Culture

Most available antidepressants are ineffective, and some may be unsafe, for children and teenagers with major depression, according to the most comprehensive comparison of commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs so far, published in The Lancet.

The findings indicate that out of 14 antidepressant drugs [1], only fluoxetine was more effective at relieving the symptoms of depression than placebo, whilst taking venlafaxine was linked with an increased risk of engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts compared with placebo and five other antidepressants.

Medicines that carry warnings about sleep disturbances do not seem to contribute to the amount of sleep disturbances in the general population, according to new 'real world' research. The findings, which are published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology suggest that investigators may need to provide more careful reporting of side effects in clinical trials, and emphasizes the value of research into the safety of medicines once they are being taken by the general population.

Scientists working for Murdoch University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, The Nature Conservancy, and other groups have good news about fishing closures established in Indonesia's shark sanctuary: It's good for sharks and other fish, all of which are more abundant within zones with fishing restrictions.

The criminal justice system in the United States uses a variety of tools to assess the behavior of criminal offenders, and those risk assessments can have a significant impact on an offender's fate. A new meta-analysis of the research conducted in the U.S. on these tools shows that -- while promising -- it is still unclear whether these tools reduce bias against offenders based on race or other factors.

In an analysis of pregnancies in Australia from 1999 to 2014 in which women were taking anti-epileptic drugs, fetal malformation rates fell over time in pregnancies where only one drug was taken, but rates increased in pregnancies where multiple drugs were taken.

Montreal, June 7, 2016 -- Massive public transportation infrastructure projects are notorious for exceeding both budgets and deadlines. Think Boston's Big Dig, finally completed eight years late and billions of dollars over budget.

Luckily, projects like Montreal's Turcot Interchange don't need to suffer the same fate, thanks to a new modelling method developed by researchers at Concordia University in Montreal, and described in a recent study in Automation in Construction.

The method is designed to help those projects come in on time and on budget.

Nice, France - 8 June 2016: Electronic anti-theft systems still post a threat to cardiac device patients, according to research presented today at CARDIOSTIM - EHRA EUROPACE 2016 by Professor Robert Stevenson, senior scientist at Greatbatch Medical in Santa Clarita, California, US.1

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Two leaded bronze artifacts found in northwestern Alaska are the first evidence that metal from Asia reached prehistoric North America prior to contact with Europeans, according to new Purdue University research.

"A pathological and very complex autoimmune reaction of the skin": This is the definition doctors and scientists use to describe psoriasis, a disease that affects one to three percent of the population. It is characterised by accelerated cell division in the upper dermal layers with proliferated skin cells and an inflammation of the skin beneath. Many different cells are involved in the complex processes: skin cells (keratinocytes) and cells of the immune system, among others T lymphocytes, macrophages, mast cells and others.

Influence on an anti-inflammatory cytokine

According to the poll, most Russians consider biological novelties useless or even unethical

Russians are cautious about modern technologies, including biomedicine achievements in biomedicine, suggests a poll conducted by the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK) of the Higher School of Economics (HSE) as part of the Monitoring Survey of Innovative Behavior of the Population.

Researchers and clinicians from hospitals and universities from many countries have collaborated to better understand diseases of platelets -- the little cells that help blood to clot. They have developed a more effective, comprehensive and cheaper panel of genetic tests that are already being used to benefit both patients and the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK.

Development of the test is described in the journal Blood, published in print on Thursday June 09, 2016.

"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine applauds the Senate passage of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, updating the statute that regulates chemicals policy.

"The bill requires alternatives to animal tests be considered and used, and places restrictions on animal testing-which are stronger than current law-that will over time facilitate the development and adoption of human-relevant, nonanimal methods. Because information obtained on chemicals will be human-relevant, products Americans use will be safer.

Focus on low-fat diets and lack of differentiation between healthy and unhealthy fat has led to 'paradoxical policies' about healthy eating

When patients participate in a clinical trial, they are required -- for legal and ethical reasons -- to complete consent forms that are typically long, complicated and filled with technical language. Some experts fear these forms can lead some patients to enroll in studies without fully understanding them and others to miss valuable opportunities.

WASHINGTON - An interdisciplinary team of scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Electronics Science and Technology and Materials Science and Technology Divisions, has demonstrated hyperthermal ion implantation (HyTII) as an effective means of substitutionally doping graphene -- a hexagonally-arranged single-atomic thickness carbon sheet -- with nitrogen atoms. The result is a low-defect film with a tunable bandstructure amenable to a variety of device platforms and applications.