News 2019

A new report released by the Sydney Policy Lab has found low income and vulnerable groups are being forced into informal and sometimes illegal housing arrangements, due to a lack of affordable alternatives. A new report released today by the Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney has found low income and vulnerable groups are being forced into informal housing arrangements, such as share accommodation.

Three decades from now, nearly half of the Swiss population will have had some experience with cannabis use. According to a new study by the University of Zurich, the number of active users will rise as well, increasing by 50% compared to 2015 - unless the government establishes new regulations. Countries such as Canada and Uruguay have introduced new paradigms when it comes to regulating the sale and consumption of cannabis.

Giving Wales the same powers over benefits as Scotland could boost the Welsh budget by £200m a year, according to new research from Cardiff University's Wales Governance Centre. The finding is revealed in a report which examines how Wales' finances could be affected if the Welsh Government was given the same control over welfare as the Scottish Government.

Editor's note: This is one in a series of stories spotlighting how faculty, students and alumni at the Harris School of Public Policy are driving impact for the next generation. Leading up to the May 3 grand opening of the Harris's new home at the Keller Center, these stories will examine three of the most critical issues facing our world: strengthening democracy, fighting poverty and inequality, and combating climate change.

How do local tax havens emerge? Is tax competition harmful? Raphaël Parchet, Assistant professor at the Faculty of Economics of Università della Svizzera italiana, addresses these questions in his new project "Sorting, Tax Competition and the Rise of Local Tax Havens", funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), shedding new light on the logic behind the rise of tax havens in Switzerland.

New research led by the University of Bristol has found some evidence that children and adolescents with higher levels of anxiety may be at greater risk of developing alcohol problems. However, the link between anxiety and later binge drinking and later frequency and quantity of drinking was more inconclusive.

Stanford researchers examining the veterans' appeals process find that legal errors and due process mistakes while processing claims are much higher than publicly reported. A new study by Stanford scholars and their colleagues shines a stark spotlight on governance issues that have plagued a cornerstone of the nation's administrative system for years: rampant errors and a backlog of appeals cases involving veterans' benefits.

PA27/19 Zoos and safari parks in the UK are using a special new tool to help them more successfully monitor the wellbeing of elephants in their care, thanks to a study led by The University of Nottingham. The new elephant behavioural welfare assessment tool, the result of research which has been published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE , allows keepers to quickly and easily track the welfare of individual elephants over time based on their demeanour and behaviour.

UK vitamin D supplementation policy needs to change to protect the health and lives of babies, pregnant women and dark skinned individuals, say University of Birmingham researchers as they today highlighted the death of a baby and serious ill health of two others due to a vitamin D deficiency. The death of six-month-old Noah Thahane, who died following complications of heart failure caused by severe Vitamin D deficiency, was entirely preventable, concluded Dr Wolfgang Högler and PhD doctoral researcher Dr Suma Uday in research published today in BMC Pediatrics.

A Canadian-led team of scientists has found the second repeating fast radio burst (FRB) ever recorded. FRBs are short bursts of radio waves coming from far outside our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists believe FRBs emanate from powerful astrophysical phenomena billions of light years away.