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Law - 20.05.2021

Parrot poachers striking while the market’s hot
"Pretty" parrots are more likely to be snatched up for Indonesia's illegal wildlife trade, a new study reveals. The findings not only expose the key drivers behind the country's illegal trade in these birds, but offer lessons for the potential emergence and spread of infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans - like COVID and avian flu.

Law - Computer Science - 19.03.2021

The importance of iconography and text: Research that impacted new privacy law
A groundbreaking law that gives consumers more agency over the sale of their private information was updated in California this week, and it reflects the work of two university teams. Additional regulations added to the California Consumer Privacy Act to include adoption of a Privacy Options icon come just as the team of researchers that helped lawmakers design the blue button get ready to share results of their research process that informed the icon design.

Social Sciences - Law - 24.02.2021

Increased green space in prisons can reduce self-harm and violence
Prisons with more green space have lower levels of violence and self-harm, according to new research at the University of Birmingham and Utrecht University. The study is the first to attempt large-scale mapping of green space within prison environments and link it to well-being in a robust, statistically significant way.

Law - History / Archeology - 01.02.2021

VUB rediscovers Belgian contribution to peace
In his doctoral research, VUB legal historian Wouter De Rycke investigated the unique but forgotten contribution of the Mons lawyer Louis Bara (1821-1857) to the 19th-century international peace campaign. According to De Rycke, his research offers a glimpse into a rather unknown episode of our history: " In the 19th century, the first internationally organised movement to declare war emerged, a kind of 'NGO' avant la lettre.

Campus - Law - 08.01.2021

Child marriage is legal and persists across Canada
Canada is at the forefront of global efforts to end child marriage abroad. Yet this practice remains legal and persists across the country. In Canada, more than 3,600 marriage certificates were issued to children, usually girls, under the age of 18 between 2000 and 2018, according to a new study from researchers at McGill University.

Law - 17.11.2020

’Extremely aggressive’ internet censorship spreads in the world’s democracies
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.

Law - Social Sciences - 03.11.2020

No evidence that asylum seekers bring terror risk
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.

Economics / Business - Law - 30.10.2020

Legal discrimination stymies economic outcomes for women
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.

Law - 12.10.2020

’Universal law of touch’ will enable new advances in Virtual Reality
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 .

Social Sciences - Law - 28.09.2020

Understanding What Holds Societies Together
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.

Social Sciences - Law - 18.09.2020

Survey explores impact of technology-facilitated abuse
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.

Law - Politics - 25.06.2020

Skewing the Vote
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.

Law - Health - 14.06.2020

Racial discrimination ingrained in jury selection, law school report finds
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.  Clinic students and faculty evaluated 683 California Courts of Appeal cases involving objections to these challenges, used by attorneys to excuse potential jurors without providing a reason why, from 2006 to 2018.

Health - Law - 07.04.2020

Covid-19: Scientists develop Bluetooth tracing system, with privacy at heart
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.

Law - Computer Science - 03.04.2020

What removing legal threat to research that exposes online discrimination means
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.

Health - Law - 11.03.2020

Moving beyond "defensive medicine"
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?

Law - 05.02.2020

Burdensome regulations stymie backyard cottage production, UC Berkeley study finds
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.

Law - Administration - 13.01.2020

The value of occupational licensing dims in the online world
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.

Economics / Business - Law - 18.12.2019

Experts: 2020 to bring new data privacy, content protections
Two Carnegie Mellon University professors expect 2020 could bring new regulations and laws to protect consumers from data privacy risks and block pirate sites. In the coming year, Ari Lightman , professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy , predicts that lawmakers will tighten regulations on social media networks as part of a push for more transparency from digital giants.

Law - Social Sciences - 25.11.2019

New researchers Law and Development
The Law and Development Research Group welcomes Tomaso Ferrando (research professor), Antidius Kaitu, Tefera Addis (PhD researchers) and Anne Oloo (Sustjustice coordinator). The Law and Development Research Group welcomes Tomaso Ferrando (research professor), Antidius Kaitu, and Tefera Addis (PhD researchers).