NEW YORK (16 December 2014) -- The Population Council published new research in the November issue of the journal Contraception demonstrating that an investigational one-year contraceptive vaginal ring containing Nestorone® and ethinyl estradiol was found to be highly acceptable among women enrolled in a Phase 3 clinical trial. Because the perspectives of women are critical for defining acceptability, researchers developed a theoretical model based on women's actual experiences with this contraceptive vaginal ring, and assessed their overall satisfaction and adherence ...

American states got tough on impaired driving in the 1980s and 1990s, but restrictions have flat lined. A new study looks at associations between levels and types of law-enforcement efforts and prevalence of drinking and driving. The number of traffic stops and DUI arrests per capita had the most consistent and significant associations. From 1982 to 1997, American states got tough on impaired driving. Policies favored adopting lower blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limits for driving, administrative license revocation (ALR), and increased sanctions for those convicted ...

Alcohol outlets tend to be concentrated in lower-income areas. Given that alcohol-related problems such as trauma, chronic disease, and suicide occur more frequently in areas with a greater density of alcohol outlets, lower-income populations are exposed to increased risk. This study examines the distribution of rural outlets in the state of Victoria, Australia, finding towns had more outlets of all types where the average income was lower and where the average income in adjacent towns was higher, and that this was consistent with retail market dynamics. Results will ...

The heaviest drinking and steepest trajectory of increasing alcohol problems are typically observed during the mid-teens to mid-20s. One common and adverse consequence is the alcohol-related blackout (ARB), which is reported by up to 50 percent of drinkers. However, there are few studies of the trajectories of ARBs over time during mid-adolescence. A new study identifying different trajectories of ARBs between ages 15 and 19, along with predictors of those patterns, has found that certain adolescents with particular characteristics are more likely to drink to the point ...

In a study that included overweight and obese participants, those with diets with low glycemic index of dietary carbohydrate did not have improvements in insulin sensitivity, lipid levels, or systolic blood pressure, according to a study in the December 17 issue of JAMA. Foods that have similar carbohydrate content can differ in the amount they raise blood glucose, a property called the glycemic index. Even though some nutrition policies advocate consumption of low-glycemic index foods and even promote food labeling with glycemic index values, the independent benefits ...

Among patients with lymphoma undergoing a certain type of chemotherapy, receiving the antiviral drug entecavir resulted in a lower incidence of hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatitis and HBV reactivation, compared with the antiviral drug lamivudine, according to a study in the December 17 issue of JAMA. Hepatitis B virus reactivation is a well­documented chemotherapy complication, with diverse manifestations including life-threatening liver failure, as well as delays in chemotherapy or premature termination, all of which can jeopardize clinical outcomes. The reported ...

EVANSTON, Ill. - Music training has well-known benefits for the developing brain, especially for at-risk children. But youngsters who sit passively in a music class may be missing out, according to new Northwestern University research. In a study designed to test whether the level of engagement matters, researchers found that children who regularly attended music classes and actively participated showed larger improvements in how the brain processes speech and reading scores than their less-involved peers after two years. The research, which appears online on Dec. ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- For up to one in five Americans over age 65, getting older brings memory and thinking problems- along with the embarrassment of not being as "sharp" as they once were, and the worry that it will get much worse. They might just call it "getting older". But officially, when memory or cognitive problems don't interfere significantly with daily living, doctors call them mild cognitive impairment, or MCI. What can be done to prevent or slow MCI? And how much should seniors fear that their thinking or memory problems will get much worse? A pair of doctors ...

DALLAS - Dec. 16, 2014 - It's a sound that saves. A "real-time" radiation monitor that alerts by beeping in response to radiation exposure during cardiac-catheterization procedures significantly reduces the amount of exposure that medical workers receive, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers found. In a randomized study, the researchers divided 505 patients undergoing either diagnostic coronary angiography or percutaneous coronary intervention, such as stent placement, into two groups. In half the procedures, medical workers used the current gold standard for radiation ...

Boston, MA-- Nutrition experts are continually debating the nutritional value of carbohydrate-containing foods and whether some are healthier than others. High carbohydrate foods are classified by how much they increase blood sugar; known as glycemic index. In new findings led by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, researchers looked at glycemic index' effect on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes and found that low glycemic diets did not improve insulin sensitivity or cardiovascular risk factors. ...

HOUSTON - (Dec. 16, 2014) - Rice University scientists have detected at least three instances of cross-species mating that likely influenced the evolutionary paths of "old world" mice, two in recent times and one in the distant past. The researchers think these instances of introgressive hybridization -- a way for genetic material and, potentially, traits to be passed from one species to another through interspecific mating -- are only the first of many needles waiting to be found in a very large genetic haystack. While introgressive hybridization is thought to be common ...

By analyzing data on multilingual Twitter users and Wikipedia editors and on 30 years' worth of book translations in 150 countries, researchers at MIT, Harvard University, Northeastern University, and Aix Marseille University have developed network maps that they say represent the strength of the cultural connections between speakers of different languages. This week, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they show that a language's centrality in their network -- as defined by both the number and the strength of its connections -- better predicts the ...

