Police and firefighters at higher risk for mental disorders following traumatic events

Feb. 26, 2013 ? Police, firefighters and other protective services workers who are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events and are new to their profession are at greater risk of developing a psychiatric disorder, according to a new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The researchers also found that protective services workers do not appear to have a higher prevalence of mental health problems than workers in other occupations.

The study results are featured in the February 2013 issue of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.

"Our findings suggest that exposure to diverse types of traumatic events among protective services workers is a risk factor for new onset of psychopathology and alcohol use disorders," said Christopher N. Kaufmann, MHS, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in the Bloomberg School's Department of Mental Health. "When we examined the relationship of exposure to common traumas with the development of mood, anxiety and alcohol use disorders among protective services workers, we found that these workers were at greater risk for developing a mood or alcohol use disorder. Interestingly, this relationship was not seen in those who had been in these jobs for a longer period, but was strong and statistically significant in workers who recently joined the profession. Developing curricula in coping skills and providing timely interventions for early career protective services workers may help reduce future psychiatric morbidity in these workers."

Using data from the U.S National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions researchers compared the prevalence of mental disorders of protective services workers to that of adults in other occupations. In addition, they examined the association of exposure to common traumatic experiences with the development of new mood, anxiety and alcohol use disorders among protective services workers who recently joined the workforce and those who had been in these jobs for a longer period. Lifetime and recent trauma events most commonly reported by protective services workers included: seeing someone badly injured or killed; unexpectedly seeing a dead body; having someone close die unexpectedly and having someone close experience a serious or life-threatening illness, accident or injury.

"The association between the number of different traumatic event types and incident mood and alcohol-use disorders, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder, was virtually confined to the group of early career protective services workers," said Ramin Mojtabai, MD, PhD, MPH, senior author of the study and an associate professor with the Bloomberg School's Department of Mental Health. "Future research should examine the coping skills of protective services workers who have been in these jobs for many years, which might make them less likely to develop psychiatric complications in the face of various potentially traumatic experiences."

The authors note, "Special support programs and services for these early career workers can potentially help to prevent development of chronic psychopathology and attrition from these critical jobs."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. C. N. Kaufmann, L. Rutkow, A. P. Spira, R. Mojtabai. Mental Health of Protective Services Workers: Results From the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, 2012; DOI: 10.1001/dmp.2012.55

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/WSK0dd0C2xI/130226141256.htm

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The Coen Brothers Get Unbroken

Posted 9:19 PM February 25th, 2013 by Binh Ngo

Considering the kinds of movies Angelina Jolie is known for, the war drama In the Land of Blood and Honey is not something one would expect her to choose to make her directorial debut, but that's exactly what she has done. With a global box office of only $303,877, we can see that not many people went to watch the movie in theaters.

While In the Land of Blood and Honey didn't have any impact in terms of box office performance, the movie has impressed Universal enough that Jolie is entrusted with Unbroken, an adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand's biography about Louis Zamperini who was captured and imprisoned by the Japanese army during WWII. Jolie replaced Francis Lawrence, who left to direct The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

It looks like she'll be given a considerably larger budget to work with this time considering the studio and who got hired to write the screenplay: The Coen Brothers!

That right, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Joel and Ethan Coen have been brought on board to adapt Hillenbrand 2010 book. The Coens took home the Best Screenplay Oscar for Fargo and No Country for Old Men so they're kind of decent at these kind of things. No word if they'll be rewriting William Nicholson and Richard LaGravenese's draft or starting over with a new one.

The Coens' new drama Inside Llewyn Davis is going to be released by CBS Films sometime this year. The movie focuses on a New York folk singer named Llewyn Davis during the '60s.

Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1926917/news/1926917/

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TuneIn Radio updated with new Google+ sign-in feature

Google only just today announced their Google+ sign-in features that are opening up to app developers, but TuneIn Radio is one of the first out of the gate to implement it. Much as they were involved early on with Jelly Bean expandable notifications, the extremely popular radio streaming app is in on the ground floor with Google's latest features. 

