One in ten adults suffer from addiction.
Everyone who has watched a loved one suffer from addiction wonders, “Why are they acting like this? Why can’t they stop?” And people with addictions wonder the same things about themselves. Many people think of addiction as a moral failing, or as a conscious choice—yet neither belief is supported by scientific evidence.
By Paul Caine Producer, WTTW’s Chicago Tonight
Originally published at: https://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2016/03/21/exploring-science-addiction
Rising rates of addiction to heroin and prescription drugs have been making headlines across the country. People suffering with addiction have often been stigmatized and viewed as being too weak to address either moral or personal failings. But the reality is that addiction is one of the most common forms of mental illness that impacts tens of millions of Americans every year.
Recent advances in neuroscience have transformed our understanding of addiction and paved the way for new treatments.
By Janet McMillan, C2ST volunteer and graduate student in chemistry at Northwestern University
Cancer is the second most common cause of death in America. Despite this bleak statistic, cancer therapies have improved drastically over the past decades. Many diseases that were once an imminent death sentence can now be managed comfortably for years after diagnoses. However for many others, cancer is still a certain death sentence.
By Valerie Lapointe, Medill Reports, video by Chencheng Zhao
Originally published at: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/climate-disruption-what-do-we-do-now/
Global warming sounds too cozy, says Seth B. Darling, a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Molecular Engineering. He prefers the term “climate disruption” for the kinds of threats to coastlines, weather, food and water that the world faces. His recent talk, sponsored by the Chicago Council on Science and Technology, tackled looked at “Climate Disruption: What We Can Do Now.”
Darling and most other scientists link the cause of climate change to burning fossil fuels such as gasoline. They emit carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas linked to heating up the Earth’s atmosphere. Carbon dioxide levels have increased 40 percent in the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Cannabis abuse during adolescence increases the risk of developing psychosis and prefrontal cortex (PFC)-dependent cognitive deficits later in life. The CB1 cannabinoid receptor has long been known to mediate the psychoactive effects of cannabis, yet the mechanisms underlying such vulnerability remain unknown. Here, I will discuss data from my lab and others showing that long-lasting deficits in prefrontal functions can occur following repeated exposure to cannabinoids during adolescence. Continue reading “C2ST Speakeasy: “Cannabis and the Developing Brain” with Dr. Kuei Yuan Tseng”
