news 2009

Men who have recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer are at greater risk of committing suicide and developing and dying from cardiovascular disease, reveals a study from Karolinska Institutet published in the open scientific journal PLoS Medicine. "Cardiovascular disease and suicide can be viewed as a manifestation of exceptional psychological stress," says Katja Fall, one of the researchers behind the study.

Cambridge, Mass. October 26, 2009 - The rationale behind torture is that pain will make the guilty confess, but a new study by researchers at Harvard University finds that the pain of torture can make even the innocent seem guilty. Participants in the study met a woman suspected of cheating to win money.

The Kentish-Snowy Plover, a small shorebird found in the US and Europe, is suffering from an identity crisis after scientists at the University of Sheffield and the University of Bath have found genetic evidence that the populations are, in fact, separate species. Historically, biologists classified the Kentish Plover, found in Europe, and its look-a-like, the Snowy Plover, from the US, as being different varieties of the same species due to their similar looks.

Cambridge, Mass. October 16, 2009 - As health care moves to the forefront of the national discourse, new research in the social sciences argues that the health of the population and the success or failure of many public health initiatives hinges as much on cultural and social factors as it does on doctors, facilities, or drugs.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield have created a new online atlas which displays images of the world, but not as we know it. The atlas includes over 200 maps which have been redrawn to show, at a glance, which cities are the largest, how all urban areas compare, and whether many or few people live in the countryside.

Schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses are not responsible for any additional risk of violence above the increased risk associated with substance abuse, according to a novel meta-analysis published in the open access journal PLoS Medicine. The findings may have implications for attempts to reduce violence in society, suggesting that strategies aimed at reducing drug and alcohol abuse would be more successful than focusing on mental illness.

A new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet and the University of Oxford finds that the severe mental disorder schizophrenia only marginally increases the risk of committing violent crime. Rather, the overrepresentation of individuals with schizophrenia in violent crime is almost entirely attributable to concurrent substance abuse.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield, funded by the UK´s leading dementia research charity, the Alzheimer´s Research Trust, have uncovered how a type of brain cell is affected in Alzheimer´s. The team´s exciting findings are to be published later this month (May 2009)in two journals.

There is an association between schizophrenia and violent crime, but it is minimal unless there are also drug or alcohol problems, a large-scale study led by Oxford University has shown. The findings, reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, highlight the importance of treating drug or alcohol problems in people with severe mental illness.

A study from Karolinska Institutet shows that the number of suicides on Greenland increases sharply during the bright summer months. Too little sleep and chemical imbalance could explain the phenomenon. The study, which was led by Karin Sparring Björkstén at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, was conducted on Greenland, where variations in sunlight are extreme over the year.

Stillenden Müttern wird nahegelegt, auf alkoholhaltige Getränke zu verzichten. Nun zeigen aber neuste Forschungsergebnisse, dass Wein, der über die Muttermilch zu Säuglingen gelangt, positive Effekte auf die Säuglinge hat.

Cambridge, Mass. and San Diego, Calif. January 26, 2009 - Can't help being the life of the party? Maybe you were just born that way. Researchers from Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego have found that our place in a social network is influenced in part by our genes, according to new findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Oxytocin, a hormone involved in child-birth and breast-feeding, helps people recognize familiar faces.