MAYWOOD, IL – New insights into the physiological causes of depression are leading to treatments beyond common antidepressants such as Prozac and Zoloft, researchers are reporting in the in the journal Current Psychiatry. Depression treatments on the horizon include new medications, electrical and magnetic stimulation of the brain and long-term cognitive behavioral therapy for stress management. Authors are Murali Rao, MD, and Julie M. Alderson, DO. Rao is professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at Loyola University Chicago ...

People living in cold, northern latitudes have bacteria in their guts that may predispose them to obesity, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Arizona, Tucson. The researchers' analysis of the gut microbes of more than a thousand people from around the world showed that those living in northern latitudes had more gut bacteria that have been linked to obesity than did people living farther south. The meta-analysis of six earlier studies by UC Berkeley graduate student Taichi Suzuki and evolutionary ...

If she loves you and then she loves you not, don't blame the petals of that daisy. Blame evolution. UCLA researchers analyzed dozens of published and unpublished studies on how women's preferences for mates change throughout the menstrual cycle. Their findings suggest that ovulating women have evolved to prefer mates who display sexy traits – such as a masculine body type and facial features, dominant behavior and certain scents – but not traits typically desired in long-term mates. So, desires for those masculine characteristics, which are thought to have been ...

Austin – February 14, 2014 - Money and parenting don't mix. That's according to new research that suggests that merely thinking about money diminishes the meaning people derive from parenting. The study is one among a growing number that identifies when, why, and how parenthood is associated with happiness or misery. "The relationship between parenthood and well-being is not one and the same for all parents," says Kostadin Kushlev of the University of British Columbia. While this may seems like an obvious claim, social scientists until now have yet to identify the psychological ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — When mothers feed their newborns formula in the hospital, they are less likely to fully breastfeed their babies in the second month of life and more likely to quit breastfeeding early, even if they had hoped to breastfeed longer, UC Davis researchers have found. "We are a step closer to showing that giving formula in the hospital can cause problems by reducing how much women breastfeed later," says Caroline Chantry, lead author and professor of clinical pediatrics at UC Davis Medical Center. "Despite being highly motivated to breastfeed their babies, ...

RICHLAND, Wash. -- In biology, a protein's shape is key to understanding how it causes disease or toxicity. Researchers who use X-rays to takes snapshots of proteins need a billion copies of the same protein stacked and packed into a neat crystal. Now, scientists using exceptionally bright and fast X-rays can take a picture that rivals conventional methods with a sheet of proteins just one protein molecule thick. Using a type of laser known as XFEL, the technique opens the door to learning the structural details of almost 25 percent of known proteins, many of which have ...

Suffering an injury to the head or neck increases ischemic stroke risk three-fold among trauma patients younger than 50, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2014. "These findings are important because strokes after trauma might be preventable," said Christine Fox, M.D., M.A.S., lead author and assistant professor of neurology at the University of California San Francisco. Researchers studied the health records of 1.3 million patients younger than 50 years who had been treated in emergency trauma rooms. ...

Hispanic stroke patients admitted to hospitals in the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas were less likely than non-Hispanics in the same border states to receive clot-busting drugs and more likely to die, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2014. Researchers analyzed stroke care for Hispanic and non-Hispanic patients according to demographics and clinical characteristics in states bordering Mexico and states not on the Mexican border. They found: Of the nearly 35,000 Hispanic stroke ...

Stroke survivors often resume driving without being formally evaluated for ability — though stroke can cause deficits that can impair driving, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2014. Researchers surveyed 162 stroke survivors a year after their strokes and found: More than 51 percent returned to driving — many a month after suffering a stroke. Only 5.6 percent received a formal driving evaluation. Eleven percent of those who returned to driving reported their strokes had greatly impacted their abilities ...

Newborns are more susceptible to infections, presumably because of their immature and inexperienced immune systems. The most common dangerous condition in newborns and infants are lower respiratory tract infections caused by viruses, especially respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). A study published on February 13th in PLOS Pathogens shows how the immune system in the lungs during early life differs from the one in older children and adults. Ideally, newborns could be protected against RSV by vaccination, but it is known that the immune system in early life is less responsive ...

Washington, DC (February 13, 2014) — Intensive dialysis treatments in pregnant women with kidney failure lead to a higher proportion of live births than standard dialysis care, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The findings suggest that more frequent and longer dialysis sessions should be considered for dialysis patients of childbearing age who want to become pregnant or who are already pregnant. When young women develop advanced kidney disease, pregnancy becomes dangerous and often impossible ...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Where you live could affect whether or not you spend compulsively, according to new research from San Francisco State University published today in the Journal of Consumer Culture. Individuals who live in wealthy neighborhoods are more likely to have materialistic values and poor spending habits, the study says, particularly if they are young, living in urban areas and relatively poor compared with their surroundings. The study is the first to show a connection between neighborhood socioeconomic status and materialism. The reason for the link, said ...

