News by Subject Social & Behavior

Alcohol advertisements on social media sites such as Facebook can increase young adults' desire to drink if the ads contain pro-drinking comments from users. That's according to new research in the current issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends screening adults 18 and older, including pregnant women, for unhealthy alcohol use in primary care settings. Those patients who engage in risky or hazardous drinking should be offered brief behavioral counseling interventions to reduce unhealthy alcohol use. The USPSTF also concludes the evidence is insufficient regarding screening for alcohol use in adolescents 12 to 17 in primary care settings.

No matter if it's grandma's cookies or commercially produced rolls, pastry lovers expect their baked goods to have a certain 'golden brown' allure -- but only after baking. A white dough that changes hue during storage, however, can negatively affect the appearance and perception of the final baked product. Now in a study appearing in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists report that they have developed a natural way to prevent discoloration during storage.

Adolescents with a particular variant of an opioid receptor gene have less response in a part of prefrontal cortex that evaluates rewards, compared to those with the other version of the gene, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Advances in understanding adolescent brain development may aid future treatments of mental illness and alcohol and substance use disorders. The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2018, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world's largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

While most college students who drink alcohol don't intend to drink to the point of blackout, many don't fully understand the specific behaviors and risk factors associated with alcohol-induced memory loss, a suite of new studies found.

Autumn is the season for falling leaves, pumpkin-spice-flavored everything and apple cider. Yet new research indicates that, in addition to alcohol, some hard ciders may contain a hefty dose of added sugar, which may not be disclosed on the label. The researchers report their results in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Society must take collective responsibility to reduce the harm caused by alcohol use disorders, a University of Otago academic says.

As new study by the Prevention Research Center of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation and the Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, Department of Biostatistics examined the determinants of the number of licensed bars, restaurants, and liquor stores across neighborhoods in 53 California cities from 2000 to 2013.