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Law - History / Archeology - 27.04.2017

Flawed forensic science may be hampering identification of human remains
A lot of the older studies only looked at females, but there's men with these scars, so there has to be something else going on. Research from The Australian National University (ANU) has cast doubt on a method used in forensic science to determine whether skeletal remains are of a person who has given birth.

Law - 05.04.2017

New Research Could Help Humans See What Nature Hides
In order for people to pick out an object against a background, the object must differ from the background by a 'just noticeable difference,' researchers said. AUSTIN, Texas - Things are not always as they appear. New visual perception research at The University of Texas at Austin, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explains the natural limits of what humans can see and how to find what nature hides.

Health - Law - 04.04.2017

Delaying marriage in developing countries benefits children
Delaying marriage in developing countries benefits children Delaying the marriage age of young women in parts of the developing world has significant positive effects for their children, a new study shows. The research, conducted by academics at the University of Sussex, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Washington at Seattle and the World Bank, looked at data from tens of thousands of households across India.

Law - 23.03.2017

Family court transparency
New research from Cardiff University's School of Law and Politics suggests that guidance given to judges to routinely publish their judgments is not being consistently followed, leaving the public with a patchy understanding of the family justice system in England and Wales. Issued in 2014, the guidance was intended to address perceptions, especially in the media, of 'secrecy' and 'justice behind closed doors' when important decisions are made about children in family courts.

Law - Health - 08.03.2017

Legalize recreational pot? More say ’yes’ for economic benefits
Four states legalized recreational marijuana in November, nearly doubling the number of states where recreational pot is legal. As more states consider joining them, a range of arguments for and against legalization is swirling around the national conversation. But which of these arguments resonate most strongly with Americans' It's the a rguments that support legalization, according to a new study co-authored by Jeff Niederdeppe , associate professor of communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Life Sciences - Law - 06.03.2017

Scientists can measure criminal intent - at least in the moment
Intent to commit a crime is a crucial factor in determining prison sentences, yet some theorists have worried that different grades of criminal intent are fictions and so should not be given weight in courtrooms. A new neuroimaging study suggests it is possible to measure the subtle variations in intent that matter to law - at least while a crime is being committed.

Civil Engineering - Law - 06.03.2017

Sharing the fares
A newly published study co-authored by MIT researchers suggests that urban ride-sharing is feasible in a wide variety of cities around the globe - and indeed that the potential 'shareability' of autos in those places is more similar, from place to place, than previously expected. The work builds on a 2014 study showing that ride-sharing - in the form of, say, taxi trips shared with other passengers traveling along similar routes - could be highly effective in New York City.

Law - 15.02.2017

Wetting Effect on Torricelli’s Law
Jets at the exit of the tank for similar conditions except wetting; hole radius = 1.75 mm; initial height = 10 cm. From hydrophilic to hydrophobic plate: (a) Glass, (b) Plexiglas, (c) Hydrophobic-glass. Left side: Zoom in of the jets at the hole exit to display the meniscus profiles for the different wetting conditions (i.e.

Law - 06.01.2017

Brixton Road becomes first place in London to breach Nitrogen dioxide limits
Data from King's College London's Environmental Research Group has shown Brixton Road has become the first place in London to breach objectives for nitrogen dioxide for 2017. UK objectives and EU limits stipulate a maximum nitrogen dioxide concentration that must not to be exceeded for more than 18 hours over the whole year.

Politics - Law - 14.12.2016

Thomas Muir - new evidence unearthed
New Court of Session papers, missing for more than 200 years, have been unearthed by the Faculty of Advocates and Professor Gerard Carruthers, University of Glasgow. The newly found papers shine light on Thomas Muir and how he courted controversy in his early years, which may have contributed to his treatment by the justice system in later life.

Law - Health - 02.12.2016

What are the health effects of legalizing marijuana?
Robert MacCoun , a professor of law and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, relays the potential risks and benefits of legalizing marijuana. His research focuses on drug policy, and he has written extensively about the effects of marijuana from a legal and health perspective.

Law - Health - 15.11.2016

Florida’s homicide rates rise after ’Stand Your Ground’ self-defence law
A change in self-defence laws in Florida which gave citizens the right to use lethal force to protect themselves in public has been linked with the state's homicide rates going up by nearly a quarter. The study published in  JAMA Internal Medicine,  led by the University of Oxford with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania, looked at homicide rates before and after the enactment of State Bill 436, known as the Stand Your Ground law, which was signed by Governor Jeb Bush in 2005.

Economics - Law - 07.11.2016

Online gambling regulations should be tightened to protect children and young people, research finds
Children and adolescents are being targeted by online gambling websites due to flaws in advertising legislation, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London and City University London. The researchers point to recent statistics from an international research review which suggest that 77 to 83 per cent of adolescents are involved in some kind of gambling, and 10 to 15 per cent of adolescents are at risk of developing serious gambling problems.

Law - Computer Science - 24.10.2016

AI predicts outcomes of human rights trials
The judicial decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) have been predicted to 79% accuracy using an artificial intelligence (AI) method developed by researchers at UCL, the University of Sheffield and the University of Pennsylvania. The method is the first to predict the outcomes of a major international court by automatically analysing case text using a machine learning algorithm.

Psychology - Law - 17.10.2016

Why was Donald Trump sniffling?
In the first US presidential debate there were many who noticed Donald Trump's sniffling. It created a twitter storm under the hashtag #TrumpSniffles and the media became extremely interested in the presidential candidate's health. However, Lisa Flower, a doctoral student in Sociology at Lund University, Sweden, who is currently doing research on emotions, offers an alternative explanation: 'My research shows that sniffling can be a way for a speaker to indicate a shift from personal to professional opinions and vice versa.

Law - 17.10.2016

INRA commits further to open science
INRA has just published its official policy guidelines regarding open access to its publications and data.

Life Sciences - Law - 03.10.2016

First evidence of deep-sea animals ingesting microplastics
Following the news that the UK government is to ban plastic microbeads by the end of 2017, a team of scientists led by the University of Oxford has discovered the first evidence of microplastics being ingested by deep-sea animals. Researchers working on the Royal Research Ship (RRS) James Cook at two sites in the mid-Atlantic and south-west Indian Ocean found plastic microfibres inside creatures including hermit crabs, squat lobsters and sea cucumbers at depths of between 300m and 1800m.

Life Sciences - Law - 29.09.2016

Vice-Chancellor’s Oration 2016
Following the news that the UK government is to ban plastic microbeads by the end of 2017, a team of scientists led by the University of Oxford has discovered the first evidence of microplastics being ingested by deep-sea animals. Researchers working on the Royal Research Ship (RRS) James Cook at two sites in the mid-Atlantic and south-west Indian Ocean found plastic microfibres inside creatures including hermit crabs, squat lobsters and sea cucumbers at depths of between 300m and 1800m.

Law - Life Sciences - 21.09.2016

Q&A with Jennifer Mnookin: Raising the bar for scientific evidence in court
This week, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) challenged the scientific community and the justice system to dramatically improve the reliability of scientific evidence and testimony presented in criminal courts. In the report, council members unanimously called for widespread changes to the protocols for using scientific evidence.

Law - Computer Science - 26.08.2016

Lobbyists’ model legislation unmasked by U-M researchers
ANN ARBOR'Since 2005, about two dozen states have created "Stand Your Ground" laws authorizing deadly force in self-defense. And nearly all of those laws have similar language. So, how did that happen? They all shared an author: The American Legislative Exchange Council drafted "model" legislation and lobbied states to pass it.