Study finds less domestic violence among married couples who smoke pot

New research findings from a study of 634 couples found that the more often they smoked marijuana, the less likely they were to engage in domestic violence.

The study, conducted by researchers in the University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions and Research Institute on Addictions (RIA), appeared in the online edition of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors in August.

The study attempted to clarify inconsistent findings about domestic violence among pot-smoking couples that primarily has been based on cross-sectional data (i.e., data from one point in time).  Looking at couples over the first nine years of marriage, the study found:

• More frequent marijuana use by husbands and wives (two-to-three times per month or more often) predicted less frequent intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration by husbands.
• Husbands’ marijuana use also predicted less frequent IPV perpetration by wives.
• Couples in which both spouses used marijuana frequently reported the least frequent IPV perpetration.
• The relationship between marijuana use and reduced partner violence was most evident among women who did not have histories of prior antisocial behavior.

The study’s lead author is Philip H. Smith, PhD, a recent doctoral graduate of the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions and now associate research scientist in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University.

It is based on research data collected by lead investigator Kenneth Leonard, PhD, director of the UB Research Institute on Addictions.  The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to Leonard and a grant to Smith from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

“These findings suggest that marijuana use is predictive of lower levels of aggression towards one’s partner in the following year.” Leonard says.  “As in other survey studies of marijuana and partner violence, our study examines patterns of marijuana use and the occurrence of violence within a year period. It does not examine whether using marijuana on a given day reduces the likelihood of violence at that time.

“It is possible, for example, that — similar to a drinking partnership — couples who use marijuana together may share similar values and social circles, and it is this similarity that is responsible for reducing the likelihood of conflict.

“Although this study supports the perspective that marijuana does not increase, and may decrease, aggressive conflict,” he says, “we would like to see research replicating these findings, and research examining day-to-day marijuana and alcohol use and the likelihood to IPV on the same day before drawing stronger conclusions.”

Group Identity Emphasized More by Those Who Just Make the Cut

People and institutions who are marginal members of a high-status or well-esteemed group tend to emphasize their group membership more than those who are squarely entrenched members of the group, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Research has long shown that people prefer to be in groups that are thought to have higher status or cultural value as a way of boosting self-image and projecting an impressive image to others. Despite the fact that separations between groups are often arbitrary, and that there may be as much variation within a group as between groups, membership in particular groups can convey significant personal and social benefits.

Psychology researcher Paul Rozin of the University of Pennsylvania was prompted to investigate the ways in which individuals and institutions communicate their group membership as a result of many years of observation, after “noticing the behavior of people just promoted to a better position, or just after receiving a degree, or being admitted to a relatively exclusive group.”

In one study, Rozin and co-authors Sydney E. Scott, Hana Zickgraf, Flora Ahn, and Hong Jiang, all of the University of Pennsylvania, examined how universities promoted themselves in the “About Us” sections of their own websites.

They found that master’s universities — which are at the border of the university category, offering some master’s-level programs but typically few doctoral-level programs — were more likely to emphasize “university”when referring to themselves. Specifically, master’s universities used the word “university”in 62.2% of self-references, whereas national universities — which offer undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degrees — used the word in only about 46.4% of self-references.

Similarly, the researchers found that small international airports were more likely to emphasize their “international” status than were large airports.

The researchers also found evidence of the phenomenon at the individual level in undergraduates’ descriptions of their universities.

Culturally, Harvard University is a well-known, even quintessential, member of the “Ivy League” — many people don’t realize that the University of Pennsylvania is also a so-called Ivy. Rozin and co-authors asked undergraduate students at each institution to describe their university. For some students, the directions were phrased in a private context: “Please write down 7 things you think of when you think of your university.” For others, they were phrased in a public context: “Please write down 7 things you think of when you describe your university to other people.”

The data showed that Penn students were more likely to mention “Ivy League” or “Ivy” in describing their university than were Harvard students.

