For Immediate Release – June 13, 2011 – (Toronto) – The latest survey of Ontario adults from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) shows increasing rates of daily drinking and cannabis use and high levels of psychological distress. The results of the 2009 CAMH Monitor survey, the longest running survey tracking mental health and addiction indicators among adults in Ontario, were published today. Alcohol The proportion of adults reporting daily drinking increased from 5.3% in 2002 to over 9% in 2009. The average number of drinks consumed weekly among drinkers ...

This press release is available in Arabic. DUBAI (14 June 2011)—With increased trade in livestock products offering a possible antidote to high food prices, livestock experts from the Middle East and 12 African countries are meeting this week in Dubai to develop a strategy that eliminates the need to impose devastating bans on livestock imports from the Horn of Africa, as prevention against the spread of Rift Valley fever. The strategy should expedite the flow of livestock products while increasing safety of the overall livestock trade in the region. Convened by the ...

Los Angeles, CA (JUNE 13, 2011) — Nearly everyone can recognize the stereotypical scene of construction workers catcalling women as being sexist, but both men and women tend to overlook the more subtle daily acts of sexism they encounter, according to a recent study from Psychology of Women Quarterly (published by SAGE on behalf of the Society for the Psychology of Women, Division 35 of the American Psychological Association). Things such as calling women "girls" but not calling men "boys" or referring to a collective group as "guys" are forms of subtle sexism that creep ...

RIKEN and the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI) have successfully produced a beam of X-ray laser light with a wavelength of 1.2 Angstroms, the shortest ever measured. This record-breaking light was created using SACLA, a cutting-edge X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) facility unveiled by RIKEN in February 2011 in Harima, Japan. SACLA (SPring-8 Angstrom Compact free electron LAser) opens a window into the structure of atoms and molecules at a level of detail never seen before. The use of ultra high-intensity X-ray free electron laser light to explore ...

A deep-sea mystery has been solved with the discovery that the tiny 3 mm long marine animals, eaten by herring, cod and mackerel, use the same buoyancy control as whales. Reporting this week in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, researchers from British Antarctic Survey describe how Southern Ocean copepods – a crustacean rich in omega-3 oil – 'hibernates' in the deep ocean during winter when seas are stormy and food scarce. To reach the ocean depths the copepod's oily body fluids undergo a remarkable transformation. As the animals swim deeper, water pressure triggers ...

New software 'hearing dummies' are part of cutting-edge research that promises to revolutionise the diagnosis and treatment of hearing impairments. The work could also be used in the long-term to develop a radical new type of hearing aid that can be customised using the hearing dummy to meet the different needs of individual patients. If the procedures gain clinical acceptance, a device could reach the market within 4 years. The research is being carried out by a team at the University of Essex with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council ...

DARIEN, IL - A Major League Baseball player's natural sleep preference might affect his batting average in day and night games, according to a research abstract that will be presented Monday, June 13, in Minneapolis, Minn., at SLEEP 2011, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS). Results indicate that players who were "morning types" had a higher batting average (.267) than players who were "evening types" (.259) in early games that started before 2 p.m. However, evening types had a higher batting average (.261) than morning ...

DARIEN, Ill. – Daytime sleepiness may affect inhibitory control in the brain when viewing tantalizing, high-calorie foods, suggests a research abstract that will be presented Monday, June 13, in Minneapolis, Minn., at SLEEP 2011, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS). Results show that greater daytime sleepiness was associated with decreased activation in the prefrontal cortex during visual presentations of enticing, high-calorie food images. The prefrontal cortex is a brain region that plays an important role in inhibitory ...

DARIEN, Ill. – Large corporations could save millions of dollars in lost productivity by screening and treating high-risk employees for obstructive sleep apnea, suggests a research abstract that will be presented Monday, June 13, in Minneapolis, Minn., at SLEEP 2011, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS). Results show that a large corporation in Florida could save an estimated $136 million in lost productivity over 10 years by screening high-risk employees for OSA and offering treatment with continuous positive airway pressure ...

DARIEN, IL – People with primary insomnia may be able to find relief by wearing a cap that cools the brain during sleep, suggests a research abstract that will be presented Monday, June 13, in Minneapolis, Minn., at SLEEP 2011, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS). According to the authors, a reduction in metabolism in the brain's frontal cortex occurs while falling asleep and is associated with restorative sleep. However, insomnia is associated with increased metabolism in this same brain region. One way to reduce cerebral ...

DARIEN, IL – Sleep apnea is associated with an increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes, suggests a research abstract that will be presented Monday, June 13, in Minneapolis, Minn., at SLEEP 2011, the 25th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC (APSS). Results show that women with severe sleep apnea had the highest incidence of adverse pregnancy outcomes. This increased prevalence was principally driven by a higher incidence of gestational diabetes and early preterm birth. The authors noted that sleep apnea has been associated with ...

Offering Multiple Sclerosis sufferers emotional support through group therapy sessions could improve their quality of life and save the NHS almost £500 per patient, a study at The University of Nottingham has discovered. Researchers are now planning a larger multi-centre study into the issue to establish whether psychological therapy should be incorporated into the MS services currently provided by the NHS. The study, funded by the MS Society, was led by Professor Nadina Lincoln, of the University's Institute of Work, Health and Organisations. She said: "These are very ...

