science wire

It's a powerful feeling, says anthropology graduate student Amanda Taylor, to stand where people stood thousands of years back and gaze out at the same water — the same sunsets — that they saw so long ago.

Phone hacking, sleaze and cash for questions — corruption in our systems of governance and public bodies has eroded faith in politicians and other senior public figures over recent years.

ANN ARBOR, Mich-Confidence remained strong in February due to a record number of consumers who were aware of ongoing increases in jobs, according to University of Michigan economist Richard Curtin, director of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers.

By Richard North 24 February 2012 The strength of the University of Sydney's relationship with China has been highlighted in a new report issued by the Minster for Science and Research, Senator Chris Evans. The report, Science and Research Collaboration between Australia and China , shows that the University published more joint papers with China between 2000 and 2009 than any other Australian university - a total of 1396 papers, or 13.2 per cent of the market.

AUSTIN, Texas — A plurality of Texans would favor taking the authority to draw new congressional and legislative maps away from the Legislature and governor and giving it to an independent, appointed commission, according to a University of Texas at Austin/Texas Tribune poll. The Feb. 8-15 statewide poll of 800 registered Texas voters showed that 42 percent favored redistricting reform, with 27 percent opposing and 30 percent expressing no opinion.

Manchester was a stone's throw away from a brave new world of helipads, boulevards, tunnels and moving pavements, according to unrealised plans unearthed by researchers at The University of Manchester and Manchester School of Architecture.

Excavation underway at Kharaneh IV site in eastern Jordan reveals 20,000-year-old huts and artifacts shedding new light on hunter-gatherers' lives. (Photo © by Lisa A. Maher) A  joint team of American, British, Danish and Jordanian archaeologists working in eastern Jordan has announced its discovery of 20,000-year-old hut structures, the earliest yet found in that country.

A cluster of ancient footprints in the Arabian desert offers the clearest evidence yet for the early origins of modern elephants' social structure, according to a Yale-led research team. Roughly seven million years old, the prints represent the movements of at least 14 prehistoric elephants through the inland desert of the Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi, anthropologists report in a paper published on Feb.

A major conference examining how the emergence of Brazil, Russia, India and China as leading world powers should be accommodated by the international community will take place at Cambridge University later this month.

Spending money on crime prevention might prove a wiser investment than building more prisons, writes Australian Research Council Federation Fellow JOHN BRAITHWAITE. Between 1910 and 1990 Australia had an imprisonment rate at approximately half what it is today. Punitive thinking led to the tragedy of massive public investment in prison building in an era when the evidence suggested this was not an effective way of reducing crime.

The Institute for the Social Sciences (ISS) at Cornell will sponsor 12 of the university's most promising social scientists for one semester, enabling them to pursue their research, free from teaching and most departmental duties.

In an effort to address urban violence on the South Side, the University of Chicago Medicine is partnering with CeaseFire Chicago to sponsor a "Violence Interrupter," who will focus on monitoring, mediating and defusing disputes in neighborhoods that the medical campus serves.

A little known and deep historical link between Australia and Indonesia will be explored at a two-day symposium starting this Thursday at The Australian National University.

Cultural System or norm circles? An exchange. This article takes the form of a debate between the two authors - Margaret S. Archer (CDH - Centre for Social Ontology ) and - Dave Elder-Vass (Loughborough University, UK) on the social ontology of propositional culture.

A new study from The Australian National University shows that foreign direct investment (FDI) both into and out of China is improving economic stability and driving development in Asia and the Pacific. In a major study, Chunlai Chen from the ANU Crawford School examined levels of FDI in 49 developing countries between 1992 and 2008.

Professor John Holmwood from The University of Nottingham has been appointed President of the British Sociological Association (BSA).

ANN ARBOR, Mich-Consumer confidence continued to improve in January due to positive news about potential job gains, according to University of Michigan economist Richard Curtin, director of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers.

A tiny mountainous region in southern Siberia may have been the genetic source of the earliest Native Americans, according to new research by a University of Pennsylvania-led team of anthropologists. Lying at the intersection of what is today Russia, Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan, the region known as the Altai "is a key area because it's a place that people have been coming and going for thousands and thousands of years," said Theodore Schurr , an associate professor in Penn's Department of Anthropology.

All images from the Southworth Spanish Civil War Collection in the UC San Diego Mandeville Special Collections Library "So There Will Be No Forgetting: Images from the Spanish Civil War," an exhibit

Professor David Goodman, Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Sydney, will speak about Chinese perspectives on globalisation at Leeds on 1 February 2012.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-As the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution approaches on Jan. 25, sociologist Mansoor Moaddel is available to discuss trends in religious, political and cultural values in Egypt and other Arab countries.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-Cognitive psychologist Frederick Conrad has been appointed director of the University of Michigan Program in Survey Methodology, based at the Institute for Social Research.

He looked at the technological revolution unfolding around him and recognized the possibility for new kinds of social networks, and the insight catapulted him to the pinnacle of his field and changed popular culture forever.

Guantánamo ten years on - necessity or troublesome legacy? In 2002, the United States of America opened a detention camp at a military base on a part of Cuba.

A new Department of Social Science, Health & Medicine at King's College London is officially launched today with the arrival of the incoming Head of Department, Nikolas Rose, Professor of Sociology.

A successful violence prevention model developed at Cardiff University is set to be implemented in the Dutch capital Amsterdam.

Current police intelligence practices could miss community tension and large scale criminality, according to analysis by the Universities' Police Science Institute.

Tomorrow we launch a series of 12 articles by Cambridge researchers who tell us about the unfamiliar places where they've spent the night in the course of their work.

20 Dec 2011 Scientists studying a unique collection of human skulls have shown that changes to the skull shape thought to have occurred independently through separate evolutionary events may have actually precipitated each other. Researchers at the Universities of Manchester and Barcelona examined 390 skulls from the Austrian town of Hallstatt and found evidence that the human skull is highly integrated, meaning variation in one part of the skull is linked to changes throughout the skull.

People read an extra edition of a newspaper reporting the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Seoul.

PA 391/11 People who apply for professional social work courses at The University of Nottingham are being urged to take advantage of bursaries which have been protected from government cuts for the next academic year.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-The overripe cucumber dangles from a vine in a photo snapped by a woman who survived the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged northeastern Japan.

08 Dec 2011 A study of 2.4 million Twitter messages from the time of the riots has found that politicians and other commentators were wrong to claim the website played an important role in inciting and organising the disturbances.

Norman languages spoken in the Channel Islands for a thousand years are now severely endangered. Cambridge linguist Mari Jones has been analysing the languages and tracing why they have declined.

Melton and Professor Kaplan's work on climate change using a combined biophysical modelling, social science, and community engagement approach will be presented at the December meeting.

First it was the Dambusters raid, now Cambridge University's Hugh Hunt has helped to recreate 'The Great Escape' from Germany's infamous Stalag Luft III.

The rolling hills and sweeping steppes of Mongolia will seem closer to Australia with the launch of a new research and teaching centre at The Australian National University today.

The healthcare guidance body NICE has today published a new clinical guideline on the longer-term care of adults, children and young people who self-harm.

A century ago, 80 per cent of the world's Christians lived in Europe and North America; today, nearly 70 per cent live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, making Christianity a predominantly non-Western religion.

The civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia ended 10 years ago but these West African nations continue to struggle, partly because the wars created an economy based on warfare.

Lund University is in a good position to start a unique interdisciplinary research collaboration on learning, according to Assistant Vice-Chancellor Sven Strömqvist, who is pushing to get such a collaboration started.