news 2012

18 Dec 2012 The detailed analysis of the 2011 census data of England and Wales by the University's new research Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) reveals the term 'ethnic minority' is fast becoming redundant. Previously passionate debates over how segregated we are, they say, should now be a thing of the past.

Everyone knows that men and women tend to hold different views on certain things. However, new research by scientists from the University of Bristol and published in PLoS ONE indicates that this may literally be the case. Researchers examined where men and women looked while viewing still images from films and pieces of art.

Do subtitles have an impact on how audiences understand the movie? A University of Nottingham academic published a book on viewers' interpretations of dynamic interactions represented in films via subtitling. Xiaohui Yuan, a lecturer in Translation and Interpreting Studies at The University of Nottingham, shared her views in the latest book Politeness and Audience Response in Chinese-English Subtitling on how the face negotiation is dealt with when subtitling between Chinese and English.

A newly-discovered manuscript may represent Edward Gibbon's earliest experiment in the irony for which he would become famous, an Oxford University English academic has found. Professor David Womersley of Oxford University's English Faculty discovered the manuscript written by the 19-year old Edward Gibbon, which had been left in the attic of a house in Lausanne for many years.

Using a traditional Chinese board game and artificial intelligence, researchers at the University of Sydney and Charles Sturt University have gained new insight into how expertise develops. The findings, published this month in Nature's scientific reports , will improve our understanding of how we think and help to develop more flexible artificial intelligences.

AUSTIN, Texas — The School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin received a $500,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to educate doctoral graduate students about the evolving occupations of information professionals. As future faculty and scholars, these students will advance the study of information work in the nation's information schools.

The US presidential election dominates the global media every four years, with news articles, which are carefully analysed by commentators and campaign strategists, playing a major role in shaping voter opinion. Academics at the University of Bristol's Intelligent Systems Laboratory have developed an online tool, Election Watch, which analyses the content of news about the US election by the international media.

Mindy Kornhaber, associate professor of educational theory and policy at Penn State, recently had a unique opportunity in television. Kornhaber served as a consultant to "Canada's Smartest Person," a two-hour prime-time television show on the Canadian national network CBC. The show aired nationally in Canada on March 18.

The fascinating story behind a 1,200-year-old book unearthed by a mechanical digger operator six years ago in an Irish bog is to be told by the man who is supervising its conservation. John Gillis, a Senior Conservator of books and manuscripts at Trinity College Library, Ireland, will speak at The John Rylands Library on March 22 in an event jointly organised by the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies (MANCASS), based at The University of Manchester, and Manchester Medieval Society.

A research team, led by Jane Stuart-Smith of the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow has been awarded £235,000 by the Leverhulme Trust to study the evolution of speech in the city over the course of the past century. The project is now asking members of the public to come forward with their own examples of audio recordings, particularly from before 1980 and especially involving teenagers and women.

14 newly-discovered letters by Francois Voltaire have allowed an Oxford University team to shed light on his brief but important time in England. Two of the new letters shed new light on the extent of the author's interactions with the English aristocracy and in one letter he even signs his name 'Francis Voltaire' - something he has never before been recorded as doing.

Are you someone who easily recognises everyone you've ever met? Or maybe you struggle, even with familiar faces? It is already known that we are better at recognising faces from our own race but researchers have only recently questioned how we assimilate the information we use to recognise people. New research by the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus has shown that when it comes to recognising people the Malaysian Chinese have adapted their facial recognition techniques to cope with living in a multicultural environment.

In a study that investigates the challenges of disseminating clinical research findings in peer-reviewed biomedical journals, Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that fewer than half of a sample of trials primarily or partially funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were published within 30 months of completing the clinical trial.