science wire

29 Oct 2013 One of the most complete insights into ethnic minority life in contemporary England and Wales is to be drawn together at a University of Manchester event this week (30 October).

Dr. Nicholas Christakis, newly named as the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Social and Natural Science, is a sociologist and physician who conducts research in the areas of social networks and biosocial science.

Having children early and in rapid succession are major factors fueling high infant mortality rates in the South Asian countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan where one in 14 births to young mothers ends with the death of the child within the first year, say researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

Amy Snipes in her office with a painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint of campesinos, symbolic of her commitment to improve farmworkers' health.

The UK's largest research centre on ethnicity, The Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), jointly based at the University of Manchester and the University of Glasgow, and funded by the Economic and S

U of M monarch expert says home gardeners can play key role in conservation MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (10/28/2013) —Americans place high value on butterfly royalty. A recent survey suggests they are willing to support monarch butterfly conservation at high levels, up to about $6.5 billion dollars if extrapolated to all U.S. households.

The University of Melbourne will become home to the significant lifetime archive of one of the country's leading thinkers, Germaine Greer, it was announced today.

A treatment which has been successfully used to treat social phobia will be used, in a world-first study, to treat sufferers of bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.

Noted physical anthropologist Cynthia Beall discusses her research into ways people living at extreme altitudes adapt and cope.

Hen harvest rates have ranged from 2 percent to 9 percent of the estimated hen population for the 2010, 2011 and 2012 hunting seasons. This is good news, because previous research has indicated that fall harvest rates of hens should be kept below 10 percent to prevent population declines. UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.

Editor's note: The following is excerpted from a Q&A conducted by the University of Chicago Urban Network. To read the rest of the , click here. While working on the steering committee of an international research network, Evelyn Brodkin , School of Social Service Administration professor and Urban Network research affiliate, began to see patterns in the changing boundaries between work and the welfare state across the globe.

EPIC-Norfolk, a long-term study of health and ageing that recently celebrated its 20th birthday, provides researchers with a wealth of data.

The 2013 Roundtable at Stanford, 'Are You Happy Now? The New Science of Happiness and Wellbeing,' took place at Maples Pavilion on Friday.

Researchers find both effectively reduce tobacco consumption among low-income smokers Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say high-priced cigarettes and smoke-fr

It is almost ten years since Saddam Hussein was captured by US forces at a farmhouse outside Tikrit, following the swift collapse of his Ba'athist regime.

Children of similar intelligence have very different levels of educational attainment depending on their social backgrounds, says a long-term study led by Oxford University researchers.

Moving dirt, and history Student interested in archaeology spent summer on Peruvian dig This is the ninth in a series of stories about Harvard's engagement in Latin America.

The University of California, San Diego has received three significant gifts and grants totaling $2.1 million to support research on domestic and foreign policy, as well as security in China and Northeast Asia.

Since 1970, middle-income neighborhoods have been disappearing. In 2009, only 42 percent of families lived in middle-income neighborhoods, compared with 65 percent four decades earlier, reports a new Cornell-Stanford study.

An archaeologist at the University of Sheffield has found evidence that, contrary to a widely held theory, ancient Syrians made their stone tools locally instead of importing finished tools from Turkey.

An investigation of how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) Queenslanders are affected by natural disasters is being undertaken by the University of Sydney and University of Western Sydney.

The poetry of water Yemen's strife, growth cause anthropologist to shift course to help I t was poetry that first brought Harvard anthropologist Steven Caton to Yemen in 1979, and it was war that brought him back in 2001.

New research charting broad shifts in changing personal music tastes during our lifetimes finds that - while it's intrinsically linked to personality and experience - there are common music genre trends associated with key stages in a human life.

15 October 2013 While two-thirds of Australians would like to see more investment in light rail, those with access to bus rapid transit are more likely to consider it a favourable option, according to the latest quarterly national transport survey from the University of Sydney.

Sussex academic sets out strategy for China-UK collaboration in research and innovation A University of Sussex academic is joining UK ministers in Beijing this week to discuss how the UK and China can collaborate in science and innovation.

A report released today by ANU reveals that policies aimed at deterring and deflecting refugees cannot be the basis of regional arrangements for refugee protection.

A new symposium at the University of California, Berkeley, will explore the world of crowdfunding, an increasingly popular financing model that harnesses the power of social networks to raise money.

A study to assess whether patients prescribed smoking cessation drugs are at an increased risk of suicide, self-harm and treated depression compared with users of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) has found no evidence of an increased risk. The findings, led by researchers from the University of Bristol, are published online in the British Medical Journal [ BMJ ] today [11 October].

Appropriately-timed student mentoring schemes can have a large and substantiate effect on influencing secondary pupils from disadvantaged areas apply to university.

What's in a kiss? A study by Oxford University researchers suggests kissing helps us size up potential partners and, once in a relationship, may be a way of getting a partner to stick around. 'Kissing in human sexual relationships is incredibly prevalent in various forms across just about every society and culture,' said Rafael Wlodarski, the DPhil student who carried out the research in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University.

To nourish the next generation of Indian children, we need to support their nurturers, said Prabhu Pingali, professor of applied economics and management and founding director of the new Tata-Cornell Agriculture and Nutrition Initiative (TCi).

A Stanford study shows that after women wear sexualized avatars in a virtual reality world, they feel objectified and are more likely to accept rape myths in the real world. The research could have implications for the role of female characters in video games. Courtesy of Jeremy Bailenson Participants in an experiment in Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab used female avatars in sexualized or non-sexualized dress.

As Australia moves to scrap its pioneering carbon-pricing scheme, China is expected to have seven pilot pricing systems in place no later than 2015, followed by a national scheme, according to a new survey from The Australian National University.

LPS joins scheme to improve gender equality The School of Law, Politics and Sociology (LPS) at Sussex has joined the pilot of a national scheme to improve gender equality in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

The adult social care system is "fundamentally broken" and "unfit for purpose" health experts warn today (Wednesday), amid calls for a radical shake-up for service provision.

An estimated 10,000 participants and more than 80 distinguished thought leaders who appeared in the 2013 University of Melbourne Festival of Ideas, agree our children and grandchildren face an unheal

Who says economics is the dismal science? A quick glance at the range of topics at Columbia Business School Professor Ray Fisman has tackled suggests otherwise: the parking behavior of U.N&per

AUSTIN, Texas — University of Texas at Austin sociologist Chandra Muller and economist Sandra Black have received a $1.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate how science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education contributes to career success.

It shows that as well as gaining good qualifications and jobs, the Assisted Place holders felt their schools helped them develop strong personal attributes, such as self-discipline and self-reliance, as well as enduring social networks.

UK head teachers are top of their class for status, Sussex study finds School heads in the UK enjoy higher social standing than their equivalents in more than 20 other countries, according to a new University of Sussex-led study.

Sussex anthropologist's project is helping to fight racism in Athens A rise in racist attacks in Athens since the start of the Greek economic crisis has prompted a University of Sussex anthropologist and his colleagues to use crowdsourcing to help antiracist activity.

PA 312/13 A report by experts at The University of Nottingham shows that the recent protests at Balcombe may have had a negative impact on the public's perceptions of shale gas.