news 2010

PA 323/10 Putting tobacco out of sight in shops can change the attitude of young people to smoking, while not hitting retailers in the pocket, researchers at The University of Nottingham have discovered. Academics from the University's UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies looked at the effect of the removal of tobacco displays in the Republic of Ireland, ahead of similar legislation which is due to come into force in the UK.

AUSTIN, Texas — The source of HIV infection in two separate criminal cases in which men were convicted of intentionally infecting their female sexual partners was confirmed by scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and Baylor College of Medicine using evolutionary forensics. The research shows it's possible to identify the source of a cluster of diseases by analyzing the evolution of a virus within its host and between individuals.

29 October 2010 New physics law sheds light on measurement precision Researchers from the University of Sheffield have discovered a new law of physics that determines exactly what it costs to make a measurement with a certain precision. The discovery by Dr Pieter Kok and his team from the University´s Department of Physics and Astronomy, which was published today (29 October 2010) in the journal Physical Review Letters, will hopefully help with the detection of elusive gravitational waves, and open up new levels of miniaturisation in nanotechnology.

UCL scientists Dr Lewis Dartnell and Dr Petra Boynton explain their motivation for posing for Geek Calendar, a project in aid of libel reform that launches this week. "The Geek Calendar is a fantastic venture started by three expert science communicators: Dr Alice Bell (Imperial College London), Mun-Keat Looi and Louise Crane (Wellcome Trust).

7 Oct 2010 Prohibition of cannabis in the United States may be counter-productive, with a new study showing that a period of increased law enforcement against the drug coincided with an increase in the number of young adult cannabis users smoking cheaper and more potent produce.

Liverpool, UK - 6 October 2010: Researchers at the University of Liverpool have found that banning under-18s from buying cigarettes has had little impact on young people¿s access to tobacco and large numbers buy cigarettes via strangers. The study, in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, found a widespread acceptance of underage sales in some communities and significant numbers of young people waiting outside shops and asking strangers to buy cigarettes for them.

High speed beams, heaps of excitement and hunting the Higgs boson Imperial physicist talks about working at Fermilab and the Large Hadron Collider - News Thursday 19 August 2010 By Lucy Goodchild If looking for the elusive Higgs boson particle is like searching for a needle in a haystack, research published last month has made the haystack smaller.

The number of 16- and 17-year-old smokers has dropped since it became illegal to sell cigarettes to under-18s according to new UCL research published today in the journal Addiction . In the first study of its kind, more than 1,100 16- and 17-year-olds were interviewed from across England before and after the age rise in October 2007.

By Michael Bezilla Research/Penn State David H. Kaye is Distinguished Professor of Law and Weiss Family Faculty Scholar in Penn State's Dickinson School of Law, and a member of the graduate faculty of the University's Forensic Science program. He is an internationally recognized legal expert on DNA and other forms of scientific evidence and the author of " The Double Helix and the Law of Evidence," released earlier this year by Harvard University Press.

Emotions - particularly those provoked by negative events - can cause distorted, inaccurate memories, but less often in children than in adults, according to a new Cornell study.

Researchers at the University have found that enhanced disclosure checks, which contain details of both spent and unspent convictions, give a false sense of reassurance as the majority of persistent and serious offenders are unknown to either the children's hearing system or the adult criminal justice system.

Liverpool, UK - 15 June 2010: Researchers have found that witnesses who receive guidance on cross-examination techniques present more accurate court testimony than those who are unfamiliar with the style of questioning. The study, by researchers at the Universities of Liverpool and Leeds, showed that the construction and phrasing of 'lawyerese' questions can inhibit processes in the brain that impact on how a witness responds under cross-examination.

The first academic study on whether third party litigation could give people with limited means greater access to the justice system has revealed its initial findings. The research team from Oxford and Lincoln universities says preliminary findings show that although litigation funding has increased access to justice for companies, individuals do not benefit from the funding models currently available.

PhD student Jay Stone (UCL MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology) discusses the implications for science of the current inequities in British libel law. In science, healthy debate and discussion of each other's work is crucial. We all read papers and discuss what we think about them; whether we agree with their controls, their statistical analysis, whether we would have drawn the same conclusions.

It's the last place you want to be judged on your looks. But in a court of law, it pays to be attractive, according to a new Cornell study that has found that unattractive defendants tend to get hit with longer, harsher sentences - on average 22 months longer in prison. The study also identified two kinds of jurors: Those who process information emotionally and give harsher verdicts to unattractive defendants and those who do it rationally and focus less on defendants' looks.

While fMRI tests distinguished between rich recollection and a weak memory, the researchers could not prove whether those memories were based on the recollection of an actual experience. It can happen in any criminal trial. A witness is being questioned about her recollection of a suspect, an event or a key piece of evidence.

University | Art 01 Mar 10 Cornelia Sorabji was India's first lawyer and the first woman to sit Oxford's Bachelor of Civil Laws exam. Reproduced with permission of Richard Sorabji. Oxford University is hosting a temporary display and conference to commemorate the University's relationship with India during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Simon Corcoran and Benet Salway made the breakthrough after piecing together 17 fragments of previously incomprehensible parchment. The fragments were being studied at UCL as part of the Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded 'Projet Volterra' ? a ten-year study of Roman law in its full social, legal and political context.

An alarmingly high number of Los Angeles County workers at the bottom of the labor market are the victims of "wage theft" and other workplace violations by employers, who on average deprive workers of 12.5 percent of their weekly paycheck, according to a study released today, Jan. 6, by three researchers with the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UCLA.

Edward Felten and Stephen Schultze use computers as flashlights. The Princeton computer scientists recently oversaw the launch of two Web-based technologies to illuminate the workings of government by making court records and the federal government's "newspaper," the Federal Register, easily accessible online.