The use of cocaine dropped sharply across the United States from 2006 to 2010, while the amount of marijuana consumed increased significantly during the same period, according to a new report. Studying illegal drug use nationally from 2000 to 2010, researchers found the amount of marijuana consumed by Americans increased by more than 30 percent from 2006 to 2010, while cocaine consumption fell by about half. Meanwhile, heroin use was fairly stable throughout the decade. Methamphetamine consumption dramatically increased during the first half of the decade and then declined, ...

Most modern electronics, from flat-screen TVs and smartphones to wearable technologies and computer monitors, use tiny light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. These LEDs are based off of semiconductors that emit light with the movement of electrons. As devices get smaller and faster, there is more demand for such semiconductors that are tinier, stronger and more energy efficient. University of Washington scientists have built the thinnest-known LED that can be used as a source of light energy in electronics. The LED is based off of two-dimensional, flexible semiconductors, making ...

An international team of researchers led by scientists at The Wistar Institute have discovered and defined LIMD2, a protein that can drive metastasis, the process where tumors spread throughout the body. Their study, published in the March issue of the journal Cancer Research, defines the structure of LIMD2 and correlates the protein in metastatic bladder, melanoma, breast, and thyroid tumors. Wistar scientists have also developed and patented a monoclonal antibody that may one day be used as a prognostic test to see if tumors have LIMD2, and plans are underway to create ...

URBANA, Ill. – Women in rural India who participate in a vocational training program learn more than just life skills. A recent University of Illinois study found that mothers who participated in a program designed to educate and empower women gained a network of peers that led to increased bargaining strength in the home, and significantly improved their children's consumption of rice and dairy. "Prior to participating in Mahila Samakhya, which loosely translates to women of equal value, most of the participants reported regularly communicating with fewer than five ...

As towns across Cape Cod struggle with problems stemming from septic systems, a recent study by a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientist focuses on one specific toxic by-product: mercury. In a study of local groundwater, biogeochemist Carl Lamborg found microbial action on wastewater transforms it into more mobile, more toxic forms of the element. His findings were published in Environmental Science and Technology in November 2013. Mercury (Hg) is a toxic trace metal. Wastewater contains small amounts of it, but Lamborg found the chemical processes that ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (March 10, 2014) – Recent years have seen exciting progress in key areas of research on autism spectrum disorders (ASD): from possible genetic causes, to effective treatments for common symptoms and clinical problems, to promoting success for young people with ASD entering college. Updates on these and other advances in ASD research are presented in the March special issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. "Autism is one of the most challenging disorders to ...

Transient brain ischemia has been shown to induce hyperphosphorylation of the microtu-bule-associated protein tau. To further determine the mechanisms underlying these processes, Dr, Bo Song and co-workers from School of Life Sciences, Tsinghua University in China found for the first time that the interaction of tau with glycogen synthase kinase (GSK)-3β and protein phosphatase 2A is altered during transient brain ischemia. In addition, the researchers found that the neuroprotective function of lithium chloride may depend partly on the altered phosphorylation of tau, ...

Focal cerebral ischemia-reperfusion may lead to neuronal loss in the hippocampus, which is regarded as one of the basic pathological mechanisms underlying cognitive impairment. The neuronal apoptosis plays an important role in cerebral infarction, determining the number of loss of neurons and infarct volume. Growing evidence has suggested that Chinese herbs can inhibit hippocampal apoptosis caused by ischemia-reperfusion. Prof. Shumin Zhao and team from Chengde Medical College in China pretreated rats with scutellaria baicalensis stem-leaf total flavonoid (SSTF) intragastrically ...

Agroforestry can help to achieve climate change mitigation and adaptation while at the same time providing livelihoods for poor smallholder farmers in Africa. Scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) say agroforestry - which is an integrated land use management technique that incorporates trees and shrubs with crops and livestock on farms - could be a win-win solution to the seemingly difficult choice between reforestation and agricultural land use, because it increases the storage of carbon and may also enhance agricultural productivity. In a special issue ...

This news release is available in French. What if the use of a product influenced your perception of it, making you even more susceptible to its positive aspects and altering your understanding of its drawbacks? This is precisely what happens with cigarettes in chronic smokers, according to a recent study by the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal and Université de Montréal. The study showed that chronic smokers have altered emotional reactions when they are exposed to negative and positive images associated with tobacco. "We observed a bias depending ...

Italian physicist Carlo Di Castro, professor emeritus at the University of Rome Sapienza, Italy, shares his recollections of how theoretical condensed matter physics developed in Rome, starting in the 1960s. Luisa Bonolis, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany, invited Di Castro to reflect upon his research career, which he did in an interview published in EPJ H. In this unique document, Di Castro talks about his upbringing during the second World War. He also explains how this childhood experience later influenced his ...

A team of MIT researchers has used a novel material that's just a few atoms thick to create devices that can harness or emit light. This proof-of-concept could lead to ultrathin, lightweight, and flexible photovoltaic cells, light emitting diodes (LEDs), and other optoelectronic devices, they say. Their report is one of three papers by different groups describing similar results with this material, published in the March 9 issue of Nature Nanotechnology. The MIT research was carried out by Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, the Mitsui Career Development Associate Professor of Physics, ...