The researchers believe this phenomenon likely occurs in many other situations. They hypothesize that individuals may emphasize marginal membership in high-status professional groups, including “greater use of doctor titles by osteopaths, dentists, and chiropractors as opposed to medical doctors” and “greater display of officer status by lieutenants as opposed to colonels, and may also highlight marginal membership in high-status socioeconomic group membership, including “greater display of wealth by the nouveau riche than by ‘old money.’”

“We believe that effects like those illustrated here are widespread, although it is sometimes difficult to collect the appropriate data,” the researchers write.

This research was supported by funds from the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Fighting prostate cancer with a tomato-rich diet

Men who eat over 10 portions a week of tomatoes have an 18 per cent lower risk of developing prostate cancer, new research suggests.

With 35,000 new cases every year in the UK, and around 10,000 deaths, prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men worldwide.

Rates are higher in developed countries, which some experts believe is linked to a Westernised diet and lifestyle.

To assess if following dietary and lifestyle recommendations reduces risk of prostate cancer, researchers at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford looked at the diets and lifestyle of 1,806 men aged between 50 and 69 with prostate cancer and compared with 12,005 cancer-free men.

The NIHR-funded study, published in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, is the first study of its kind to develop a prostate cancer ‘dietary index’ which consists of dietary components – selenium, calcium and foods rich in lycopene – that have been linked to prostate cancer.

Men who had optimal intake of these three dietary components had a lower risk of prostate cancer.

Tomatoes and its products – such as tomato juice and baked beans – were shown to be most beneficial, with an 18 per cent reduction in risk found in men eating over 10 portions a week.

This is thought to be due to lycopene, an antioxidant which fights off toxins that can cause DNA and cell damage. Vanessa Er, from the School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol and Bristol Nutrition BRU, led the research.

She said: “Our findings suggest that tomatoes may be important in prostate cancer prevention. However, further studies need to be conducted to confirm our findings, especially through human trials. Men should still eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, maintain a healthy weight and stay active.”

The researchers also looked at the recommendations on physical activity, diet and body weight for cancer prevention published by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR).

Only the recommendation on plant foods – high intake of fruits, vegetables and dietary fibre – was found to be associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer. As these recommendations are not targeted at prostate cancer prevention, researchers concluded that adhering to these recommendations is not sufficient and that additional dietary recommendations should be developed.

Probing excitonic dark states in single-layer tungsten disulphide

Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) monolayers have recently emerged as an important class of two-dimensional semiconductors with potential for electronic and optoelectronic devices1, 2. Unlike semi-metallic graphene, layered TMDCs have a sizeable bandgap3. More interestingly, when thinned down to a monolayer, TMDCs transform from indirect-bandgap to direct-bandgap semiconductors4, 5, exhibiting a number of intriguing optical phenomena such as valley-selective circular dichroism6, 7, 8, doping-dependent charged excitons9, 10 and strong photocurrent responses11. However, the fundamental mechanism underlying such a strong light–matter interaction is still under intensive investigation. First-principles calculations have predicted a quasiparticle bandgap much larger than the measured optical gap, and an optical response dominated by excitonic effects12, 13, 14. In particular, a recent study based on a GW plus Bethe–Salpeter equation (GW-BSE) approach, which employed many-body Green’s-function methodology to address electron–electron and electron–hole interactions, theoretically predicted a diversity of strongly bound excitons14. Here we report experimental evidence of a series of excitonic dark states in single-layer WS2 using two-photon excitation spectroscopy. In combination with GW-BSE theory, we prove that the excitons are of Wannier type, meaning that each exciton wavefunction extends over multiple unit cells, but with extraordinarily large binding energy (~0.7 electronvolts), leading to a quasiparticle bandgap of 2.7 electronvolts. These strongly bound exciton states are observed to be stable even at room temperature. We reveal an exciton series that deviates substantially from hydrogen models, with a novel energy dependence on the orbital angular momentum. These excitonic energy levels are experimentally found to be robust against environmental perturbations. The discovery of excitonic dark states and exceptionally large binding energy not only sheds light on the importance of many-electron effects in this two-dimensional gapped system, but also holds potential for the device application of TMDC monolayers and their heterostructures15 in computing, communication and bio-sensing.

