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Monday, June 27, 2016

ScienceDaily: Latest Science News

Substance user’s social connections: Family, friends, and the foresaken
Understanding Risk Factors Involved in Initiation of Adolescent Alcohol Use
Adolescent Girls Choose to Drink at Lower Blood Alcohol Concentrations
Minimum legal drinking age of 21 can protect against later risk of death
Keep it simple: Low-cost solar power
This message will self-destruct
Insects were already using camouflage 100 million years ago
Scientists model universe using Einstein’s full theory

Substance user’s social connections: Family, friends, and the foresaken

Posted: 26 Jun 2016 08:06 AM PDT

It's no secret that social environments can play a role in the development as well as recovery from substance-abuse problems. A new study, designed to uncover how individual relationships respond to substance use and social influences, has found that the links between substance use and social connections are bidirectional and strong.

Understanding Risk Factors Involved in Initiation of Adolescent Alcohol Use

Posted: 26 Jun 2016 08:06 AM PDT

Underage drinking is a major public health and social problem in the U.S. The ability to identify at-risk children before they initiate heavy alcohol use has immense clinical and public health implications. A new study has found that demographic factors, cognitive functioning, and brain features during the early-adolescence ages of 12 to 14 years can predict which youth eventually initiate alcohol use during later adolescence around the age of 18.

Adolescent Girls Choose to Drink at Lower Blood Alcohol Concentrations

Posted: 25 Jun 2016 12:05 PM PDT

Gender and a family history of alcoholism (FH) are two genetically determined factors known to affect someone's risk for developing alcohol-use disorders (AUDs). Adolescence is also a critical period for the development of AUDs; drinking habits can be unstable and environmental factors such as peer pressure may be substantial. This study looked at how gender and FH might affect alcohol use in a sample of 18- to 19-year-olds from the Dresden Longitudinal Study on Alcohol use in Young Adults (D-LAYA).

Minimum legal drinking age of 21 can protect against later risk of death

Posted: 25 Jun 2016 12:05 PM PDT

The minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) in the U.S. regulates the age at which individuals can legally purchase and possess alcohol in public. An MLDA of 21 has been linked to a number of benefits, including a lower risk for alcoholism in adulthood. However, no studies have examined linkages between exposure to MLDAs during young adulthood and mortality later in life. This study examined if young adults – college and non-college students – exposed to a permissive MLDA (younger than 21) had a higher risk of death from alcohol-related chronic diseases compared to those exposed to an MLDA of 21.

Keep it simple: Low-cost solar power

Posted: 24 Jun 2016 12:49 PM PDT

A new architecture takes very few processing steps to produce an affordable solar cell with efficiencies comparable to conventional silicon solar cells.

This message will self-destruct

Posted: 24 Jun 2016 12:49 PM PDT

In movies and television shows, audio tapes or other devices self-destruct after delivering the details of impossible missions. Scientists have taken it to a new level.

Insects were already using camouflage 100 million years ago

Posted: 24 Jun 2016 12:47 PM PDT

Those who go to a masked ball consciously slip into a different role, in order to avoid being recognized. Insects were already doing something very similar in the Cretaceous: They cloaked themselves in pieces of plants, grains of sand, or the remains of their prey, in order, for example, to be invisible to predators. Scientists hav now investigated such 'invisibility cloaks' encased in amber.

Scientists model universe using Einstein’s full theory

Posted: 24 Jun 2016 07:50 AM PDT

Cosmologists have begun modelling the universe for the first time using Einstein's full general theory of relativity.