BUFFALO, N.Y. — If a person is dually diagnosed with a severe mental illness and a substance abuse problem, are improvements in their mental health or in their substance abuse most likely to reduce the risk of future violence? Although some may believe that improving symptoms of mental illness is more likely to lessen the risk for future episodes of violence, a new study from the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) suggests that reducing substance abuse has a greater influence in reducing violent acts by patients with severe mental illness. ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 1, 2014—Regulation of the human immune system's response to infection involves an elaborate network of complex signaling pathways that turn on and off multiple genes. The emerging importance of long noncoding RNAs and their ability to promote, fine-tune, and restrain the body's inflammatory response by regulating gene expression is described in a Review article in Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research (JICR), a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the JICR website. In the Review ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Relational aggression, or "mean girl" bullying, is a popular subject in news and entertainment media. This nonphysical form of aggression generally used among adolescent girls includes gossiping, rumor spreading, exclusion and rejection. As media coverage has illustrated, relational aggression can lead to tragic and sometimes fatal outcomes. Despite these alarming concerns, little has been done to prevent and eliminate these negative behaviors. Now, University of Missouri researchers have developed and tested an intervention that effectively decreases relational ...

This news release is available in French and Spanish. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has released a comprehensive report on the changing face of industrial pollution in North America, covering the years 2005 through 2010. This is the first time an edition of the CEC's Taking Stock series, which gathers data from pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs) in Canada, Mexico and the United States, has analyzed North American pollutant information over an extended timeframe. To view the report, visit http://www.cec.org/library. This volume ...

Biological sensors, or biosensors, are like technological canaries in the coalmine. By converting a biological response into an optical or electrical signal, they can alert us to dangers in our external and internal environments. They can sense toxic chemicals and particles in the air and enzymes, molecules, and antibodies in the body that could indicate diabetes, cancer, and other diseases. An optical biosensor works by absorbing a specific bandwidth of light and shifting the spectrum when it senses minor changes in the environment. The narrower the band of absorbed ...

It's old news that open-source 3D printing has a lot going for it: it's cheap, green and incredibly useful for making everything from lab equipment to chess pieces. Now it's time to add another star to the 3D printing constellation. It may help lift some of the world's most destitute people from poverty while cleaning up a major blight on the earth and its oceans: plastic trash. At the center of the movement is a new set of standards inspired by fair trade products ranging from diamonds to chocolate. "We are creating a new class of material called ethical 3D printing ...

Washington, D.C., October 1, 2014—Use of specific dietary supplements can have a positive effect on health care costs through avoided hospitalizations related to Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), according to a new article published in the Journal of Dietary Supplements(1). The article, "From Science to Finance—A Tool for Deriving Economic Implications from the Results of Dietary Supplement Clinical Studies," published by Christopher Shanahan and Robert de Lorimier, Ph.D., explores a potential cost-benefit analysis tool that, when applied to a high-risk population (U.S. adults ...

Reston, Va. (October 1, 2014) – Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering found that PET/CT imaging of patients younger than 40 who were initially diagnosed with stage I–III breast cancer resulted in change of diagnosis. As reported in the October issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, while guidelines recommend FDG-PET/CT imaging only for women with stage III breast cancer, it can also help physicians more accurately diagnose young breast cancer patients initially diagnosed with earlier stages of the disease. Assessing if and how far breast cancer has spread throughout ...

As the threat of antibiotic resistance grows, scientists are turning to the human body and the trillion or so bacteria that have colonized us — collectively called our microbiota — for new clues to fighting microbial infections. They've logged an early success with the discovery of a new antibiotic candidate from vaginal bacteria, reports Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Matt Davenport, a C&EN contributing editor, explains that the human microbiota produces thousands of small molecules. Some have been discovered ...

Here's another reason why it's a good idea to hit the gym: it can improve memory. A new Georgia Institute of Technology study shows that an intense workout of as little as 20 minutes can enhance episodic memory, also known as long-term memory for previous events, by about 10 percent in healthy young adults (see a video demo). The Georgia Tech research isn't the first to find that exercise can improve memory. But the study, which was just published in the journal Acta Psychologica, took a few new approaches. While many existing studies have demonstrated that months of ...

Materials – Vehicle Lightweighting ... For about the price of leather seats, automakers can trim approximately 362 pounds off the body and chassis of a midsize passenger vehicle, according to an Oak Ridge National Laboratory study. Researchers analyzed an array of materials – carbon fiber, advanced high-strength steel, aluminum alloys, magnesium alloys – that could replace steel. While the carbon fiber composite option reduced weight by 35 percent at an additional cost of $1,317, a combination of advanced high-strength steel and alloys resulted in a 25 percent weight ...

Pity the poor lithium ion. Drawn relentlessly by its electrical charge, it surges from anode to cathode and back again, shouldering its way through an elaborate molecular obstacle course. This journey is essential to powering everything from cell phones to cordless power tools. Yet, no one really understands what goes on at the atomic scale as lithium ion batteries are used and recharged, over and over again. Michigan Technological University researcher Reza Shahbazian-Yassar has made it his business to better map the ion's long, strange trip—and perhaps make it smoother ...

People who are unable to button up their jacket or who find it difficult to insert a key in lock suffer from a condition known as apraxia. This means that their motor skills have been impaired – as a result of a stroke, for instance. Scientists in Munich have now examined the parts of the brain that are responsible for planning and executing complex actions. They discovered that there is a specific network in the brain for using tools. Their findings have been published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers from Technische Universität München (TUM) and the Klinikum ...