Bidirectional switch of the valence associated with a hippocampal contextual memory engram

The valence of memories is malleable because of their intrinsic reconstructive property¹. This property of memory has been used clinically to treat maladaptive behaviours². However, the neuronal mechanisms and brain circuits that enable the switching of the valence of memories remain largely unknown. Here we investigated these mechanisms by applying the recently developed memory engram cell- manipulation technique^3, 4. We labelled with channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2) a population of cells in either the dorsal dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus or the basolateral complex of the amygdala (BLA) that were specifically activated during contextual fear or reward conditioning. Both groups of fear-conditioned mice displayed aversive light-dependent responses in an optogenetic place avoidance test, whereas both DG- and BLA-labelled mice that underwent reward conditioning exhibited an appetitive response in an optogenetic place preference test. Next, in an attempt to reverse the valence of memory within a subject, mice whose DG or BLA engram had initially been labelled by contextual fear or reward conditioning were subjected to a second conditioning of the opposite valence while their original DG or BLA engram was reactivated by blue light. Subsequent optogenetic place avoidance and preference tests revealed that although the DG-engram group displayed a response indicating a switch of the memory valence, the BLA-engram group did not. This switch was also evident at the cellular level by a change in functional connectivity between DG engram-bearing cells and BLA engram-bearing cells. Thus, we found that in the DG, the neurons carrying the memory engram of a given neutral context have plasticity such that the valence of a conditioned response evoked by their reactivation can be reversed by re-associating this contextual memory engram with a new unconditioned stimulus of an opposite valence. Our present work provides new insight into the functional neural circuits underlying the malleability of emotional memory.

A synaptic and circuit basis for corollary discharge in the auditory cortex

Sensory regions of the brain integrate environmental cues with copies of motor-related signals important for imminent and ongoing movements. In mammals, signals propagating from the motor cortex to the auditory cortex are thought to have a critical role in normal hearing and behaviour, yet the synaptic and circuit mechanisms by which these motor-related signals influence auditory cortical activity remain poorly understood. Using in vivo intracellular recordings in behaving mice, we find that excitatory neurons in the auditory cortex are suppressed before and during movement, owing in part to increased activity of local parvalbumin-positive interneurons. Electrophysiology and optogenetic gain- and loss-of-function experiments reveal that motor-related changes in auditory cortical dynamics are driven by a subset of neurons in the secondary motor cortex that innervate the auditory cortex and are active during movement. These findings provide a synaptic and circuit basis for the motor-related corollary discharge hypothesized to facilitate hearing and auditory-guided behaviours.

A global strategy for road building

The number and extent of roads will expand dramatically this century¹. Globally, at least 25 million kilometres of new roads are anticipated by 2050; a 60% increase in the total length of roads over that in 2010. Nine-tenths of all road construction is expected to occur in developing nations¹, including many regions that sustain exceptional biodiversity and vital ecosystem services. Roads penetrating into wilderness or frontier areas are a major proximate driver of habitat loss and fragmentation, wildfires, overhunting and other environmental degradation, often with irreversible impacts on ecosystems^{2, 3, 4, 5}. Unfortunately, much road proliferation is chaotic or poorly planned^3,4, 6, and the rate of expansion is so great that it often overwhelms the capacity of environmental planners and managers^{2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}. Here we present a global scheme for prioritizing road building. This large-scale zoning plan seeks to limit the environmental costs of road expansion while maximizing its benefits for human development, by helping to increase agricultural production, which is an urgent priority given that global food demand could double by mid-century^8, 9. Our analysis identifies areas with high environmental values where future road building should be avoided if possible, areas where strategic road improvements could promote agricultural development with relatively modest environmental costs, and ‘conflict areas’ where road building could have sizeable benefits for agriculture but with serious environmental damage. Our plan provides a template for proactively zoning and prioritizing roads during the most explosive era of road expansion in human history.

