news 2016

It turns out that even in the world of scientific writing, your eighth-grade teacher was right: how you write can matter as much as what you write. In a study published Dec. 15 in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers from the University of Washington looked at the abstracts from more than 700 scientific papers about climate change to find out what makes a paper influential in its field.

When a 2013 study published in Science concluded that reading literary fiction for as few as 20 minutes could improve someone's social abilities, it made quite the splash. However, when researchers from the University of Pennsylvania , Pace University, Boston College and the University of Oklahoma tried to replicate the findings using the original study materials and methodology, the results didn't hold up.

Women's expectations now more closely match reality and as a result these more closely match the expectations of men. Paradox of "contented female worker" has vanished as there is no longer a job satisfaction gap between men and women. Female job satisfaction has dramatically declined in Britain since the early 1990s and a gender gap no longer exists, meaning that the paradox of the "contented female worker" has vanished, new research from Lancaster University Management School reveals.

A new online schools resource and app, all about metaphor, have been launched by researchers at the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow. The materials aim to "open the minds" of secondary school pupils, "put ideas into their heads" and "build up" their knowledge of the English language - metaphorically speaking.

ANN ARBOR-When reading emails, do you become the "grammar police?" You no who you aer: the person who thinks its her job too catch every typo or gramatical errur? This behavior is partly the result of personality traits that influence how people react to written errors, according University of Michigan linguistics experts.

Volkswagen Foundation Sponsors Project at Freie Universität on Relationship between Theory and Practice in Art and Science of Dance with 195,000 Euros / Press Image The Volkswagen Foundation is supporting a research project at Freie Universität Berlin that is investigating the relationship between theory and practice in the art and science of dance.

A new Oxford-led research programme will explore the crucial role of creativity in the use of languages and investigate more creative forms of language learning, providing a forum for universities, schools and other partners to forge a new and more cohesive identity  for modern foreign languages (MFL).

When communicating with others, people often make physical gestures to complement their verbal descriptions, yet the study of human communication generally overlooks this dynamic, Stanford psychologist Herbert Clark says. When talking with others, people routinely describe and point at things with their hands, arms, heads, faces, eyes and bodies – with or without props.

A web-based machine language system solves crossword puzzles far better than commercially-available products, and may help machines better understand language. Despite recent progress in AI, problems involving language understanding are particularly difficult. Felix Hill Researchers have designed a web-based platform which uses artificial neural networks to answer standard crossword clues better than existing commercial products specifically designed for the task.

The courtship and mating behaviors of the perky Australian red-backed fairy-wren have evolved into nothing short of a free-for-all. The rampant promiscuity of both sexes is legendary. What's a fairy-wren to do to keep from wasting energy raising another male's chicks? New research from scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology provides a surprising answer: Sing with your mate.