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Researchers examined data from the Missouri Adolescen t Female Twins Study: the mean age of the 3,787 women at time of interview was 24.5 years; 85.4 percent were EA, 14.6 percent AA. Trauma exposures were defined as sexual abuse (SA), physical abuse (PA), witnessing another person being killed or injured, experiencing an accident, or experiencing a disaster. Trauma exposure was examined as a predictor of alcohol initiation, transition to the first AUD symptom, and transition to an AUD diagnosis -- while also considering other substance involvement , parental characteristics, and commonly co-occurring psychiatric disorders. Results showed that trauma experiences were important contributors to all stages of alcohol involvement in EA women only, with different trauma types conferring risk for each stage of alcohol involvement. For example, in EA women SA was associated with alcohol initiation prior to the age of 14; PA predicted the transition from initiation to the first AUD symp...

Siddharth Chandra, director of MSU's Asian Studies Center, has developed a methodology based on the wholesale prices of Ecstasy in 59 cities, identifying probable city-to-city links for the transit of the drug. He used data published by the National Drug Intelligence C enter of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2002 to 2011, which field intelligence officers and local, regional and federal law enforcement sources collected through drug arrests and investigations. "NDIC hasn't highlighted the Carolinas as an area of activity but our price data suggest there's a lot going on there," he said. "Prices are probably one of the most important economic phenomena because they carry information about the movement of goods." Never before implemented to study drug-trafficking patterns, Chandra's methodology is simple. Drugs are inferred to flow from the city with the lower price to the city with the higher price. If cities are connected as source and de...