NATURE | ARTICLE Print Email Share/bookmark Developmental plasticity and the origin of tetrapods

The origin of tetrapods from their fish antecedents, approximately 400 million years ago, was coupled with the origin of terrestrial locomotion and the evolution of supporting limbs. Polypterus is a member of the basal-most group of ray-finned fish (actinopterygians) and has many plesiomorphic morphologies that are comparable to elpistostegid fishes, which are stem tetrapods.Polypterus therefore serves as an extant analogue of stem tetrapods, allowing us to examine how developmental plasticity affects the ‘terrestrialization’ of fish. We measured the developmental plasticity of anatomical and biomechanical responses in Polypterus reared on land. Here we show the remarkable correspondence between the environmentally induced phenotypes of terrestrializedPolypterus and the ancient anatomical changes in stem tetrapods, and we provide insight into stem tetrapod behavioural evolution. Our results raise the possibility that environmentally induced developmental plasticity facilitated the origin of the terrestrial traits that led to tetrapods.

A massive galaxy in its core formation phase three billion years after the Big Bang

Most massive galaxies are thought to have formed their dense stellar cores in early cosmic epochs^1, 2, 3. Previous studies have found galaxies with high gas velocity dispersions⁴ or small apparent sizes^5, 6, 7, but so far no objects have been identified with both the stellar structure and the gas dynamics of a forming core. Here we report a candidate core in the process of formation 11 billion years ago, at redshift z = 2.3. This galaxy, GOODS-N-774, has a stellar mass of 100 billion solar masses, a half-light radius of 1.0 kiloparsecs and a star formation rate of   solar masses per year. The star-forming gas has a velocity dispersion of 317 ± 30 kilometres per second. This is similar to the stellar velocity dispersions of the putative descendants of GOODS-N-774, which are compact quiescent galaxies at z ≈ 2 (refs 8, 9, 10, 11) and giant elliptical galaxies in the nearby Universe. Galaxies such as GOODS-N-774 seem to be rare; however, from the star formation rate and size of this galaxy we infer that many star-forming cores may be heavily obscured, and could be missed in optical and near-infrared surveys.

Blue Lobster Caught Off Maine Coast Gets New Home

 In Olympic National Park, the past has gone out with a bang.

A small construction crew on Tuesday detonated a large charge of dynamite, destroying the last remaining portion of Glines Canyon Dam and hastening the restoration of the Elwha River in the far reaches of the Pacific Northwest. Part of the largest dam-removal project in the nation, the $325 million undertaking represents the beginning of a new era for the river, the surrounding ecosystem and those who come to experience it.

“It’s taken 25 to 30 years to get to this point,” said park spokesperson Barb Maynes, “so it’s great to see it actually happen.”

Located just west of Port Angeles, Washington, the Elwha drains the largest watershed on the Olympic Peninsula and once supported legendary salmon runs including king salmon, also known as chinook, that reputedly tipped the scales at 100 pounds.

Then local entrepreneur Thomas Aldwell built a pair of dams on the river, starting with the 108-foot-high Elwha Dam, completed in 1913, and then the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon Dam, completed in 1927. Neither featured fish ladders, effectively reducing 70 miles of salmon spawning habitat to just five.

“It’s going to take another 30 to 100 years to see complete restoration. Taking the dams out is just the beginning of the story.”

Other problems arose over time, from sediment build-up behind the dams to coastal erosion to the incompatibility of having the Glines Canyon dam and a man-made reservoir in what became a national park in 1938. It all came to a head in the 1980s with legal challenges, political battles and eventually the passage of the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act in 1992.

The Elwha Dam, just outside the park, was removed in 2012, and all but 35 feet of the Glines Canyon Dam is gone. The silt-laden reservoirs that once lay behind them have begun to flow freely through forests in various states of recovery.

ROB LOVITT FOR NBC NEWS

Construction manager Don Laford stands on what remains of the Glines Canyon Dam. When the project is completed, all that will remain will be the walkways behind him, which will allow visitors to peer down into the canyon proper for the first time in almost a century.

“It’s going to take another 30 to 100 years to see complete restoration,” said Rob Smith, Northwest regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association. “Taking the dams out is just the beginning of the story.”