To the user, it's exactly the same process as signing in via Twitter or Facebook, without the necessity of course to enter any login details. You choose which of your Google accounts you wish to sign-in with, and that's it. You're also presented with a check box allowing you to restrict who has access to content you share on Google+ -- although sharing something only you can see does seem a little, well, pointless. 

Google+ sign in isn't the only new feature in this update either. TuneIn Radio will now integrate with your calendar, so if you don't want to forget about that big soccer football game coming up, tapping the 'add to calendar' button will produce a handy reminder when the program is about to begin. Additionally, Chevrolet drivers with the MyLink functionality can now access TuneIn Radio directly from the car. Download the free version of TuneIn Radio can be found at the Play Store link above.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/MvfGUUGJuhA/story01.htm

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Leatherback sea turtle could be extinct within 20 years at last stronghold in the Pacific Ocean

Feb. 26, 2013 ? An international team led by the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has documented a 78 percent decline in the number of nests of the critically endangered leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) at the turtle's last stronghold in the Pacific Ocean.

The study, published online Feb. 26 in the Ecological Society of America's scientific online journal Ecosphere, reveals leatherback nests at Jamursba Medi Beach in Papua Barat, Indonesia -- which accounts for 75 percent of the total leatherback nesting in the western Pacific -- have fallen from a peak of 14,455 in 1984 to a low of 1,532 in 2011. Less than 500 leatherbacks now nest at this site annually.

Thane Wibbels, Ph.D., a professor of reproductive biology at UAB and member of a research team that includes scientists from State University of Papua (UNIPA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Marine Fisheries Service and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia, says the largest marine turtle in the world could soon vanish.

"If the decline continues, within 20 years it will be difficult if not impossible for the leatherback to avoid extinction," said Wibbels, who has studied marine turtles since 1980. "That means the number of turtles would be so low that the species could not make a comeback.

"The leatherback is one of the most intriguing animals in nature, and we are watching it head towards extinction in front of our eyes," added Wibbels.

Leatherback turtles can grow to six feet long and weigh as much as 2,000 pounds. They are able to dive to depths of nearly 4,000 feet and can make trans-Pacific migrations from Indonesia to the U.S. Pacific coast and back again.

While it is hard to imagine that a turtle so large and so durable can be on the verge of extinction, Ricardo Tapilatu, the research team's lead scientist who is a Ph.D. student and Fulbright Scholar in the UAB Department of Biology, points to the leatherback's trans-Pacific migration, where they face the prevalent danger of being caught and killed in fisheries.

"They can migrate more than 7,000 miles and travel through the territory of at least 20 countries, so this is a complex international problem," Tapilatu said. "It is extremely difficult to comprehensively enforce fishing regulations throughout the Pacific."

The team, along with paper co-author Peter Dutton, Ph.D., discovered thousands of nests laid during the boreal winter just a few kilometers away from the known nesting sites, but their excitement was short-lived.

"We were optimistic for this population when year round nesting was discovered in Wermon Beach, but we now have found out that nesting on that beach appears to be declining at a similar rate as Jamursba Medi," said Dutton, head of the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center's Marine Turtle Genetics Program.

The study has used year-round surveys of leatherback turtle nesting areas since 2005, and it is the most extensive research on the species to date. The team identified four major problems facing leatherback turtles: nesting beach predators, such as pigs and dogs that were introduced to the island and eat the turtle eggs; rising sand temperatures that can kill the eggs or prevent the production of male hatchlings; the danger of being caught by fisheries during migrations; and harvesting of adults and eggs for food by islanders.

Tapilatu, a native of western Papua, Indonesia, has studied leatherback turtles and worked on their conservation since 2004. His efforts have been recognized by NOAA, and he will head the leatherback conservation program in Indonesia once he earns his doctorate from UAB and returns to Papua.

He has worked to educate locals and limit the harvesting of adults and eggs. His primary focus today is protecting the nesting females, eggs and hatchlings. A leatherback lays up to 10 nests each season, more than any other turtle species. Tapilatu is designing ways to optimize egg survival and hatchling production by limiting their exposure to predators and heat through an extensive beach management program.

