News 2019

Female MPs are roughly 20% more vocal in parliamentary debates where the cabinet minister is female than when the responsible minister is male, finds a new study by UCL. The research, published in the British Journal of Political Science , is the first to consider whether female leadership affects the processes or outcomes of political debate.

ETH Zurich researchers are reexamining the causes of soil erosion around the world - and have found that countries themselves have a surprisingly strong influence on their soil. This country effect was previously undetected. Soil erosion is a global problem that threatens food security and the functioning of ecosystems.

Donald Trump's anti-immigration views were a feature of his 2016 presidential campaign. To what extent was his unexpected victory driven by voters' anger over immigrants moving into their neighborhoods, attending their children's schools, or working in local businesses? Not at all, according to a new study co-authored by Yale political scientist Gregory A. Huber.

The majority of high-quality medical and science journals require disclosure of possible conflicts of interest (COI). However, a new study suggests that such disclosures have no impact on journal reviewers, even when the authors of submitted papers did, in fact, report conflicts. The study also found that reviewers' evaluations of seven additional measures of different facets of research quality (e.g., methods, conclusions, objectivity) were similarly unaffected by COI disclosures.

Muslim and Hindu students at Zenith School in Vadodara in India. (Photo courtesy of Mahesh Srinivasan) With a multi-faith population of some 1.3 billion, India claims to be the world's largest secular democracy. But when it comes to the question of who is a true Indian, the country's Hindu children are more likely than their Muslim peers to connect their faith to their national identity, according to new research from UC Berkeley.

The U.S. energy system has seen sweeping changes in the past two decades. Natural gas replaced coal as the dominant fossil source of power generation, and wind and solar energy now contribute roughly 9% of the nation's electricity, compared to almost none 20 years ago. Because of these changes, less carbon is being emitted by the power sector per unit of electricity produced.

Politicians need to get people to trust them more if they want their speeches to be heard says a new report launched by the University of Birmingham and the University of East Anglia. The research project " The Crisis of Rhetoric: Renewing Political Speech and Speechwriting " argues that public debate and the freedom to make arguments and counterarguments are essential for democracy.

The political leeway for carbon taxes is greater than commonly assumed. Political scientists at ETH have shown how carbon taxes could find acceptance in Germany and the US. What matters most is the intended use of the tax revenues and that all industrialised nations implement the taxes. Useful to fight climate change, but politically risky: carbon taxes are widely regarded as a double-edged sword.

People whose identity is "fused" with that of a political leader are more likely to take extreme positions or commit violence on behalf of the leader, new studies by researchers at Yale and University of Oslo have found. Followers of Donald Trump who have fused - or experience a deep sense of oneness - with the president are more likely to support use of violence to challenge an election result, persecute Iranians or other immigrants, and support a ban on Muslims, according to a compilation of seven studies published Sept.

Research findings were released today by a UK-Nigerian research team examining the role of WhatsApp in Nigeria's 2019 elections. Drawing on citizen surveys and interviews with political campaigns, the report underlines the ways in which WhatsApp has promoted the spread of "fake news" around elections, but has also strengthened accountability and promoted inclusion in other areas.

Is trade liberalisation shifting environmental burden from industrialised countries to poorer ones' This question was investigated by a research team at ETH Zurich led by Thomas Bernauer. In particular, they analysed whether, and if so how, commerce driven by free trade agreements is transferring environmental impacts from industrialised countries to poorer ones.

A unique new project led by the University of Bristol has received a £960,000 boost to improve integration across Bristol by exploring how its citizens and communities share spaces and move around the city. University researchers on the 'Everyday Integration' project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), will work with Bristol City Council and 29 community partners to identify existing best-practice and better understand how to overcome the various barriers people currently face.

A new study finds that climate has affected the risk of armed conflict. Though other drivers of violence were found to be substantially more influential, as global temperatures continue to rise, the changing climate is expected to further amplify the risk of conflict. Can a changing climate trigger organised armed conflict, such as civil war, or make it more severe?

As global temperatures climb, the risk of armed conflict is expected to increase substantially, according to experts across several fields. Intensifying climate change will increase the future risk of violent armed conflict within countries, according to a study published today in the journal Nature.

Facebook has joined forces with Australian university experts to devise policy that better manages online harmful content and hate speech in the Asia-Pacific region. Professor Katharine Gelber , Head of School for The University of Queensland's Political Science and International Studies , will join colleague Dr Kirril Shields and University of Sydney researchers Dr Aim Sinpeng and Dr Fiona Martin on the 12 month project.

Living in a warzone is linked with an increased risk of heart attack and stroke among civilians, even years after the conflict ends. The findings come from the first systematic review of the effects of armed conflict on heart disease risk, carried out by researchers at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

A lack of evaluation of the impact of countering violent extremism (CVE) and counter-terrorism (CT) efforts may actually be increasing the threat and risk of terrorism, a new study points out. Researchers say that national and international agencies' efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism have lacked two key ingredients - a clear and coherent theory of how individuals change and consistent evaluation of evidence of their changing attitudes.

Evidence of the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency's long-term interest in European politics and elections has been revealed in two new studies from Cardiff University's Crime and Security Research Institute. Taken together the findings provide a strong indication of the kinds of disinformation campaigns that could be directed towards the 2019 European Parliamentary elections on 23 May.

The number of immigrants the Swiss are willing to take in on an annual basis depends greatly on the quantified proposal (i.e. high or low) put forward to them - as recently revealed by a team of UNIGE researchers.

An international collaboration has investigated how people perceive politicians when they spread misinformation. The research found supporters of the politicians reduced their belief in misinformation once corrected, yet their feelings towards the political figure remained unchanged if misinformation was presented alongside an equal number of facts.