People with mental disorders more likely to have experienced domestic violence

Dec. 26, 2012 ? Men and women with mental health disorders, across all diagnoses, are more likely to have experienced domestic violence than the general population, according to new research from King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, in collaboration with the University of Bristol. Previous studies into the link between domestic violence and mental health problems have mainly focused on depression, but this is the first study to look at a wide range of mental health problems in both male and female victims.

In this study, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and published December 26 in PLOS ONE, researchers reviewed data from 41 studies worldwide. Compared to women without mental health problems, women with depressive disorders were around 2 and a ? times more likely to have experienced domestic violence over their adult lifetime (prevalence estimate 45.8%); women with anxiety disorders were over 3 and a ? times more likely (prevalence estimate 27.6%); and women with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were around 7 times more likely (prevalence estimate 61.0%).

Women with other disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), eating disorders, common mental health problems, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder were also at an increased risk of domestic violence compared to women without mental health problems. Men with all types of mental disorders were also at an increased risk of domestic violence. However, prevalence estimates for men were lower than those for women, indicating that it is less common for men to be victims of repeated severe domestic violence.

Professor Louise Howard, senior author of the study from King's Institute of Psychiatry, says: "In this study, we found that both men and women with mental health problems are at an increased risk of domestic violence. The evidence suggests that there are two things happening: domestic violence can often lead to victims developing mental health problems, and people with mental health problems are more likely to experience domestic violence."

This study is part of PROVIDE, a 5-year research programme on domestic violence funded by NIHR. Professor Gene Feder, co-author of the study from the University of Bristol's School of Social and Community Medicine and chief investigator of PROVIDE says: "We hope this review will draw attention to the mental health needs of survivors of domestic violence and remind general practitioners and mental health teams that experience of domestic violence may lie behind the presentation of mental health problems."

Internationally, the lifetime prevalence of physical and/or sexual partner violence among women ranges from 15-71%. In the UK, the2010/11 British Crime Survey reported that 27% of women and 17% of men had experienced partner abuse during their lifetime, with women experiencing more repeated and severe violence than men. From March 2013, the UK Home Office will be amending its definition of domestic violence to include 16 and 17 year olds, and will be defined as "any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. This can encompass, but is not limited to, psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional abuse."

Professor Howard concludes: "Mental health professionals need to be aware of the link between domestic violence and mental health problems, and ensure that their patients are safe from domestic violence and are treated for the mental health impact of such abuse."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by King's College London, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Journal Reference:

1. Kylee Trevillion, Si?n Oram, Gene Feder, Louise M. Howard. Experiences of Domestic Violence and Mental Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. PLoS ONE, 2012; 7 (12): e51740 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051740

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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/bCELOUB9SrA/121226223049.htm

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Remains of the Day: Google Calling to Be Free Through 2013

Google extends its free calling service, Google Music's scan-and-match has a bit of a mix-up, and Netflix's US customers will get new social features next year.

• Free calling within the US and Canada through 2013 If you already use Gmail to make free calls, then here's some good (though perhaps expected) news: Google will continue to support free calling within the US and Canada through 2013. If you don't already take advantage of this, here are a few ideas on how to use it. [Official Gmail Blog]
• Google's Music Matching Reportedly Replacing Explicit Songs with Clean Versions Some Google Music users are reporting that the service's new scan-and-match feature has been replacing explicit songs in their collections with clean versions. Other users have reported the exact opposite scenario?clean versions being replaced with explicit ones. Commenters have been quick to point out that this sort of problem happens a lot with many scan-and-match services. Google has yet to respond. [The Verge]
• Netflix ?Social Features' Coming In 2013, Once President Signs Bill Netflix will be introducing new social features for its US customers next year which will allow them to link their Netflix and Facebook accounts and share their recently watched list with friends. Canadian and Latin American Netflix customers have already had this feature for some time, but the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act prohibited companies from disclosing customers rental histories. A bill amending the act was passed by the Senate last Thursday and will allow companies like Netflix to share such information provided they obtain "informed, written consent." [Talking Points Memo]

Photo by photastic (Shutterstock), a2bb5s (Shutterstock), and Feng Yu (Shutterstock).