Even so, dramatic changes are already on display, says Morgan Colonel, owner of Olympic Raft and Kayak, which runs float trips on the eight-mile stretch between the two dam sites. “The dam removal is why I moved here,” he said. “It’s the chance to experience a whole new river.”

Manning the oars on a recent afternoon, he provided a running commentary on the evolving landscape. New banks sport red alder and cottonwood saplings. Log jams are catching sediment and creating new islands. River channels change with every rainstorm, and sandy beaches are replacing beds of cobble and rock.

And, perhaps most important of all, the return of that icon of the Pacific Northwest: the salmon, which are not only returning in larger numbers but also swimming farther upstream. “Last year, we saw king salmon above the Elwha Dam site,” said Smith. “To see fish swimming where no one has seen them for 100 years is amazing.”

That, in turn, has led to a concurrent rebound in other wildlife, including otters, ospreys and bald eagles. Surf smelt and Dungeness crab are also beginning to return to local waters as sediment-rich beaches and sandy bottoms replace the rocky shores near the mouth of the river, said Robert Elofson, river restoration director for the adjacent Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.

ROB LOVITT FOR NBC NEWS

Rob Smith, left, northwest regional director for National Parks Conservation Association and Robert Elofson, river restoration director for the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, discuss the continuing changes in the river’s path, water volume and turbidity, a key factor in salmon survival.

Recreational options are increasing as well. Last week, the National Park Service began offering free guided hikes along the river where the reservoir behind Elwha Dam used to be, and viewing platforms at the Glines Canyon site could open by the end of the year. Depending on water flows, sediment transport and continued debris removal, Colonel hopes to eventually offer trips through the Elwha Dam site, where Class IV rapids will turn today’s float trips into white-knuckle whitewater adventures.

For his part, Elofson is taking a somewhat longer view: “My grandfather was 19 or 20 when the first dam was built; he was one of the last ones to fish the river as it was. I have grand hopes that when my grandkids are adults, they’ll be able to fish the same river.”

OSCA1 mediates osmotic-stress-evoked Ca2+ increases vital for osmosensing in Arabidopsis

Water is crucial to plant growth and development. Environmental water deficiency triggers an osmotic stress signalling cascade, which induces short-term cellular responses to reduce water loss and long-term responses to remodel the transcriptional network and physiological and developmental processes^{1, 2, 3, 4}. Several signalling components that have been identified by extensive genetic screens for altered sensitivities to osmotic stress seem to function downstream of the perception of osmotic stress. It is known that hyperosmolality and various other stimuli trigger increases in cytosolic free calcium concentration ([Ca²⁺]i)^5, 6. Considering that in bacteria and animals osmosensing Ca²⁺ channels serve as osmosensors^7, 8, hyperosmolality-induced [Ca²⁺]iincreases have been widely speculated to be involved in osmosensing in plants^1, 9. However, the molecular nature of corresponding Ca²⁺ channels remain unclear^6, 10, 11. Here we describe a hyperosmolality-gated calcium-permeable channel and its function in osmosensing in plants. Using calcium-imaging-based unbiased forward genetic screens we isolated Arabidopsis mutants that exhibit low hyperosmolality-induced [Ca²⁺]i increases. These mutants were rescreened for their cellular, physiological and developmental responses to osmotic stress, and those with clear combined phenotypes were selected for further physical mapping. One of the mutants, reduced hyperosmolality-induced [Ca²⁺]i increase 1 (osca1), displays impaired osmotic Ca²⁺ signalling in guard cells and root cells, and attenuated water transpiration regulation and root growth in response to osmotic stress. OSCA1 is identified as a previously unknown plasma membrane protein and forms hyperosmolality-gated calcium-permeable channels, revealing that OSCA1 may be an osmosensor. OSCA1 represents a channel responsible for [Ca²⁺]i increases induced by a stimulus in plants, opening up new avenues for studying Ca²⁺ machineries for other stimuli and providing potential molecular genetic targets for engineering drought-resistant crops.

Blue Lobster Caught Off Maine Coast Gets New Home

In Olympic National Park, the past has gone out with a bang.

