire with 22 distinct vocalization types produced by adults and 11 neonate vocalization types, according to a study published November 12, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Christina Mumm and Mirjam Knörnschild from University of Ulm, Germany. Giant otters, found in South America, are very social and frequently vocalizing animals. They live in groups that may vary, but generally include a reproductive pair and their offspring, born in different years. Individuals engage in shared group activities and hold different social ...

Using fewer than twenty genomes, researchers were unable to find rare protein-altering variants significantly associated with extreme longevity, according to a study published November 12, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hinco Gierman from Stanford University and colleagues. Supercentenarians are the world's oldest people, living beyond 110 years of age. Seventy-four are alive worldwide, with twenty-two living in the United States. The authors of this study performed whole-genome sequencing on 17 supercentenarians to explore the genetic basis underlying ...

An educational approach in kindergarten focused on the development of executive functions--the ability to avoid distractions, focus attention, hold relevant details in working memory, and regulate impulsive behavior--in children improved academic learning in and beyond kindergarten, helping to overcome deficits in school readiness associated with poverty, according to a study published November 12, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Clancy Blair and C. Cybele Raver from New York University. Based on the results, the authors suggest that executive function ...

An educational approach focused on the development of children's executive functions - the ability to avoid distractions, focus attention, hold relevant information in working memory, and regulate impulsive behavior - improved academic learning in and beyond kindergarten, according to a new study by researchers at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Because some effects were especially pronounced in high-poverty schools, the findings hold promise for closing the poverty-related achievement gap and suggest that an emphasis on executive ...

The normally bland face of Uranus has become increasingly stormy, with enormous cloud systems so bright that for the first time ever, amateur astronomers are able to see details in the planet's hazy blue-green atmosphere. "The weather on Uranus is incredibly active," said Imke de Pater, professor and chair of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and leader of the team that first noticed the activity when observing the planet with adaptive optics on the W. M. Keck II Telescope in Hawaii. "This type of activity would have been expected in 2007, when Uranus's ...

In the fight against HIV, microbicides--chemical compounds that can be applied topically to the female genital tract to protect against sexually transmitted infections--have been touted as an effective alternative to condoms. However, while these compounds are successful at preventing transmission of the virus in a petri dish, clinical trials using microbicides have largely failed. A new study from the Gladstone Institutes and the University of Ulm now reveals that this discrepancy may be due to the primary mode of transportation of the virus during sexual transmission, ...

VIDEO: The video illustrates the complete experiment. First the participant shown wearing the Oculus head-mounted display and the OptiTrack motion capture suit gives comfort to the crying virtual child. We see... Click here for more information. Self-compassion can be learned using avatars in an immersive virtual reality, finds new research led by UCL. This innovative approach reduced self-criticism and increased self-compassion and feelings of contentment in naturally self-critical ...

It is claimed one in five students have taken the 'smart' drug Modafinil to boost their ability to study and improve their chances of exam success. But new research into the effects of Modafinil has shown that healthy students could find their performance impaired by the drug. The study carried out by Dr Ahmed Dahir Mohamed, in the School of Psychology at The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, and published today, Wednesday 12 November 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE, showed the drug had negative effects in healthy people. Dr Mohamed said: "We looked ...

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (Nov. 12, 2014) -- Crowdsourcing utilizes the input of a crowd of online users to collaboratively solve problems. To advance this emerging technology, researchers at the University of Miami are developing a computing model that uses crowdsourcing to combine and optimize human efforts and machine computing elements. The new model can be used to efficiently perform the complex tasks of face recognition--a method used in law enforcement. It's a new approach to using social networks as a formal part of the criminal investigation process, explained computer ...

Making friends is often extremely difficult for people with social anxiety disorder and to make matters worse, people with this disorder tend to assume that the friendships they do have are not of the highest quality. The problem with this perception, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis, is that it's not necessarily true from the point of view of their friends. "People who are impaired by high social anxiety typically think they are coming across much worse than they really are," said study co-author Thomas Rodebaugh, PhD, associate professor ...

While the Martinis Lab at UC Santa Barbara has been focusing on quantum computation, former postdoctoral fellow Pedram Roushan and several colleagues have been exploring qubits (quantum bits) for quantum simulation on a smaller scale. Their research appears in the current edition of the journal Nature. "While we're waiting on quantum computers, there are specific problems from various fields ranging from chemistry to condensed matter that we can address systematically with superconducting qubits," said Roushan, who is now a quantum electronics engineer at Google. "These ...

It's not uncommon to see cameras mounted on store ceilings, propped up in public places or placed inside subways, buses and even on the dashboards of cars. Cameras record our world down to the second. This can be a powerful surveillance tool on the roads and in buildings, but it's surprisingly hard to sift through vast amounts of visual data to find pertinent information - namely, making a split-second identification and understanding a person's actions and behaviors as recorded sequentially by cameras in a variety of locations. Now, University of Washington electrical ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Peering deep into time with one of the world's newest, most sophisticated telescopes, astronomers have found a galaxy - AzTEC-3 - that gives birth annually to 500 times the number of suns as the Milky Way galaxy, according to a new Cornell University-led study published Nov. 10 in the Astrophysical Journal. Lead author Dominik Riechers, Cornell assistant professor of astronomy, and an international team of researchers gazed back - with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile - over 12.5 billion years to find bustling galaxies creating ...