Researchers have tied a particular gene to the development of cortical convolutions—the prominent but enigmatic folds covering the surface of the human brain. Their discovery should shed some light on these characteristic contours, which have been the subject of wild speculation for ages, and perhaps also provide a better understanding of how such brain ridges form, how they evolved from our pre-human ancestors and, ultimately, how they influence brain function. The exact role of cortical convolutions remains unknown, but theories have abounded. (Some, for example, have ...

This news release is available in Spanish, French, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese. "Termites are what inspired this whole research topic for us," said the study's lead author Justin Werfel, a researcher at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "We learned the incredible things these tiny insects can build and said: Fantastic. Now how do we create and program robots that work in similar ways but build what humans want?" Unlike humans, who require a high-level blueprint to build something complicated, termites can build ...

Scientists from Stanford University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have discovered that crude oil interferes with fish heart cells. The toxic consequence is a slowed heart rate, reduced cardiac contractility and irregular heartbeats that can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death. The research, published in the Feb. 14 issue of Science, is part of the ongoing Natural Resource Damage Assessment of the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. While crude oil is known to be cardiotoxic to developing fish, the physiological mechanisms ...

The first thorough comparison of evidence for natural gas system leaks confirms that organizations including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have underestimated U.S. methane emissions generally, as well as those from the natural gas industry specifically. Natural gas consists predominantly of methane. Even small leaks from the natural gas system are important because methane is a potent greenhouse gas – about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. A study, "Methane Leakage from North American Natural Gas Systems," published in the Feb. 14 issue of the journal ...

The interactive map, produced by researchers from Oxford University and UCL (University College London), details the histories of genetic mixing between each of the 95 populations across Europe, Africa, Asia and South America spanning the last four millennia. The study, published this week in Science, simultaneously identifies, dates and characterises genetic mixing between populations. To do this, the researchers developed sophisticated statistical methods to analyse the DNA of 1490 individuals in 95 populations around the world. The work was chiefly funded by the Wellcome ...

Graphene has proven itself as a wonder material with a vast range of unique properties. Among the least-known marvels of graphene is its strange love affair with water. Graphene is hydrophobic – it repels water – but narrow capillaries made from graphene vigorously suck in water allowing its rapid permeation, if the water layer is only one atom thick – that is, as thin as graphene itself. This bizarre property has attracted intense academic and industrial interest with intent to develop new water filtration and desalination technologies. One-atom-wide graphene capillaries ...

The researchers say the effect sizes are equal or larger than those of antidepressant treatment for mood and anxiety disorders. It is well known that stopping smoking substantially reduces major health risks, such as the development of cancers, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. But the association between smoking and mental health is less clear cut. Many smokers want to stop but continue smoking as they believe smoking has mental health benefits. And health professionals are sometimes reluctant to deal with smoking in people with mental disorders in case ...

Children living in areas surrounded by fast food outlets are more likely to be overweight or obese according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR). New research published today looked at weight data from more than a million children and compared it with the availability of unhealthy food from outlets including fish and chip shops, burger bars, pizza places, and sweet shops. They found that older children in particular are more likely to be overweight when living in close proximity to a high density ...

The authors say the potential benefits of cycling "may not currently apply to all groups in all settings." Over 600 cities around the world have implemented bicycle sharing schemes, but there is very little published evidence on the health effects of such schemes. So researchers at the University of Cambridge, University College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine set out to estimate the health impacts of London's cycle hire scheme on its users. Using registration and usage data collected from April 2011 to March 2012, they modelled the medium ...

In a letter to The BMJ this week, they explain that, for more than 30 years, bodybuilders have taken tamoxifen to prevent and treat gynaecomastia (breast swelling) caused by use of anabolic steroids. Usually, tamoxifen is sourced from the illicit market, they say. However, bodybuilding discussion forums have speculated that a dietary supplement called Esto Suppress contains tamoxifen because the label listed one of its chemical names. The researchers purchased four samples at different times between late 2011 and early 2012 and analysed their contents. Tamoxifen ...

PHILADELPHIA— People receiving mental health care are up to four times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population, according to a new study published Feb. 13 in the American Journal of Public Health from researchers at Penn Medicine and other institutions who tested over 1,000 patients in care in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Of that group, several new HIV cases were detected, suggesting that not all patients are getting tested in mental health care settings, despite recommendations to do so from the CDC and the Institute of Medicine. The study is ...

DURHAM, NH –-Scientists on NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, including a team leader from the University of New Hampshire, report that recent, independent measurements have validated one of the mission's signature findings—a mysterious "ribbon" of energy and particles at the edge of our solar system that appears to be a directional "roadmap in the sky" of the local interstellar magnetic field. Unknown until now, the direction of the galactic magnetic field may be a missing key to understanding how the heliosphere—the gigantic bubble that surrounds ...

Boston, MA – A six-year-old Massachusetts law requiring that only "fire-safe" cigarettes (FSCs) be sold in the state appears to decrease the likelihood of unintentional residential fires caused by cigarettes by 28%, according to a new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers. The study will appear online February 13, 2014 in the American Journal of Public Health. "This study is the first rigorous population-based study to evaluate the effectiveness of the fire-safe cigarette standards, and shows that science-based tobacco product regulation can protect ...