A small construction crew on Tuesday detonated a large charge of dynamite, destroying the last remaining portion of Glines Canyon Dam and hastening the restoration of the Elwha River in the far reaches of the Pacific Northwest. Part of the largest dam-removal project in the nation, the $325 million undertaking represents the beginning of a new era for the river, the surrounding ecosystem and those who come to experience it.

“It’s taken 25 to 30 years to get to this point,” said park spokesperson Barb Maynes, “so it’s great to see it actually happen.”

Located just west of Port Angeles, Washington, the Elwha drains the largest watershed on the Olympic Peninsula and once supported legendary salmon runs including king salmon, also known as chinook, that reputedly tipped the scales at 100 pounds.

Then local entrepreneur Thomas Aldwell built a pair of dams on the river, starting with the 108-foot-high Elwha Dam, completed in 1913, and then the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon Dam, completed in 1927. Neither featured fish ladders, effectively reducing 70 miles of salmon spawning habitat to just five.

“It’s going to take another 30 to 100 years to see complete restoration. Taking the dams out is just the beginning of the story.”

Other problems arose over time, from sediment build-up behind the dams to coastal erosion to the incompatibility of having the Glines Canyon dam and a man-made reservoir in what became a national park in 1938. It all came to a head in the 1980s with legal challenges, political battles and eventually the passage of the Elwha River Ecosystem and Fisheries Restoration Act in 1992.

The Elwha Dam, just outside the park, was removed in 2012, and all but 35 feet of the Glines Canyon Dam is gone. The silt-laden reservoirs that once lay behind them have begun to flow freely through forests in various states of recovery.

ROB LOVITT FOR NBC NEWS

Construction manager Don Laford stands on what remains of the Glines Canyon Dam. When the project is completed, all that will remain will be the walkways behind him, which will allow visitors to peer down into the canyon proper for the first time in almost a century.

“It’s going to take another 30 to 100 years to see complete restoration,” said Rob Smith, Northwest regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association. “Taking the dams out is just the beginning of the story.”

Even so, dramatic changes are already on display, says Morgan Colonel, owner of Olympic Raft and Kayak, which runs float trips on the eight-mile stretch between the two dam sites. “The dam removal is why I moved here,” he said. “It’s the chance to experience a whole new river.”

Manning the oars on a recent afternoon, he provided a running commentary on the evolving landscape. New banks sport red alder and cottonwood saplings. Log jams are catching sediment and creating new islands. River channels change with every rainstorm, and sandy beaches are replacing beds of cobble and rock.

And, perhaps most important of all, the return of that icon of the Pacific Northwest: the salmon, which are not only returning in larger numbers but also swimming farther upstream. “Last year, we saw king salmon above the Elwha Dam site,” said Smith. “To see fish swimming where no one has seen them for 100 years is amazing.”

That, in turn, has led to a concurrent rebound in other wildlife, including otters, ospreys and bald eagles. Surf smelt and Dungeness crab are also beginning to return to local waters as sediment-rich beaches and sandy bottoms replace the rocky shores near the mouth of the river, said Robert Elofson, river restoration director for the adjacent Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.

ROB LOVITT FOR NBC NEWS

Rob Smith, left, northwest regional director for National Parks Conservation Association and Robert Elofson, river restoration director for the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, discuss the continuing changes in the river’s path, water volume and turbidity, a key factor in salmon survival.

Recreational options are increasing as well. Last week, the National Park Service began offering free guided hikes along the river where the reservoir behind Elwha Dam used to be, and viewing platforms at the Glines Canyon site could open by the end of the year. Depending on water flows, sediment transport and continued debris removal, Colonel hopes to eventually offer trips through the Elwha Dam site, where Class IV rapids will turn today’s float trips into white-knuckle whitewater adventures.

For his part, Elofson is taking a somewhat longer view: “My grandfather was 19 or 20 when the first dam was built; he was one of the last ones to fish the river as it was. I have grand hopes that when my grandkids are adults, they’ll be able to fish the same river.”