A new study has found that long-term stimulant abuse had more significant effects on brain volume in women compared with men.

The researchers sought to determine how the brains of people previously dependent on stimulants were different from the brains of healthy people. 

The researchers analyzed structural brain magnetic resonance imaging exams in 127 men and women, including 59 people (28 women and 31 men) who were previously dependent on cocaine, amphetamines and/or methamphetamine for an average of 15.7 years, and 68 people (28 women and 40 men) who were similar in age and were not previously dependent on those drugs.

Healing times for skin ulcers and bedsores can be reduced by a third with the use of low-intensity ultrasound - ultrasound transmits a vibration through the skin and wakes up cells in wounds helping to stimulate and accelerate the healing process. 

More than 200,000 patients in the UK suffer with chronic wounds every year at a cost of over £3.1 billion to the NHS, according to background information in the article. The ultrasound treatment, which also reduces the chance of wounds getting infected, is particularly effective when treating diabetics and the elderly. 

According to the World Health Organization, clinical depression carries the second heaviest burden of disability among all medical conditions worldwide (around 350 million people) and accounts for more than 8 percent of all U.S. years lived with disability. 

The findings of a recent study could potentially lead to new ways to predict risk for depression and treatments for the disease, using genome-wide association studies. 

Surgeries related to overuse elbow injuries, i.e. Tommy John Surgery, are more common among youth athletes than previously believed, according to research presented last week at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting in Orlando.

"Our results showed that 15-19 year-olds accounted for 56.7 percent of the Ulnar Collateral Ligament Reconstruction (UCLR) or Tommy John surgeries performed in the U.S. between 2007-2011. This is a significant increase over time with an average increase of 9.12 percent per year," said lead author, Brandon Erickson, MD of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.

By Charles Choi, Inside Science -- Bloodcurdling screams in horror movies often send tingles down people's spines, even though they know such shrieks are fake. Now scientists have discovered the key ingredient of screams that activates the brain's fear circuitry. Inventors may have unknowingly copied this hair-raising acoustic feature into alarms found in cars and houses.

A humble soil additive used by millions of amateur and professional gardeners alike is set to slash the cost of the most effective form of insulation for buildings.

Brunel University London academic Dr. Harjit Singh has proved in the laboratory that vacuum insulation panels can be made with a core of perlite - the volcanic ore “popcorn” used in horticulture to improve drainage and water retention.

This dramatically reduces the cost of the panels which are normally made by surrounding a core of fumed silica with metallised PET envelope. Initial cost savings are estimated to be at least 30 per cent.

A group of scientists at SISSA have proposed a quick alternative for predicting the internal dynamics of RNA molecules (how the different parts move in relation to each other). Their simple solution, which uses beads and springs, provides similar results to other, more complex and expensive techniques for analyzing molecules that are currently in use. 

New research has confirmed plutonium's magnetism, which scientists have long theorized but have never been able to experimentally observe. 

Plutonium was first produced in 1940 and its unstable nucleus allows it to undergo fission, making it useful for nuclear fuels as well as for nuclear weapons. Much less known, however, is that the electronic cloud surrounding the plutonium nucleus is equally unstable and makes plutonium the most electronically complex element in the periodic table, with intriguingly intricate properties for a simple elemental metal.

A lot of attention has been given to city dwellers and the health risks of sitting in front of a computer screen, but almost 50 of the world spends 75 percent of their time on their feet.

Prolonged standing is associated with short-term adverse health issues, including reports of fatigue, leg cramps, and backaches, which can affect job performance and cause significant discomfort. A new study published in Human Factors suggests that, over time, this type of sustained muscle fatigue can result in serious health consequences. 

Researchers have developed an inhalable vaccine that protects primates against Ebola. 

Previous studies with primates suggest that aerosols of most biothreat agents, which are particles dispersed in the air, are infectious. Recent studies show that contact with the Ebola virus through the mucus membranes that line the respiratory tract results in infection, suggesting that airway linings may be important portals of entry for the virus. Aerosolized delivery has never before been tested for an Ebola vaccine or any other viral hemorrhagic fever vaccine.