News Articles

For many recovering alcoholics, AA is the primary reason they're able to kick their addiction and stay sober. According to a new study in the Journal Addiction, one of many reasons that the program is so successful appears to be alleviation of depression. Researchers have found that study participants who attended AA meetings more frequently had fewer symptoms of depression – along with less drinking – than did those with less AA participation.

Writing in Alcoholism: Clinical&Experimental Research, scientists say that older adults who have more money, engage in more social activities, and whose friends approve more of drinking are more likely to engage in excessive or high-risk drinking.Researchers examined 719 (399 men, 320 women) 55 to 65-year-old adults at baseline (between 1986-1988), and then again 10 and 20 years later. At each contact point, participants provided information regarding their drinking, as well as their social and financial resources.

Through the use of sophisticated brain-imaging techniques, researchers at UCLA say they have been able to predict a brain's progression to Alzheimer's by measuring subtle changes in brain structure over time, changes that occur long before symptoms can be seen. The research appears in two separate papers published in Human Brain Mapping and Neurobiology of Aging.

Painting the roofs of buildings white may reduce the impact of the urban heat island effect by as much as 33 percent, significantly cooling off cities and helping society adjust to the changing climate, suggests a new study soon to be published in Geophysical Research Letters.The study's authors used a newly developed computer model to simulate the amount of solar

Researchers say they have devised a new strategy that increases the likelihood of a recipient's immune system accepting embryonic stem cell transplants. The strategy involves fusing bone marrow cells to embryonic stem cells. Once fused, the hybrid cells have DNA from both the donor and recipient, raising hopes that immune rejection of embryonic stem cell therapies can be avoided without drugs. The findings appear in the February issue of the FASEB Journal

The government financial support that has bolstered America's commercial news industry since its colonial days is now in sharp decline and is likely to fall further, according to a report released today by the University of Southern California's Center on Communication Leadership and Policy. Because these cutbacks are occurring at the height of the digital revolution, they will have an especially powerful impact on an already weakened news industry.

Writing in the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers say that many of the health benefits of aerobic exercise are due to the most recent exercise session, and the nature of these benefits can be greatly affected by the food we eat afterwards.

Researchers from George Washington University and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology have discovered a new species of Jurassic theropod dinosaur called Haplocheirus sollers in Xinjiang, China. The team says the discovery illustrates how one family of dinosaurs called Alvarezsauridae came to look like birds independent of birds.

The scientific community may agree that anthropogenic global warming poses a real threat, but the general public isn't all that worried about the changing climate. Public concern about global warming has dropped sharply since the fall of 2008, according to the results of a national survey released today by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities. The survey found that Only 50 percent of Americans now say they are "somewhat" or "very worried" about global warming, a 13-point decrease. The percentage of Americans who think global warming is happening has declined 14 points, to 57 percent. The percentage of Americans who think global warming is caused mostly by human activities dropped 10 points, to 47 percent.

According to a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, parents who try to teach responsible drinking to their children by letting them drink at home may be setting their teens up for all kinds of alcohol related problems later in life. The study included 428 families with two children between the ages of 13 and 15. Parents and teens completed questionnaires on drinking habits at the outset and again one and two years later.

Based on new radiocarbon dating evidence for the Late Aurignacian of Portugal, an archaeological culture unquestionably associated with modern humans,  an international team of researchers claims that the last Neanderthals in Europe died out approximately 37,000 years ago.The new paper, published in PLoS ONE builds on earlier research which proposed that, south of the Cantabro-Pyrenean mountain chain, Neanderthals survived for several millennia after being replaced or assimilated by anatomically modern humans everywhere else in Europe.

A new study in Biological Chemistry suggests that Vitamin D, readily available in supplements or cod liver oil, may counter the effects of Crohn's disease. Researchers from McGill University and the Université de Montréal found that Vitamin D acts directly on the beta defensin 2 gene, which encodes an antimicrobial peptide, and the NOD2 gene that alerts cells to the presence of invading microbes. Both Beta-defensin and NOD2 have been linked to Crohn's disease. If NOD2 is deficient or defective, it cannot combat invaders in the intestinal tract.