Researchers have discovered a new type of brain activity that underlies the timing of voluntary actions, allowing them to forecast when a spontaneous decision will occur more than a second in advance. 'Experiments like this have been used to argue that free will is an illusion, but we think that this interpretation is mistaken,' says Zachary Mainen, a neuroscientist at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, in Lisbon, Portugal, who led the research, published on Sept. 28, 2014, in the journal Nature Neuroscience. The scientists used recordings of neurons in an area ...

The peptide —a small protein— beta-amyloid is strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease; however, researchers are still looking for unequivocal proof that this peptide is the causal agent of the onset and development of the disease. The main obstacle impeding such confirmation is that beta-amyloid is not harmful when found in isolation but only when it aggregates, that is when it self-assembles to form the so-called amyloid fibrils "We are not dealing with a single target, beta-amyloid alone, but with multiple ones because each aggregate of peptide, which can go from ...

Current changes in the ocean around Antarctica are disturbingly close to conditions 14,000 years ago that new research shows may have led to the rapid melting of Antarctic ice and an abrupt 3-4 metre rise in global sea level. The research published in Nature Communications found that in the past, when ocean temperatures around Antarctica became more layered - with a warm layer of water below a cold surface layer - ice sheets and glaciers melted much faster than when the cool and warm layers mixed more easily. This defined layering of temperatures is exactly what is ...

An international team of scientists has shown that more than 80 per cent of bowel cancers could be treated with existing drugs. The study found that medicines called 'JAK inhibitors' halted tumour growth in bowel cancers with a genetic mutation that is present in more than 80 per cent of bowel cancers. Multiple JAK inhibitors are currently used, or are in clinical trials, for diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, blood cancers and myeloproliferative disorders. Bowel cancer is the second-most common cancer in Australia with nearly 17,000 people diagnosed ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A Duke University team has found that nanoparticles called single-walled carbon nanotubes accumulate quickly in the bottom sediments of an experimental wetland setting, an action they say could indirectly damage the aquatic food chain. The results indicate little risk to humans ingesting the particles through drinking water, say scientists at Duke's Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT). But the researchers warn that, based on their previous research, the tendency for the nanotubes to accumulate in sediment could indirectly ...

Computer modelling of the human eye, the brain of a rat and a robot could revolutionise advances in neuroscience and new technology, says a QUT leading robotics researcher. Dr Michael Milford from QUT's Science and Engineering Faculty says the new study uses new computer algorithms to enable robots to navigate intelligently, unrestricted by high-density buildings or tunnels. "This is a very Frankenstein type of project," Dr Milford said. "It's putting two halves of a thing together because we're taking the eyes of a human and linking them up with the brain of a rat. "A ...

An international group of researchers led by Dr. Warren E. Piers (University of Calgary) and Dr. Heikki M. Tuononen (University of Jyväskylä) has been able to isolate and characterize an important chemical intermediate whose existence has, so far, only been inferred from indirect experimental evidence. Chemical reactions rarely go from starting materials to final products in one single step, but instead they progress through a number of intermediates. In many cases the intermediates are not stable enough to be studied by conventional characterization methods, which thwarts ...

Philadelphia, PA, October 1, 2014 – Patients with increased inflammation, including those receiving cytokines for medical treatment, have a greatly increased risk of depression. For example, a 6-month treatment course of interferon-alpha therapy for chronic hepatitis C virus infection causes depression in approximately 30% of patients. Omega-3 fatty acids, more commonly known as fish oil, have a long list of health benefits, including lowering the risk of heart disease and reducing triglyceride levels. These nutritional compounds are also known to have anti-depressant ...

When appointing a new leader, selectors base their choice on several factors and typically look for leaders with desirable characteristics such as honesty and trustworthiness. However once leaders are in power, can we trust them to exercise it in a prosocial manner? New research published in The Leadership Quarterly looked to discover whether power corrupts leaders. Study author John Antonakis and his colleagues from the University of Lausanne explain, "We looked to examine what Lord Acton said over 100 years ago, that 'Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'" To ...

Chicago, October 1, 2014 – Patients receiving lungs from donors whose cause of death was asphyxiation or drowning have similar outcomes and long-term survival as patients receiving lungs from traditional donors, according to a study in the October2014 issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points: Lungs from donors whose cause of death was asphyxiation or drowning can be safely transplanted into patients with end-stage lung disease. Patient survival rates were not affected when lungs from cases involving asphyxiation and drowning were used. The researchers note ...

Chicago, October 1, 2014 – Patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery may not have to follow a strict blood sugar management strategy after surgery, according to a study in the October 2014 issue of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points Liberal management of a patient's blood sugar levels following CABG surgery leads to similar survival and long-term quality of life as achieved through stricter blood sugar management. The findings applied to all patients, regardless of diabetes status. The results may encourage hospitals to consider ...

Despite advances, millions of children worldwide still die before their fifth birthday, with complications from preterm birth and pneumonia together killing nearly 2 million young children in 2013, according to a study led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their report, published online Oct. 1 in The Lancet, examines what caused an estimated 6.3 million children under the age of five to die in 2013, one-third fewer than the 9.9 million estimated to have died around the world in 2000. While preterm births and pneumonia were also the top killers in ...