"If we relocate the nests from the warmest portion of the beach to our egg hatcheries, and build shades for nests in other warm areas, then we will increase hatching success to 80 percent or more," said Tapilatu.

"The international effort has attempted to develop a science-based nesting beach management plan by evaluating and addressing the factors that affect hatching success such as high sand temperatures, erosion, feral pig predation and relocating nests to maximize hatchling output," said Manjula Tiwari, a researcher at NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif.

Wibbels, who is also the Ph.D. advisor for Tapilatu, says that optimizing hatchling production is a key component to leatherback survival, especially considering the limited number of hatchlings who survive to adulthood.

"Only one hatchling out of 1,000 makes it to adulthood, so taking out an adult makes a significant difference on the population," Wibbels said. "It is essentially the same as killing 1,000 hatchlings."

The research team believes that beach management will help to decrease the annual decline in the number of leatherback nests, but protection of the leatherbacks in waters throughout the Pacific is a prerequisite for their survival and recovery. Despite their prediction for leatherback extinction, the scientists are hopeful this species could begin rebounding over the next 20 years if effective management strategies are implemented.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Alabama at Birmingham. The original article was written by Kevin Storr.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Ricardo F. Tapilatu, Peter H. Dutton, Manjula Tiwari, Thane Wibbels, Hadi V. Ferdinandus, William G. Iwanggin, Barakhiel H. Nugroho. Long-term decline of the western Pacific leatherback,Dermochelys coriacea: a globally important sea turtle population. Ecosphere, 2013; 4 (2): art25 DOI: 10.1890/ES12-00348.1

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/-2zDZ55IC1Y/130226141233.htm

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A Magnetized Bull Nose Keyring Keeps Your Wandering Keys Captive

You might feel like you're always losing your keys. This bull has a magnet in its nose to hold onto them for you. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/QYpGuVI2v-M/a-magnetized-bull-nose-keyring-keeps-your-wandering-keys-captive

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This new dinosaur had chicken-size young

Junchang Lu

A fossil of the newly found Yulong mini dinosaur, "Yulong looks like chicken with a tail," lead author Junchang Lu said.

By Jennifer Viegas
Discovery

A newly discovered dinosaur, Yulong mini, was appropriately named, as the remains of its chicken-sized offspring are now among the smallest dinosaurs ever found, according to a new study.

The tiny baby dinosaurs, described in the journal Naturwissenschaften, were oviraptorids, a.k.a. "egg thieves." These non-flying dinosaurs resembled modern birds, except adults of some species could grow to over 26 feet long.

"Yulong looks like chicken with a tail," lead author Junchang L? told Discovery News. "Its behavior was similar to living birds too. Based on the primitive oviraptors such as Caudipteryx, Yulong should be feathered, although we could not find feathers due to the poor preservation condition."

L?, of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, and his colleagues analyzed the dinosaur remains, which were unearthed at Henan Province in central China. In addition to L?, the team included researchers from the Henan Geological Museum as well as Philip Currie from the University of Alberta.

While adult dinosaurs were found in the general region of the excavation, they were not directly with the babies, suggesting that members of this species did not require parental care when young.

It has been widely accepted that oviraptors were carnivores. One earlier specimen, for example, was found with the preserved remains of a lizard in its stomach. The new study, however, challenges that theory.

In terms of the new oviraptor fossils, "based on their hind limb proportions, the pattern is more commonly seen in herbivores than in carnivores, thus indicating that they were herbivores," L? said.

He did, however, add that the jaw structure of this dinosaur could have handled a few meaty edibles.

"It provided strong bite force when (the dinosaur) ate hard foods such as nuts, mollusks and even eggs," he explained.

Currie, though, described Yulong mini as having a "sedentary lifestyle that did not involve the pursuit of similar-sized prey."

The dinosaur might then have rather passively poked around for food, similar to how some birds today forage.

