News 2019

New research from the University of Sussex shows that people who take part in Dry January - living alcohol-free for a month - are still drinking less six months later. In the most robust research on the subject to date, the study, led by University of Sussex psychologist Dr Richard de Visser , compared the experiences of participants in the Dry January 2019 challenge with adult drinkers who did not take part.

People transported animals over huge distances for mass gatherings at one of Ireland's most iconic archaeological sites, research concludes. Dr Richard Madgwick of Cardiff University led the study, which analysed the bones of 35 animals excavated from Navan Fort, the legendary capital of Ulster. Researchers from Queen's University Belfast, Memorial University Newfoundland and the British Geological Survey were also involved in the research.

As the Christmas party season gears up, new research from The ANU has found Australians don't know, and 'wildly underestimate' guidelines for responsible drinking. Despite this, Australians felt a deep sense of social responsibility to others when drinking and uniformly cited drink driving as the ultimate act of irresponsible drinking.

Older people who engage with the arts live longer than those who take part infrequently or not at all, according to UCL research. The study, published today in the BMJ , measured engagement in the 'receptive arts' such as going to the theatre, concerts, opera, museums, art galleries and exhibitions, and linked this to mortality.

HOUSTON - (Dec. Is there a "God spot” in the brain that determines whether you're hardwired to be religious' New research from Rice University finds that nonbelievers are more likely than the faithful to think that's true. "Can Religiosity Be Explained by 'Brain Wiring'- An Analysis of U.S. Adults' Opinions” builds on significant literature about neurotheology , or the connection between religion and the mind.

People exposed to higher levels of air pollution are more likely to experience depression or die by suicide, finds a new analysis led by UCL. The first systematic review and meta-analysis of evidence connecting air pollution and a range of mental health problems, published in Environmental Health Perspectives , reviewed study data from 16 countries.

Researchers know that adversity-especially poverty-related adversity-increases the risk for anxiety and depression. Now, University of Michigan researchers have won a $6.7 million grant to study how poverty-related adversity might affect the development of threat and reward systems in the brain, and how that developmental process might increase the risk for people to develop anxiety and depression.

Meerkat clans perform a 'war dance' to frighten opponents and protect their territory, according to a new UCL and University of Cambridge study. The study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B , is the first empirical study to reveal intergroup aggression. The researchers, who monitored hundreds of these intergroup encounters over 11 years, show that meetings between meerkat clans often turn aggressive and sometimes escalate to fighting and lethal violence.

After nearly a decade, the Migrating out of Poverty Research Programme (MOOP) is drawing to a close, having conducted research in more than ten countries in an effort to uncover how and why migration plays such a significant role in poverty reduction in some contexts, but not in others. Funded by the UK's Department for International Development, MOOP has built up a robust body of evidence on the relationship between migration and poverty, with research feeding directly into regional policy in the global South, and cited in international reports on development.

Just 14% of people in the world population have access to palliative care services that allow people to die with dignity and alleviate their suffering, according to new research led by the University of Glasgow. And more than half of the world's population - mainly in low and middle-income countries - have very poor or non-existent access to palliative care.

Melting glaciers and rising sea levels are common examples of the effects of climate change. However, there has been far less research on how a warmer world affects people who need freshwater ice on lakes and rivers. What is known is that ice cover for freshwaters in the Northern Hemisphere has steadily declined for the last 150 years, putting people's cultural and spiritual practices at risk - and potentially their livelihoods.

SIEPR's Maya Rossin-Slater finds the average rate of antidepressant use among youths under age 20 rose by 21 percent in the local communities where fatal school shootings occurred. The toll from gun violence at schools has only escalated in the 20 years since the jolting, horrific massacre at Columbine High.

New research from the University of Minnesota examines how secondhand smoke might impact children and adolescent cardiovascular health. Published in Pediatric Research , researchers studied the carotid artery in the neck, brachial artery in the upper arm and abdominal aorta right above the belly button in 298 people.

Research from Oxford University calls us to reconsider how behaviours may spread through societies of wild animals, and how this might provide new insights into human social networks. Our social connections to one another, whether it be online or in real life, give rise to our 'social networks'. Previously, it has often been assumed that the individuals with the most social connections are the primary 'social influencers' and most likely to acquire, and spread, new behaviours.

Thousands of young women are unnecessarily admitted to UK hospitals and undergo surgery they do not need each year in the NHS, according to a new study. Surgery for appendicitis is one of the world's most common emergency operations. UK hospitals exhibit the world's highest rate of 'normal appendicectomy,' where patients undergo surgery for suspected appendicitis but laboratory examination of the removed appendix finds it to be normal.

New research investigating the effect of sleep on eyewitness memory has found that having a period of sleep, compared to a period of wake, does not improve eyewitness identification accuracy. The research team, led by PhD student, David Morgan at Royal Holloway, University of London, Professor Laura Mickes, senior author at the University of Bristol and including researchers from Royal Holloway, the Universities of California, USA and Birmingham, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is published today [4 December] in Royal Society Open Science .

Childbirth is increasingly risky in the United States. Maternal deaths and potentially life-threatening complications - called severe maternal morbidity - are climbing. This reality is especially challenging for rural communities, which face declining access to obstetric services. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are approximately 700 maternal deaths and an additional 50,000 cases of severe maternal morbidity in the U.S. every year.

If one turns a stone over in a river or stream, it swarms with tiny animals: caddisflies, water beetles, freshwater shrimp, and snails. The invertebrates living on the beds of water bodies that can be seen with the naked eye, called macroinvertebrates, are rather unimposing, but for science and the protection of surface waters they are of great importance.

Today Stanford University released its third annual Title IX/Sexual Harassment Report , which outlines the ways in which the university responded to reported concerns of sexual harassment, sexual violence and gender discrimination on campus and in all programs and activities connected to Stanford. The report includes information about reports of prohibited sexual conduct involving students, faculty and staff during the period from Sept.

The choices we make in large group settings - such as in online forums and social media - might seem fairly automatic to us. But our decision-making process is more complicated than we know. So, researchers have been working to understand what's behind that seemingly intuitive process. Now, new University of Washington research has discovered that in large groups of essentially anonymous members, people make choices based on a model of the "mind of the group" and an evolving simulation of how a choice will affect that theorized mind.