Robert Storey, Professor of Cardiology at the University of Sheffield's Department of Cardiovascular Science, presented findings today that confirm one in five deaths in the year following a heart attack could be prevented if a new drug, ticagrelor, was used instead of the standard treatment, clopidogrel. Professor Storey's latest findings were presented at the British Cardiovascular Society annual scientific conference in Manchester today (Monday 13 June 2011). Professor Storey has led UK investigations of ticagrelor and was a member of the international committee ...

The number of heart attack deaths at Europe's sporting venues is set to significantly reduce if recommendations published today are widely adopted. In a special article published online today by the European Heart Journal (EHJ), minimum standards of cardiovascular medical expertise, available equipment, and emergency planning are defined for stadiums and mass participation events, including marathons and cycle sportives. The recommendations have been developed in response to a 2010 review¹ of cardiovascular safety at 190 major soccer arenas. This review determined that, ...

Researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center have developed a tool to rapidly assess the risk of aggressive and violent behavior by children and adolescents hospitalized on psychiatric units. Ultimately, they hope to use the questionnaire to improve treatment and prevention of aggressive behavior in schools and in the community. A study providing preliminary validation of the Brief Rating of the Child and Adolescent Aggression (BRACHA) tool is published online in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. "Using the BRACHA could ...

Approximately 12 million people in the United States are cancer survivors. On average, their medical care costs $4,000 to $5,000 more annually than the care of people who have never had cancer, according to Penn State researchers. Those who are treated for and survive cancer are susceptible to later health complications and their total medical expenses average about $9,300 per year. People are considered cancer survivors from the moment they are diagnosed through the end of their lives. Advances in medicine enable more people to survive cancer, but there is little information ...

The idea for this research arose when the problems of the large structural components of an airplane were being analyzed. These components are made up of a large number of different elements, which are themselves assembled using a variety of techniques, such as soldering, mechanical or adhesive bonding or a combination of these. Of these techniques, mechanical bonding is the method most commonly used in components made of composite materials. For example, the wing of an Airbus 380 alone is composed of over 30,000 elements, with approximately 750,000 bolted joints. These ...

NEW YORK, NY – June 13, 2011 – Data from the landmark HORIZONS-AMI clinical trial demonstrated that the administration of the anticoagulant medication bivalirudin enhanced survival compared to the use of heparin plus a glycoprotein (GP) IIb/IIIa inhibitor in heart attack patients undergoing angioplasty after 3 years. Use of a drug-eluting stent (paclitaxel) was also shown to be more effective than a bare-metal stent, with equivalent safety. Final 3-year results of the trial were published in the June 13, 2011, issue of The Lancet. After 3 years, treatment with bivalirudin ...

This release is available in French. Montreal, June 13, 2011 – Exposure to secondhand smoke can create symptoms of nicotine dependence in non-smoking preteens, according to a new study from Concordia University and the University of Montreal. Published in the Oxford journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, the study also found that tweens who repeatedly observe a parent, sibling, friend or neighbor consuming cigarettes are more likely to light up themselves as adolescents. "Kids who see others smoking are more likely to take up the habit because they don't perceive ...

Migraine is a neurovascular disease that affects about 15% of the western population. Compounds in foods and beverages (chocolate, wine, citrus, etc) considered as migraine triggers include tyramine, phenylethylamine and possibly histamine and phenolic compounds. Avoiding those triggers may significantly reduce the frequency of migraines in some patients. However, only a small percentage of patients in one study became headache-free simply by excluding those foods, epidemiological studies are pointing out that genetic factors may be an underlying cause. Discrepancies ...

Contact: Dr. Abigail Stevenson Abigail.Stevenson@effem.com 44-166-441-5409 Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition advances understanding of factors influencing body weight in cats New research by the Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition marks an important step forward in the fight against cat obesity 13th June, 2011 – A collaborative team of researchers has shown that adding moisture to a cat's diet slows down the rate of weight gain. This finding, at least in part, appeared to be driven by increased activity. This research was conducted at ...

Boston, Mass – Guidelines that reduce the use of mechanical ventilation with premature infants in favor of a gentler form of respiratory support can profoundly affect those children's outcomes while reducing the cost of care, according to a team of researchers at Children's Hospital Boston. The team, led by Bernadette Levesque, MD, of the Division of Newborn Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston, published their findings today online in Pediatrics. Children's operates the NICU at ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Photographs of moving objects are almost always a little blurry. To make their work look as much like conventional film as possible, game and movie animators try to reproduce this blur. But producing blurry images is actually more computationally complex than producing perfectly sharp ones. In August, at this year's Siggraph conference — the premier computer-graphics conference — researchers from the Computer Graphics Group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will present a pair of papers that describe new techniques for ...

Hippocampus adapts to environmental stresses Stockpiles neuronal stem cells under deprived conditions, produces more neurons under favorable conditions Knowledge of how neural stem cells produce neurons could lead to potential treatment for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's (NEW YORK, NY, June 13, 2011) – Scientists have known for years that neurogenesis takes place throughout adulthood in the hippocampus of the mammalian brain. Now Columbia researchers have found that under stressful conditions, neural stem cells in the adult hippocampus ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The United States federal government supports many welfare and entitlement programs that attempt to eliminate poverty by providing financial assistance to families in need. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri has found that requirements for some of these welfare programs can create stress on families, which can have a negative effect on young children. Colleen Heflin, an associate professor in the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, studied the cognitive scores of young children whose families receive assistance from ...