Yulong mini itself was good eats.

Just as many humans today love chicken, it seems that other dinosaurs enjoyed chowing down on Yulong. Remains of several large carnivorous dinosaurs, including T. rex, were found in the area and likely preyed on the more sedentary dinosaurs, the researchers believe.

While Yulong mini and other oviraptorid dinosaurs resembled chickens and other modern birds and appear to have behaved somewhat like them, they were definitely non-avian dinosaurs and not birds.

"They could not have been the ancestors to modern birds," L? explained. "They (exemplify) convergent evolution and went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous."

That was around 65 million years ago, when the world's non-avian dinosaurs all went extinct.

Source: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/25/17089181-this-new-dinosaur-had-chicken-size-young?lite

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Scientists develop a whole new way of harvesting energy from the sun

Feb. 24, 2013 ? A new method of harvesting the Sun's energy is emerging, thanks to scientists at UC Santa Barbara's Departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, and Materials. Though still in its infancy, the research promises to convert sunlight into energy using a process based on metals that are more robust than many of the semiconductors used in conventional methods.

The researchers' findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

"It is the first radically new and potentially workable alternative to semiconductor-based solar conversion devices to be developed in the past 70 years or so," said Martin Moskovits, professor of chemistry at UCSB.

In conventional photoprocesses, a technology developed and used over the last century, sunlight hits the surface of semiconductor material, one side of which is electron-rich, while the other side is not. The photon, or light particle, excites the electrons, causing them to leave their postions, and create positively-charged "holes." The result is a current of charged particles that can be captured and delivered for various uses, including powering lightbulbs, charging batteries, or facilitating chemical reactions.

"For example, the electrons might cause hydrogen ions in water to be converted into hydrogen, a fuel, while the holes produce oxygen," said Moskovits.

In the technology developed by Moskovits and his team, it is not semiconductor materials that provide the electrons and venue for the conversion of solar energy, but nanostructured metals -- a "forest" of gold nanorods, to be specific.

For this experiment, gold nanorods were capped with a layer of crystalline titanium dioxide decorated with platinum nanoparticles, and set in water. A cobalt-based oxidation catalyst was deposited on the lower portion of the array.

"When nanostructures, such as nanorods, of certain metals are exposed to visible light, the conduction electrons of the metal can be caused to oscillate collectively, absorbing a great deal of the light," said Moskovits. "This excitation is called a surface plasmon."

As the "hot" electrons in these plasmonic waves are excited by light particles, some travel up the nanorod, through a filter layer of crystalline titanium dioxide, and are captured by platinum particles. This causes the reaction that splits hydrogen ions from the bond that forms water. Meanwhile, the holes left behind by the excited electrons head toward the cobalt-based catalyst on the lower part of the rod to form oxygen.

According to the study, hydrogen production was clearly observable after about two hours. Additionally, the nanorods were not subject to the photocorrosion that often causes traditional semiconductor material to fail in minutes.

"The device operated with no hint of failure for many weeks," Moskovits said.

The plasmonic method of splitting water is currently less efficient and more costly than conventional photoprocesses, but if the last century of photovoltaic technology has shown anything, it is that continued research will improve on the cost and efficiency of this new method -- and likely in far less time than it took for the semiconductor-based technology, said Moskovits.

"Despite the recentness of the discovery, we have already attained 'respectable' efficiencies. More importantly, we can imagine achievable strategies for improving the efficiencies radically," he said.

Research in this study was also performed by postdoctoral researchers Syed Mubeen and Joun Lee; grad student Nirala Singh; materials engineer Stephan Kraemer; and chemistry professor Galen Stucky.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Santa Barbara, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Syed Mubeen, Joun Lee, Nirala Singh, Stephan Kr?mer, Galen D. Stucky, Martin Moskovits. An autonomous photosynthetic device in which all charge carriers derive from surface plasmons. Nature Nanotechnology, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2013.18

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/matter_energy/physics/~3/aTqnvmAaFnw/130224142917.htm

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