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/0pZmWvGyi4o/remains-of-the-day-google-calling-to-be-free-through-2013

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Toward a new model of the cell: Everything you always wanted to know about genes

Dec. 16, 2012 ? Turning vast amounts of genomic data into meaningful information about the cell is the great challenge of bioinformatics, with major implications for human biology and medicine. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and colleagues have proposed a new method that creates a computational model of the cell from large networks of gene and protein interactions, discovering how genes and proteins connect to form higher-level cellular machinery.

The findings are published in the Dec. 16 advance online publication of Nature Biotechnology.

"Our method creates ontology, or a specification of all the major players in the cell and the relationships between them," said first author Janusz Dutkowski, PhD, postdoctoral researcher in the UC San Diego Department of Medicine. It uses knowledge about how genes and proteins interact with each other and automatically organizes this information to form a comprehensive catalog of gene functions, cellular components, and processes.

"What's new about our ontology is that it is created automatically from large datasets. In this way, we see not only what is already known, but also potentially new biological components and processes -- the bases for new hypotheses," said Dutkowski.

Originally devised by philosophers attempting to explain the nature of existence, ontologies are now broadly used to encapsulate everything known about a subject in a hierarchy of terms and relationships. Intelligent information systems, such as iPhone's Siri, are built on ontologies to enable reasoning about the real world. Ontologies are also used by scientists to structure knowledge about subjects like taxonomy, anatomy and development, bioactive compounds, disease and clinical diagnosis.

A Gene Ontology (GO) exists as well, constructed over the last decade through a joint effort of hundreds of scientists. It is considered the gold standard for understanding cell structure and gene function, containing 34,765 terms and 64,635 hierarchical relations annotating genes from more than 80 species.

"GO is very influential in biology and bioinformatics, but it is also incomplete and hard to update based on new data," said senior author Trey Ideker, PhD, chief of the Division of Genetics in the School of Medicine and professor of bioengineering in UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering.

"This is expert knowledge based upon the work of many people over many, many years," said Ideker, who is also principal investigator of the National Resource for Network Biology, based at UC San Diego. "A fundamental problem is consistency. People do things in different ways, and that impacts what findings are incorporated into GO and how they relate to other findings. The approach we have proposed is a more objective way to determine what's known and uncover what's new."

In their paper, Dutkowski, Ideker and colleagues capitalized upon the growing power and utility of new technologies like high-throughput assays and bioinformatics to create elaborately detailed datasets describing complex biological networks. To test the approach, the scientists pulled together multiple such datasets, applied their method, and then compared the resulting "network-extracted ontology" to the existing GO.

They found that their ontology captured the majority of known cellular components, plus many additional terms and relationships, which subsequently triggered updates of the existing GO.

Neither Ideker nor Dutkowski say the new approach is intended to replace the current GO. Rather, they envision it as complementary high-tech model that identifies both known and uncharacterized biological components derived directly from data, something the current GO does not do well. Moreover, they note a network-extracted ontology can be continuously updated and refined with every new dataset, moving scientists closer to the complete model of the cell.

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Journal Reference:

1. Janusz Dutkowski, Michael Kramer, Michal A Surma, Rama Balakrishnan, J Michael Cherry, Nevan J Krogan, Trey Ideker. A gene ontology inferred from molecular networks. Nature Biotechnology, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nbt.2463

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/j6nvh78QoZ4/121216132515.htm

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Even the smallest stroke can damage brain tissue and impair cognitive function

Dec. 16, 2012 ? Blocking a single tiny blood vessel in the brain can harm neural tissue and even alter behavior, a new study from the University of California, San Diego has shown. But these consequences can be mitigated by a drug already in use, suggesting treatment that could slow the progress of dementia associated with cumulative damage to miniscule blood vessels that feed brain cells. The team reports their results in the December 16 advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience.

"The brain is incredibly dense with vasculature. It was surprising that blocking one small vessel could have a discernable impact on the behavior of a rat," said Andy Y. Shih, lead author of the paper who completed this work as a postdoctoral fellow in physics at UC San Diego. Shih is now an assistant professor at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Working with rats, Shih and colleagues used laser light to clot blood at precise points within small blood vessels that dive from the surface of the brain to penetrate neural tissue. When they looked at the brains up to a week later, they saw tiny holes reminiscent of the widespread damage often seen when the brains of patients with dementia are examined as a part of an autopsy.

