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Offering interventions to young people in the general community can prevent the emergence of certain mental health disorders, according to the first comprehensive systematic review to address this question. The results appear in the May/June issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry, which is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

The mutant Sars Cov-2 viruses B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 are classified as "variants of concern", because they are more easily transmitted than the wild type virus or because our immune system does not recognise them as easily. A research team from Bochum, Jena, Nuremberg and Duisburg-Essen studied how the so-called British and South African variants react to disinfection and cleaning and how long they remain infectious on different surfaces.

Researchers analysed data on 740 children who took up one-to-one counselling. The research, published in European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, used data from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) completed by teachers and parents. One year later, this data showed that the children who spoke to counsellors had considerably better mental health than a comparative group of children who had poor mental health yet had not seen a counsellor.

Dr. Seung-Hyun Lee found that companies based in developed countries are more likely to influence the institutional environment of host countries through lobbying, even when bribery is expected to be a more prevalent way of doing business.

A rare mutation in the Caps2 gene, which encodes a protein that regulates the release of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters, has also been linked with autism spectrum disorders. Now, researchers at the Tokyo University of Science report that Caps2 mutations in mice limit the release of oxytocin (a hormone that regulates social behavior), causing diminished sociality in these animals. These findings may help researchers understand the neurobiology of autism and develop effective treatments for it.

A team of researchers, including those from Penn State College of Medicine, took a closer look at cervical cancer in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to determine the prevalence and key factors that influence cancer screenings. The group found that despite high mortality rates, cancer screenings are substantially low, and there are multiple reasons why.

A research group led by Prof. LUO Tianzhi from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, collaborating with Prof. WANG Zhengzhi's team from Wuhan University, explored the natural defenses in the tail spike of mantis shrimps and left chela of hermit crabs.

Analysing the forces at work behind the obstructions that cause heart attacks is crucial for identifying patients at risk of these events.

Researchers of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) developed a new approach to determine the best electrode materials composition for Solid-state lithium-ion batteries. The research group of St. Petersburg Polytechnic University developed a method to determine the electrochemical capacity of each component of the "nickel-cobalt oxide" system.

Scientists have developed a mathematical model that predicts how the number and effects of bacterial mutations leading to drug resistance will influence the success of antibiotic treatments.

Researchers at IRB Barcelona identify that the expression of ancestral fragments of viral DNA results in a strong inflammatory response and causes breast tissue dysfunction. This viral DNA accumulation has also been observed in some types of cancer, such as triple-negative breast cancer, and it may play a key role in determining metastatic potential. The work has been published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

Eating a Western diet impairs the immune system in the gut in ways that could increase risk of infection and inflammatory bowel disease, according to a study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Cleveland Clinic.

According to new study results, a team of researchers led by Cleveland Clinic's Thaddeus Stappenbeck, M.D., Ph.D., have found that a diet high in fat and sugar is associated with impaired intestinal immune cell function in mice. The findings, published in Cell Host & Microbe, provide novel insights into pathways linking obesity and disease-driving gut inflammation, and have implications for developing targets to treat inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) in patients.

Prompted by a recent alarming rise in cases of colorectal cancer in people younger than 50, an independent expert panel has recommended that individuals of average risk for the disease begin screening exams at 45 years of age instead of the traditional 50. Dana-Farber's Kimmie Ng, MD, MPH, is first author of an accompanying editorial.

Research to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature Communications is the first study to quantify the costs of storm damage caused by sea level rise driven specifically by human-induced climate change. Researchers from Stevens Institute of Technology, Climate Central, Rutgers University and other institutions found this self-inflicted damage to be $8.1 billion of Hurricane Sandy's damage and an additional 71,000 people and 36,000 homes exposed to Sandy's flooding.

What The Study Did: Demographic information from 105 randomized clinical trials for primary open-angle glaucoma was combined to compare the rate of participation between individuals from racial/ethnic minority groups with white individuals.

What The Study Did: Telemedicine use grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic but there was geographic variation in its use so researchers in this study examined the association of county-level telemedicine use with community factors among people with commercial or Medicare Advantage insurance.

Wake steering is a strategy employed at wind power plants involving misaligning upstream turbines with the wind direction to deflect wakes away from downstream turbines, which consequently increases the net production of wind power at a plant. In Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, researchers illustrate how wake steering can increase energy production for a large sampling of commercial land-based U.S. wind power plants. Several were ideal candidates.

Researchers from Nara Institute of Science and Technology have found that dendritic spine structural plasticity, a key process underlying learning and memory, requires the linkage of cell adhesion molecules and polymerizing actin by shootin1a. Their findings suggest that the disruption of this coupling may be a causative factor in many neurological disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder and Alzheimer's disease, and might lead to the identification of new drug targets for these disorders.

Bottom Line: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends that adults ages 45 to 75 be screened for colorectal cancer, lowering the age for screening that was previously 50 to 75. The USPSTF also recommends that clinicians selectively offer screening to adults 76 to 85 years of age. Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death for both men and women in the United States.