Seattle now has the first medical marijuana vending machines in Washington State, although a person must have their medical marijuana card checked before being able to buy anything.

The machines called ZaZZZ are produced by the technology company, American Green Inc., which plans to install plant five more of them in Seattle and Washington state, as well as other states where medical marijuana is legal. The machines, which are located in licensed medical marijuana dispensaries, are stocked with cannabis flower, vaporizer pens, hemp-oil energy drinks, and more.

Voters in a state of Washington legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, the same year it became legal in Colorado.

Currently, medical marijuana is legal in 23 states.

NEXT: Longest surgery: Feb. 4-8, 1951

Sourced from: Reuters, Medical pot vending machine debuts in Seattle

Want more control over the shade of your glasses? Scientists at Georgia Tech are creating lenses that can be controlled by person wearing them–the shading and clearing of lenses would be controlled by the person wearing the glasses instead of changing based on the surrounding light.

The new lens material the team has created is a blend of electrochromic polymers (ECPs) that they say can be incorporated as the active material in user-controlled electrochromic eyewear. In lab tests, all the color blends showed an ability to change from shaded (10 percent transmittance of light) to clear (70 percent transmittance) in a few seconds.

The material would change color in response to a change in electrical charge, which could be controlled by a small switch.

The scientists, who described their research in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, believe these lenses would be especially useful to airline pilots and security guards – people who could  benefit from lenses with a much faster response time in changing from clear to color.

NEXT: Longest Surgery: Feb. 4-8, 1951

Sourced from: Medical News Today, Scientists create eyeglasses that become shaded ‘on command’

New research led by scientists at Stanford University suggests that different mental health disorders – ranging from depression to schizophrenia – originate from the same regions in the brain.

To conduct their study, the team looked at nearly 200 structural brain imaging studies that involved more than 7,000 people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder or anxiety, as well as some 8,500 healthy individuals. When they compared the findings from different psychiatric disorders, they found that most of the disorders were linked to gray matter loss in a network of three brain regions involved in higher cognitive functions, such as self-control and certain types of memory.

This region of the brain is linked to executive functioning–how well a person functions in daily life, such as holding down a job, maintaining a relationship and not regularly acting on impulses.

The team notes that because many psychiatric disorders share the same structural root, it may be possible to administer treatments from one disorder to another. Future research in this area will focus on whether brain activity is also similar across different mental health disorders.

Sourced from: Live Science, Many Mental Disorders Affect Same Brain Regions

The current wave of opiod and heroin addiction and overdoses is tied to the overprescribing of painkillers by doctors, according to a report of a team of researchers.

Based on analysis of data since 2002, scientists at Johns Hopkins University, Brandeis University and the University of North Florida. found that new cases of non-medical abuse has declined, yet painkiller overdose deaths are on the rise, and that, they say, suggests that recreational use of painkillers is not a key driver of the opiod crisis.

“I think we have overestimated the benefits of prescription opioids and underestimated their risks,” said study co-author Dr. Caleb Alexander at the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health.

To help solve this problem, the researchers suggest that some of the same public health strategies used for controlling disease outbreaks can be effective for bringing the opioid crisis under control, such as focusing on prevention and access to treatment. Prevention strategies outlined in the report include increased public education on the risks of prescription opioids and wider use of state prescription drug monitoring program data to alert doctors to possible doctor-shopping by patients looking for painkillers.

The study also recommends increasing access to the addiction medicine buprenorphine and ensuring that first responders, syringe exchange programs, and family members of high risk opioid users have access to the opioid overdose antidote, naloxone.

NEXT: Scientists create glasses that let wearer control shading

Sourced from: Science Daily, Opioid and heroin crisis triggered by doctors overprescribing painkillers