These micro-lesions are too small to be detected with conventional MRI scans, which have a resolution of about a millimeter. Nearly two dozen of these small vessels enter the brain from a square millimeter area of the surface of the brain.

"It's controversial whether that sort of damage has consequences, although the tide of evidence has been growing as human diagnostics improve," said David Kleinfeld, professor of physics and neurobiology, who leads the research group.

To see whether such minute damage could change behavior, the scientists trained thirsty rats to leap from one platform to another in the dark to get water.

The rats readily jump if they can reach the second platform with a paw or their snout, or stretch farther to touch it with their whiskers. Many rats can be trained to rely on a single whisker if the others are clipped, but if they can't feel the far platform, they won't budge.

"The whiskers line up in rows and each one is linked to a specific spot in the brain," Shih said. "By training them to use just one whisker, we were able to distill a behavior down to a very small part of the brain."

When Shih blocked single microvessels feeding a column of brain cells that respond to signals from the remaining whisker, the rats still crossed to the far platform when the gap was small. But when it widened beyond the reach of their snouts, they quit.

The FDA-approved drug memantine, prescribed to slow one aspect of memory decline associated with Alzheimer's disease, ameliorated these effects. Rats that received the drug jumped whisker-wide gaps, and their brains showed fewer signs of damage.

"This data shows us, for the first time, that even a tiny stroke can lead to disability," said Patrick D. Lyden, a co-author of the study and chair of the department of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. "I am afraid that tiny strokes in our patients contribute -- over the long term -- to illness such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease," he said, adding that "better tools will be required to tell whether human patients suffer memory effects from the smallest strokes."

"We used powerful tools from biological physics, many developed in Kleinfeld's laboratory at UC San Diego, to link stroke to dementia on the unprecedented small scale of single vessels and cells," Shih said. "At my new position at MUSC, I plan to work on ways to improve the detection of micro-lesions in human patients with MRI. This way clinicians may be able to diagnose and treat dementia earlier."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - San Diego, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS. The original article was written by Susan Brown.

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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/8oyNHAcTxtE/121216132503.htm

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LIFE: The photo that changed the face of AIDS

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/life-the-photo-that-changed-the-face-of-aids-slideshow/

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No charges against Chris Brown in Fla. phone grab

MIAMI (AP) ? Grammy-winning singer Chris Brown will not face criminal charges for snatching a woman's cellphone when she tried to snap a photo of him outside a Miami Beach club, prosecutors said Friday.

A memo released Friday by Miami-Dade County State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle concludes there is no evidence that Brown intended to steal the phone in February or that he deleted any photos. One or the other is necessary for him to be charged with robbery or theft.

Prosecutors said that Brown tossed the phone from his limo and that it was picked up by Devon Blanche, head of security for rapper Tyga, who had performed with Brown at the Cameo club that night. According to the memo, Blanche tried to find out if someone had lost the phone, ultimately took it with him to Atlanta during the rapper's tour and said he intended to find its owner.

A felony charge against Brown, 24, might have triggered a violation of his probation for his 2009 assault on singer Rihanna, who was his girlfriend at the time. The two have recently collaborated on a new duet, "Nobody's Business," and have been spotted out together in recent weeks.

Rundle said the investigation's findings would be forwarded to probation officials in Los Angeles for review.

"We are grateful for the decision and the thorough investigation," Brown's attorney Mark Geragos said in an email.

According to the memo, after Brown and Tyga ? real name Michael Stevenson ? finished their performances, both got into separate limos to head for their hotels. Witnesses told prosecutors about 30 female fans gathered outside Brown's vehicle, at least one of whom reached inside to take a photo. Brown was accompanied by at least two women in the limo.

Stevenson told prosecutors that he saw Brown throw a white cellphone out of the limo. The phone's owner, Christal Spann, said Brown used a derogatory term for women and said "this will not run the website" when he grabbed the phone. Spann began beating on the limo's windows, according to the memo, until someone in a front seat told her the phone had been tossed out. She could not find it, however.

"She used to be a fan of Brown's, but no longer," the memo notes of Spann.

Blanche, the security man, told investigators he thought Brown was upset because "if photographs of himself with two females got out, it might cause him problems with Rihanna."

___

Follow Curt Anderson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Miamicurt

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/no-charges-against-chris-brown-fla-phone-grab-191545785.html

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