news 2022

As the climate crisis leads to more intense and more frequent extreme weather and climate-related events, this in turn risks increasing the amount of gender-based violence experienced by women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities, say researchers.

Archaeologists have found that a tool, dubbed the "stone Swiss Army knife" of prehistory, was made to look the same in enormous numbers across great distances and multiple biomes in southern Africa. This indicates early humans were sharing information and communicating with one another.

Social isolation is linked to lower brain volume in areas related to cognition and a higher risk of dementia, according to research published today in Neurology. The study found that social isolation was linked to a 26% increased risk of dementia, separately from risk factors like depression and loneliness.

Monash University experts are calling for people to contribute to a world first ethically-sourced and managed image bank for research to combat child exploitation. The project is an initiative of the AiLECS Lab - a collaboration between Monash University's Faculty of Information Technology and the Australian Federal Police - which develops artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that aid law enforcement and enhance community safety.

When parents in countries worldwide use spanking as a behavior deterrent, their children are more likely to become a victim of physical abuse, say University of Michigan researchers. Study: The association between spanking and physical abuse of young children in 56 lowand middle-income countries A new U-M study analyzed the connection between spanking and physical abuse in 56 lowand middle-income countries, as well as examined the extent to which physical abuse might be reduced if spanking were eliminated.

Research from The University of Queensland has found people lifting weights for aesthetic reasons run the risk of developing muscle dysmorphia. Also called 'reverse anorexia' or 'bigorexia', muscle dysmorphia is characterised by obsessive thoughts, compulsive behaviours and body image distortion, with sufferers seeing themselves as smaller than they are.

Because environmental justice screening tools will affect community members impacted by disproportionate environmental burdens, soliciting input from the environmental justice community is crucial to developing and using screening tools, according to a new study from the University of Michigan.

If expectant mothers are exposed to stress their child can develop behavioural problems - but this is less often the case for children with siblings During the first years of their lives, children develop the cognitive, social and emotional skills that will provide the foundations for their lifelong health and achievements.

Children whose mothers experience rising levels of depression from the period before pregnancy until the months just after giving birth are at greater risk of developing emotional, social and academic problems during their youth, UCLA psychology researchers and colleagues report. Their recently published seven-year study, which tracked mothers and their offspring from preconception until the children were 5 years old, is the first to demonstrate how changes in mothers' level of depression over time may impact early childhood behavior and emotional well-being, the authors said.

A comprehensive survey of more than five hundred young Australians aged 18-24, and in-depth interviews with an additional 30, encompassed areas such as education, employment, technology, health and wellbeing, finances, housing, civic participation and the impact of COVID-19. The findings reveal more needs to be done urgently to ensure safe and inclusive communities, and offers particularly striking insights in relation to three key areas: mental health and wellbeing, education and employment.

New research explores how abstract concepts are represented in the brain across cultures, languages Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have explored the regions of the brain where concrete and abstract concepts materialize. A new study now explores if people who grow up in different cultures and speak different languages form these concepts in the same regions of the brain.

Throughout history, mass gatherings such as collective rituals, ceremonies, and pilgrimages have created intense social bonds and feelings of unity in human societies. But Yale psychologists wondered if modern day secular gatherings that emphasize creativity and community serve an even broader purpose.

A wide-scale look at Detroit's urban gardens finds that while they don't seem to foreshadow gentrification in the city, there are some unsettling trends about where they're located and the sociodemographics in those areas. For example, home and community gardens are more frequently planted in non-Black neighborhoods, according to the study forthcoming in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning.

Asian Americans who experienced increased acts of racism at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic were more likely to acquire firearms and ammunition for self-defense, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University.

An international study of global progress in reaching World Health Organisation (WHO) goals in the provision of universal healthcare coverage has found that many countries, including Australia, may be inflating their success by not counting people in prisons and youth detention in their data. The review, led in Australia by Curtin University and The University of Melbourne, and published in The Lancet Public Health , analysed the way WHO collects global data about coverage of essential healthcare.

More than twenty years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, the fight against terrorism continues unabated. In this 'War on Terror', combating the financing of terrorist groups plays a central role. Political scientist Tasniem Anwar investigated how this fight is put into practice in court. What is being prosecuted as the financing of terrorism? 'A diverse group of citizens has become involved in the legislation.

Successful and unsuccessful approaches to the pandemic by Western governments Tuesday, May 17, 2022 — Since 2020, the world has been experiencing the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. The cause is obviously a virus, but the degree of its spread, and the associated number of infections and deaths, is largely dependent on socio-economic factors.

A study by UdeM economics professor Karim Chalak finds that U.S. gun ownership is more closely associated with risk of homicide than was previously thought. In 2017, there were nearly 40,000 gun-related deaths in the United States, including homicides and suicides. To delve into this alarming statistic, U.S.-trained Université de Montréal economist Karim Chalak and his coauthors did an econometric study of the rate of U.S. gun ownership and the associated risk of death, and found it to be much higher than previously thought.

Mariano Torcal and Josep Maria Comellas, researchers at the UPF Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology (RECSM), are the authors of an introductory article for a special issue of the jou

Globally, most adolescents who experiment with vaping don't develop an addiction, but the way tobacco products were taxed may be linked with higher e-cigarette use among young people, according to new University of Queensland research. Lead author Dr Gary Chan from UQ's National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research said the UQ study analysed data from nearly 152,000 teens in 47 countries who participated in a World Health Organization (WHO) Tobacco Survey between 2015 and 2018.