ADDYSOFT BLOG

The underlying causes of a behavior, such as alcohol drinking, can change during adolescence and young adulthood. Prior alcohol research has shown that, in general: shared/common environment influences are strongest in early adolescence, declining in strength until young adulthood; unique environmental influences are moderate, but stable, during adolescence and young adulthood; and genetic influences are weakest during early adolescence, steadily increasing in strength until young adulthood. This study examined the relations between genetic and environmental etiologies of alcohol use and the influence of peer use, parental autonomy granting, and maternal closeness on this behavior. Researchers analyzed the first three waves of data collected during the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health for 2,447 twin and sibling pairs (30% male pairs, 32% female pairs, 38% opposite sex pairs) ranging in age from 13 to 27 years. Wave 1was collected from 1994 to 1995, Wave 2 f...

Women who became first-time mothers as teens were significantly more likely than older mothers to have greater risks for heart and blood vessel disease later in life, according to new research in  Journal of the American Heart Association , the Open Access Journal of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. Researchers found that women reporting a first birth before the age of 20 scored significantly higher on Framingham Risk Score -- a measure commonly used to estimate the 10-year cardiovascular risk. In comparison, women whose first births occurred at older ages had lower average risk scores: The lowest cardiovascular risk, however, was among women who had never given birth. "Adolescent mothers may need to be more careful about lifestyle factors that increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, including maintaining a healthy body weight and sufficient physical activity," said study lead author Catherine Pirkle, Ph.D., assistant professor in t...

Fruits and vegetables are a pivotal part of a healthful diet, but their benefits are not limited to physical health. New research finds that increasing fruit and vegetable consumption may improve psychological well-being in as little as 2 weeks. Increasing fruit and vegetable intake may benefit psychological well-being. Study leader Dr. Tamlin Conner, of the Department of Psychology at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and colleagues found that young adults who were given extra fruits and vegetables each day for 14 days ate more of the produce and experienced a boost in motivation and vitality. The researchers recently reported their findings in the journal PLOS One. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, adults should aim to consume around two cups of fruits and around two to three cups of vegetables daily. One cup of fruits is the equivalent to half a grapefruit or a large orange, and one cup of vegetables is proportionate to one la...

Everybody loves to be the stickler who calls attention to how incapable the flu immunization is, or how poor our reputation is on anticipating the correct match. The shot needs to secure against three or four particular infections, each with their own remarkable hereditary profile, and frequently the yearly expectation is off. Prompt the naysayers. And they’re not wrong. Why is it so difficult to know what sort of vaccine to make? What's more, how might we improve? The flu is a sneaky little devil Influenza viruses are tricky. Unlike more stable diseases, the flu is constantly morphing into ever-so-slightly different forms to evade our annual vaccine campaigns. This is at the core of our need for an annual shot—there’s always a new genetic variant. It’s somewhat akin to antibiotic resistance. Viruses tend to have more genetic mutations because their replication method is prone to errors. To more complex organisms, constant mutations would be problematic (it only takes a few key ...

Angelina Jolie Quotes (42) Angelina Jolie is an American actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian. She has received an Academy Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards, and has been cited as Hollywood’s highest-paid actress. She is also known for her humanitarian and activist work in Africa and the Middle East. She continues to be a role model and inspires millions to be confident & powerful people who change the world. Here are 42 of her most inspiring quotes: 1. “I’ve realized that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy.” – Angelina Jolie 2. “If I make a fool of myself, who cares? I’m not frightened by anyone perception of me.” – Angelina Jolie 3. “People have two sides, a good side and a bad side, a past, a future. We must embrace both in someone we love.” – Angelina Jolie 4. “We have a responsibility to be aware of others.” – Angelina Jolie 5. “If you as...

Future smartwatches will be able to better analyse and understand  our activities by automatically discovering when we engage in some new type of activity. London Scientists have created a new algorithm that enables smartwatches to not only record your exercise session but also detect when you are brushing your teeth or cooking, an advance that will provide a richer and more accurate picture of your daily life. Current smartwatches can recognise a limited number of particular activities, including yoga and running, but these are programmed in advance. The new method, developed by researchers from University of Sussex in the UK, enables the technology to discover activities as they happen, not just simply when exercising, but also when brushing your teeth or cutting vegetables. Traditional models "cluster" together bursts of activity to estimate what a person has been doing, and for how long, researchers said. For example, a series of continuous steps may be clustered i...

A new type of smart fabric developed at the University of Washington could pave the way for jackets that store invisible passcodes and open the door to your apartment or office. The UW computer scientists have created fabrics and fashion accessories that can store data -- from security codes to identification tags -- without needing any on-board electronics or sensors. Using magnetic properties of conductive thread, University of Washington researchers are able to store data in fabric. In this example, the code to unlock a door is stored in a fabric patch and read by an array of magnetometers. As described in a paper presented Oct. 25 at the Association for Computing Machinery's User Interface Software and Technology Symposium (UIST 2017), they leveraged previously unexplored magnetic properties of off-the-shelf conductive thread. The data can be read using an instrument embedded in existing smartphones to enable navigation apps. "This is a completely electronic-f...