A survey of primary care physicians suggests they often face uncertainty in ordering and interpreting clinical laboratory tests, and would welcome better electronic clinical decision support tools. The results of the survey, sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were published in the March-April issue of The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. "The optimal testing pathways to arrive at correct diagnoses is changing, so it is difficult for primary care physicians to keep up with new and efficient testing algorithms," says Dr. John ...

(WASHINGTON, March 10, 2014) – A pill that suppresses a key regulator of cancer growth may provide hope to relapsed leukemia and lymphoma patients running out of treatment options for their aggressive, treatment-resistant disease, according to three reports* published online today in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology. Patients with blood cancer are typically administered a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy, the latter using the body's own immune system to help fight disease, as a first line of treatment. While chemotherapy has traditionally ...

Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have been instrumental in making significant improvements to the diagnostic procedure called sentinel node biopsy for melanoma patients and teaching this procedure to physicians from around the world. Sentinel nodes are the first lymph nodes to which cancer cells from a primary tumor like melanoma will spread. In the sentinel node biopsy procedure, a radioactive tracer and a blue-colored dye are injected at or near the melanoma site on the skin and tracked to the first lymph node(s). These sentinel nodes are then surgically removed and ...

New Rochelle, NY, March 10, 2014–Nearly $7 billion is spent each year in the U.S. on diagnostic testing of the estimated three million people with symptoms of obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD). A new blood test that detects specific genes activated in individuals with obstructive CAD could exclude the diagnosis without the need for imaging studies or more invasive tests, reducing health care costs, as described in an article in Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Population ...

The Orion Nebula is home to hundreds of young stars and even younger protostars known as proplyds. Many of these nascent systems will go on to develop planets, while others will have their planet-forming dust and gas blasted away by the fierce ultraviolet radiation emitted by massive O-type stars that lurk nearby. A team of astronomers from Canada and the United States has used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study the often deadly relationship between highly luminous O-type stars and nearby protostars in the Orion Nebula. Their data reveal ...

On Friday, March 7 there were two tropical lows located east and west of Queensland, Australia. Those lows organized and intensified into Tropical Cyclone Gillian and Hadi and were caught together in one amazing image from NASA's Aqua satellite. While Gillian has already made one landfall and is expected to make another, Hadi is turning tail and running from the mainland. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Queensland on March 10 at 04:00 UTC and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument known as MODIS captured Tropical Cyclones Gillian in the Gulf of ...

Plants that live in unusual soils, such as those that are extremely low in essential nutrients, provide insight into the mechanisms of adaptation, natural selection, and endemism. A seminal paper by Arthur Kruckeberg from 1951 on serpentine plant endemism has served as a solid bedrock foundation for future research on the link between natural selection and speciation. A recent article in the American Journal of Botany focuses on how this paper has influenced subsequent research on local adaptation, evolutionary pathways, and the relationship between climate, soils, and ...

Older people globally are being denied proper access to cancer care, according to an editorial by Queen's University Belfast academic, Professor Mark Lawler of the Centre for Cancer Research and Cell Biology. In an editorial in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) Professor Lawler said: "there is increasing evidence from around the world that elderly patients are being 'undertreated', leading to a 'survival gap' between older and younger patients. "We need a fundamental change in cancer policy for the elderly patient. Our current practices are essentially ageist, as we ...

Smartphones are capable of giving us directions when we're lost, sending photos and videos to our friends in mere seconds, and even helping us find the best burger joint in a three-mile radius. But University of Houston researchers are using smartphones for another very important function: diagnosing diseases in real time. The researchers are developing a disease diagnostic system that offers results that could be read using only a smartphone and a $20 lens attachment. The system is the brainchild of Jiming Bao, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, ...

(SALT LAKE CITY)—Good news for lifelong exercisers: Along with its salutary effects on the heart, weight, and other facets of health, physical activity also helps to regenerate muscle mass, which tends to diminish as people age. In a study published in the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine, researchers from the University of Utah and other institutions found that aged mice lacking Nrf2 that underwent two weeks of endurance exercise stress on treadmills showed poor stem cell regeneration, which is likely to hinder the recovery of lost muscle mass. Nrf2 is protein ...

Fresh banana, a waft of flowers, blueberry: the scents in Shota Atsumi's laboratory in the UC Davis Department of Chemistry are a little sweeter than most. That's because Atsumi and his team are engineering bacteria to make esters -- molecules widely used as scents and flavorings, and also as basic feedstock for chemical processes from paints to fuels. Their latest work is published March 9 in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. Nearly all industrial chemicals, from artificial flavorings to paint, are derived from oil or gas, Atsumi said. "Our motivation is to ...

Jerusalem, March 9, 2014 -- What if you could "hear" colors? Or shapes? These features are normally perceived visually, but using sensory substitution devices (SSDs) they can now be conveyed to the brain noninvasively through other senses. At the Center for Human Perception and Cognition, headed by Prof. Amir Amedi of the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences and the Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Medicine, the blind and visually impaired are being offered tools, via training with SSDs, to receive ...

A new type of biomolecular tweezers could help researchers study how mechanical forces affect the biochemical activity of cells and proteins. The devices – too small to see without a microscope – use opposing magnetic and electrophoretic forces to precisely stretch the cells and molecules, holding them in position so that the activity of receptors and other biochemical activity can be studied. Arrays of the tweezers could be combined to study multiple molecules and cells simultaneously, providing a high-throughput capability for assessing the effects of mechanical forces ...