news 2009

myScience. ch has just published information on salaries in Switzerland. The median gross salary in Switzerland was 5823 Swiss francs in 2008.

Michael Browne, Head of European Research and Development at UCL said: ?These grants are designed to allow exceptional established research leaders in any field of science, engineering and scholarship to pursue risk-taking, interdisciplinary and pioneering research. The Advanced Grant scheme, in particular, is highly competitive (with an overall success rate of seven percent) and highly prestigious.

The national research network Swedish Brain Power, which is led and coordinated from Karolinska Institutet, is to receive SEK 100 million from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation. Its research focuses on early diagnosis and treatment and improved care for patients with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and ALS.

A new UCLA study shows that patient-care performance ratings for 25 medical groups across California improved significantly following the launch of a statewide pay-for-performance program in 2004 — but not when incentives focused on doctors' productivity.

Farmers and pastoralists in a maize-growing region of Eastern Kenya. A new study finds that climate change could severely harm crop productivity and increase the likelihood that disadvantaged rural populations will take up arms. (Marshall Burke photo) BERKELEY — Climate change could increase the likelihood of civil war in sub-Saharan Africa by over 50 percent within the next two decades, according to a new study led by a team of researchers at University of California, Berkeley, and published in today's (Monday, Nov.

A team of UCL researchers say that subliminal messaging is most effective when the message being conveyed is negative. Subliminal images ' in other words, images shown so briefly that the viewer does not consciously 'see' them ' have long been the subject of controversy, particularly in the area of advertising.

PA249/09 Economists have finally proved what most of us have suspected for a long time - when it comes to apologising, talk is cheap. According to new research, firms that simply say sorry to disgruntled customers fare better than those that offer financial compensation. The ploy works even though the recipient of the apology seldom gets it from the person who made it necessary in the first place.

Cambridge, Mass. September 15, 2009 - Marc Melitz, an economist who specializes in international trade theory and has worked on the development of trade models that account for differences in productivity between firms, has been named professor of economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, effective July 1, 2009.

Cambridge, Mass. September 3, 2009 - Rewards go further than punishment in building human cooperation and benefiting the common good, according to research published this week in the journal Science by researchers at Harvard University and the Stockholm School of Economics. While previous studies have focused almost exclusively on punishment for promoting public cooperation, here rewards are shown to be much more successful.

Published in PLoS One, the study was led by Fiery Cushman, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, along with Anna Dreber of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard and the Stockholm School of Economics. “Punishing those who’ve caused accidents seems to be something that people do routinely,” says Cushman.

July 14, 2009 — Coral Gables — Why Reinforcing Concrete Columns with Internal Bars Made of Glass Fibers Can Make a Building More Sturdy The University of Miami, through its NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center RB2C performed the first-ever tests of full-scale concrete columns internally reinforced with glass fiber reinforced polymer bars.

PA 136/09 Despite the global recession and the crisis in the banking sector, consumer confidence in financial services remains intact, according to a report compiled for the Nottingham University Business School. The Financial Services Trust Index 2009, by Professor Christine Ennew is based on 1400 consumer interviews and is the first of its kind to look at simple yes and no answers.

Teaching young children how to speak a second language is good for their minds, report two Cornell linguistic researchers. Learning a second language does not cause language confusion, language delay or cognitive deficit, which have been concerns in the past. In fact, according to studies at the Cornell Language Acquisition Lab (CLAL), children who learn a second language can maintain attention despite outside stimuli better than children who know only one language.

How can the marine environment benefit our physical and mental health' Could understanding rip currents help save lives' What impact will the Wave Hub have on our coast line' These are just a few of the topics that will be discussed as the Plymouth Marine Sciences Partnership (PMSP) showcases pioneering research at its first-ever research symposium, 'Marine Science for a Changing World'.

As technological advances continue to have an impact on marketing research practices, an academic at the University of Birmingham has proposed ways that researchers can make appropriate choices at different stages of the research process. Doctor Eric Shiu, in a new book - Marketing Research, analyses the use of technology-enabled market intelligence, geographic information system, Facebook, Second Life and a new electronic form of consumer data - consumer-generated media (CGM).