PRINCETON, N.J.--More than half of all American children will likely live with an unmarried mother at some point before they reach age 18, according to a report issued by Princeton University and Harvard University. The absence of a biological father increases the likelihood that a child will exhibit antisocial behaviors like aggression, rule-breaking and delinquency, the researchers report in the journal EducationNext. This finding - which holds true regardless of a child's race - is especially prevalent among young boys. As a result, these children are 40 percent less ...

We humans have an exceptional age structure compared to other animals: Our children remain dependent on their parents for an unusually long period and our elderly live an extremely long time after they have stopped procreating. Could the microscopic fellow travelers that consider the human body to be their home - collectively known as the microbiome - have played an active role in shaping and maintaining this unusual aspect of human nature? That is the speculative proposition advanced by Martin Blaser, professor of medicine and microbiology at NYU's Langone Medical ...

Humpback whales have a trick or two, when it comes to finding a quick snack at the bottom of the ocean. But how they pinpoint that meal at night, with little or no available light, remains a mystery. Susan Parks, assistant professor of Biology in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with a consortium of other researchers, has been studying these unique feeding behaviors. Her research emphasizes the importance of specific auditory cues that these mammoth creatures emit, as they search the deep ocean for their prey. Her findings are the ...

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have developed a method of detecting, across the entire genome of human cells, unwanted DNA breaks induced by use of the popular gene-editing tools called CRISPR-Cas RNA-guided nucleases (RGNs). Members of the same team that first described these off-target effects in human cells describe their new platform, called Genome-wide Unbiased Indentification of DSBs Evaluated by Sequencing (GUIDE-seq), in a report being published online in Nature Biotechnology. "GUIDE-seq is the first genome-wide method of sensitively detecting ...

ANN ARBOR--A national survey of students in U.S. middle schools and high schools shows some important improvements in levels of substance use. Both alcohol and cigarette use in 2014 are at their lowest points since the study began in 1975. Use of a number of illicit drugs also show declines this year. These findings come from the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future study, which tracks trends in substance use among students in 8th, 10th and 12th grades. Each year the national study, now in its 40th year, surveys 40,000 to 50,000 students in about 400 secondary ...

The rate at which carbon emissions warmed Earth's climate almost 56 million years ago resembles modern, human-caused global warming much more than previously believed, but involved two pulses of carbon to the atmosphere, researchers have found. The findings mean that the so-called Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM, can provide clues to the future of modern climate change. The good news: Earth and most species survived. The bad news: It took millennia to recover from the episode, when temperatures rose by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit). ...

Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health analyzed the results of the Oregon Health Experiment, where eligible uninsured individuals were randomly assigned Medicaid or to stay with their current care. Considered controversial because the experiment found no measurable gains for physical health it did reveal benefits for mental health, financial wellbeing, and preventive screening. In terms of quality-adjusted life years, the researchers showed that Medicaid is an excellent value--a $62,000 gain in quality-adjusted life years. Study findings are ...

Antimicrobial peptides are a distinctive class of potent, broad-spectrum antibiotics produced by the body's innate immune system--the first line of defense against disease-causing microbes. In a new study, Yixin Shi, Ph.D., and Wei Kong, Ph.D., researchers in the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, explore the clever techniques used by bacteria to survive destruction from antimicrobial peptides--potent defense factors produced by all living forms, including humans. Professor Shi underscores the importance ...

It may seem counterintuitive, but exercise can be beneficial for people suffering from arthritis and other muscle and joint conditions. A new study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) finds that older adults experienced less pain, reduced stiffness and less fatigue after participating in a hospital-based exercise program. "The study adds to the growing body of evidence that exercise can help people with muscle and joint conditions," said Sandra Goldsmith, MA, MS, RD, director of Public and Patient Education at Hospital for Special Surgery. Up to 50 million adults ...

Home- and community-based HIV testing and counselling services can achieve high participation uptake in rural Africa but reach different populations within a community and should be provided depending on the groups that are being targeted, according to new research published in this week's PLOS Medicine by Niklaus Labhardt from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, and colleagues from SolidarMed, a Swiss non-governmental Organization for Health in Africa. Annually, about 2.3 million people become newly infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. A key step ...

Neuroscientists from the John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale School of Medicine have discovered that mice can detect minute differences in the temporal dynamics of the olfactory system, according to research that will be published on December 16 in the open access journal PLOS Biology. The research team used light in genetically-engineered mice to precisely control the activity of neurons in the olfactory bulbs in mice performing a discrimination task. This approach to controlling neural activity, called optogenetics, allows for much more precise control over the activity ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Introverted employees are more likely to give low evaluations of job performance to extroverted co-workers, giving introverts a powerful role in workplaces that rely on peer-to-peer evaluation tools for awarding raises, bonuses or promotions, new research shows. Introverts consistently rated extroverted co-workers as worse performers, and were less likely to give them credit for work performed or endorse them for advancement opportunities, according to two studies from researchers at Oregon State University, the University of Florida and University ...

VIDEO: Daniel Glavin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center discusses the discovery of organic matter on Mars and other recent results from the MSL Curiosity rover. Click here for more information. The team responsible for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Curiosity rover has made the first definitive detection of organic molecules at Mars. Organic molecules are the building blocks of all known forms of terrestrial life, and consist of a wide variety ...