news 2020

The largest collection of public internet censorship data ever compiled shows that even citizens of what are considered the world's freest countries aren't safe from internet censorship. The University of Michigan team used its own Censored Planet tool, an automated censorship tracking system launched in 2018, to collect more than 21 billion measurements over 20 months in 221 countries.

University of Queensland researchers have debunked the theory that asylum seekers pose a terrorism threat in Australia. Professor Peter Billings and Dr Rebecca Ananian-Welsh from UQ Law School wrote a chapter of the book Terrorism and Asylum , featuring an international collaboration of experts from Europe, the UK, North America and Australia.

Despite decades of progress in addressing gender discrimination, women across the globe face persistent legal barriers to participating in the economy on an equal basis with men,  according to a study  co-authored by Yale economist Pinelopi Goldberg. The study, based on the World Bank Group's newly compiled "Women, Business and the Law"(WBL) database, provides the first global picture of how discriminatory laws continue to restrict women's economic opportunities.

Seismic waves, commonly associated with earthquakes, have been used by scientists to develop a universal scaling law for the sense of touch. A team, led by researchers at the University of Birmingham, used Rayleigh waves to create the first scaling law for touch sensitivity. The results are published in Science Advances .

Berlin University Alliance funds six groundbreaking projects in the Social Cohesion funding line of its Grand Challenge Initiatives No 170/2020 from Sep 28, 2020 Social cohesion is a global challenge. Understanding social transformations is a key to successful coexistence in a complex, heterogeneous world.

A study is under way to investigate how 'smart' devices may be helping to facilitate domestic abuse in Australia and the United Kingdom. A team from The University of Queensland , Queensland University of Technology and University College London is examining how domestic and sexual violence survivors are being impacted by Internet of Things (IoT) technology, which enables everyday devices to collect, send and receive data.

V oter ID laws are becoming more common and more strict, and the stakes for American democracy are high and growing higher by the year. New research from the University of California San Diego provides evidence that voter ID laws disproportionately reduce voter turnout in more racially diverse areas.

By Andrew Cohen  An eye-opening report from Berkeley Law's Death Penalty Clinic finds that racial discrimination is a consistent aspect of jury selection in California. The exhaustive study investigates the history, legacy, and ongoing practice of excluding people of color-especially African Americans-from state juries through prosecutors' peremptory challenges.

A new Bluetooth contact tracing system for detecting Covid-19 proximity, has been developed by a team of scientists and data privacy experts, including from UCL. The DP-3T tracing system, which is presented openly for public scrutiny in a new White Paper , works at scale and has been developed to the highest privacy standards, ready to deploy into an app.

FACULTY Q&A A federal court has cleared the way for academic researchers, computer scientists and journalists to continue work that investigates online company practices for racial, gender or other discrimination. The ruling means that those who research online companies no longer have to fear prosecution for the work they do to hold tech companies accountable for their practices, said Christian Sandvig , the H Marshall McLuhan Collegiate Professor of Digital Media, professor of information and director of the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing at the University of Michigan.

Study shows removing liability concerns slightly increases C-section procedures during childbirth. Doctors face tough choices during difficult childbirths - often involving the decision of whether to perform a cesarian section operation. And in the background lies a question: To what extent are these medical decisions motivated by the desire to avoid liability lawsuits?

Building new backyard cottages - called accessory dwelling units - is a critical part of fixing California's housing crisis, says Karen Chapple, chair of UC Berkeley's city and regional planning program. (Photo courtesy of UC Berkeley. Despite numerous California state legislative wins in support of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) in the last three years, local regulations still limit their production, UC Berkeley researchers have found.

SIEPR Faculty Fellow Brad Larsen brings a twist to ongoing debates over licensing laws as his latest research shows how consumers don't care about occupational licenses amid online reviews and star ratings. Consider the last time you hired an electrician, plumber or painter. Did you care to check if they were licensed or not? If licensing status was not your priority, you are not alone, according to new research by Stanford economist Brad Larsen.